But, on the other hand, no amount of attention from the outside alone will keep it healthy.

All the organs inside the body must be kept healthy if the skin is to be kept in good condition.
Although the external washing and cleaning are very important, the greater part of the work of developing a healthy skin and a good complexion must be done from the inside.
The Two Layers which Make Up the Skin.

Like our "internal skin," the mucous membrane, which lines our stomach and bowels, the skin is made up of two layers--a deeper, or basement, sheet, woven out of tough strands of fibrous stuff (_derma_); and a surface layer (_epidermis_) composed of cells lying side by side like the bricks in a pavement, or the tiles on a floor, and hence called "pavement" (_epithelial_) cells.

These pavement cells are fastened on the basement membrane much as the kernels of corn grow on a cob; only, instead of there being but one layer, as on a cob of corn, there are a dozen or fifteen of them, one above the other, each one dovetailing into the row below it, as the corn kernels do into the surface of the cob.

As they grow up toward the surface from the bottom, they become flatter and flatter, and drier, until the outer surface layer becomes thin, fine, dry, slightly greasy scales, like fish-scales, of about the thickness of the very finest and driest bran.
We are continually Shedding our Skin.