Skin diseases : their nursing and general management / by G. Norman Meachen.

  • Meachen, G. Norman (George Norman), 1876-
Date:
[between 1900 and 1922]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Skin diseases : their nursing and general management / by G. Norman Meachen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/152 (page 4)
    through no fault of his own, and in spite of the most scrupulous care and cleanliness. Those who will only take the trouble to study carefully the different manifestations and innumerable types of cutaneous disease, the wonderful way in which the skin reacts to treatment and in which it corresponds to and affords a valuable index of the state of the general health, will find their labour amply rewarded, for there is hardly any branch of medicine that bristles with so many inter¬ esting features as dermatology. But there must first be the seeing eye. After these prefatory remarks which, it is hoped, may aid in dispelling the mists of prejudice which have for so long clouded our ken and prevented many of us, perhaps, from doing ourselves and our patients justice in the treat¬ ment and management of skin disease, we must pass on to consider the structure of the normal skin. One of the first things about which it is absolutely necessary to be clear is that the skin is not merely a membrane or wrapper covering over the fleshy parts beneath in the same manner as the “ skin ” of a grape or a plum encloses the luscious fruit within itself. It is something far more than this. In spite of physiology lectures, lantern-slides and mammoth diagrams, the vaguest notions are abroad with respect to the architec¬ ture of the skin and its relationship to other tissues of the body. The human skin is as much an organ as is the heart or the liver, i.e., it is made up of more than one kind of tissue and it performs very definite functions. The expression “ cutaneous system ” is frequently used to signify the skin, and it is most appropriate, for each part