The skin in health and disease.

Date:
[1888?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The skin in health and disease. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    ment, and the abundance of their distribution may- be also judged from the pain caused by the entrance of a pin, or even the penetration of the minute sting of an insect. This very abundant nerve supply of the skin, which is undoubtedly for the purpose of protect- ing us against injury, is accomplished by the most delicate division and distribution of the nerves, until their extremities are lost among the deeper cells of the epidermis. It is exceedingly difficult to trace these nerve-fibres, and this has only been accomplished quite recently by means of staining the sections of the skin with chloride of gold. This kind of nerve gives ordinary sensation of pain, heat, and cold, etc.; but there is a somewhat different class or arrangement of nerves, whose function is to preside over the special sense of touch. These end differently; they enter the papilla of the corium, and appear to be wound up into a little knot. These little knot-like bodies are called iactile corpuscles, because the sense of touch is supposed to reside in them. They are always found on the palmar ends of the fingers, and are most nu- merous there, but are present to a lesser degree over most of the surface. They are found in about one out of every fourpapillce. There are two varieties of glands contained in the skin,— the one for the secretion of sweat, called the sudoriparous, or sweat glands, and the other for the secretion of an oily or greasy substance called sebum, these latter glands receiving the name of sebaceous or sebiparous glands. The sweat glands are in the form of minute tubes of about 5-^5- of an inch in diameter, which are twisted into coils at the very deepest portion of the corium, or true skin, or even in the subcutaneous tissue, and