Diabetes mellitus: its history, chemistry, anatomy, pathology, physiology, and treatment : Illustrated with woodcuts, and cases successfully treated / By William Morgan, M.D.

  • Morgan, William.
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diabetes mellitus: its history, chemistry, anatomy, pathology, physiology, and treatment : Illustrated with woodcuts, and cases successfully treated / By William Morgan, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

    168/214 (page 150)
    servation, which remarkably illustrated the marvellous vital functions of the skin. The lungs, he says, were partly destroyed from an imposthume, and the side of the chest was consequently contracted. Neverthe- less, he found that the cutaneous functions increased, so as to supply the deficiency caused by impaired lung-action. All subsequent experience has tended to establish the potent agency of the skin, not only as an assistant to the lungs, but also to the whole excretory organism; for it is a well-established fact, that there is an anatomical connection between the mucous membrane which lines our internal organism, and the external mucous membrane, or true skin, which covers the whole body. The general term, mucous membrane, may be applied to that great system of membranous expansions which forms the external tegument, or skin—the lining of the internal cavities, whose walls are continuous with it; or mucous membrane proper—and the prolongation of this into the secreting organs, forming the tubes and follicles of the glands. Hence, in fact, the lungs are nothing but a bit of skin turned in, just as the internal surface of the lung would become skin if it were ex- posed externally. Unfortunately, however, medical practitioners have not heretofore properly understood the marvellous functions of the skin, and therefore did not seek to make available as sound physiology and pathology now dictates. The skin was not regarded as supplying a medium through which deranged internal organism could be