Lectures on the eruptive fevers : as now in the course of delivery at St. Thomas's hospital, in London / by George Gregory.
- George Gregory
- Date:
- 1851
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Lectures on the eruptive fevers : as now in the course of delivery at St. Thomas's hospital, in London / by George Gregory. 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.
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![PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SKIN. 6 epidermis, of the corion or true skin, and of the muci- form tissue, called rete mucosum, interposed between them. You will bear in mind what you were taught regarding the blood-vessels and nerves of the skin. But though I shall pass over in silence the anatomy of the skin, I must detain you for a few minutes while I direct your attention to some points in its physiology. The skin, you know, is the great organ of transpiration. By means of the skin, the body loses every twenty-four hours not less than thirty ounces of matter,—very nearly two pounds. [Very different results have been arrived at by those who have made experiments for the purpose of ascertaining the amount of matter thrown off from the skin. M. Seguin fixed the quantitj^, taking the average of his experiments, at eleven grains per minute, in a grown person, or more than two pounds in twenty-four hours. Dr. William Wood, of Newport (England), makes it about forty-five ounces, or nearly four pounds every twenty-four hours. {^Essay on Structure and Functions of Skin. Edinb., 1832 ; quoted by Dunglison. Physiology, 1850.)] The skin is exposed to the atmosphere, and to the moisture which the atmosphere contains, and to all its other influences. It must be, and it is, fitted to bear the extremes of temperature which the meteorologist registers. You are aware that there are at least a hundred degrees of diflerence between the heats of Calcutta and the snows of Caubul. The skin, too, is exposed to various injuries, for by the sweat of man's brow he is to earn his daily bread. It is also supplied with abundant means for the repair of those physical injuries. Its numerous blood-vessels are endowed with a strong disposition to heal by the first intention (adhesive inflammation), or failing that, by the second intention, by which is understood the pro- cesses of abscess, granulation, and cicatrization.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21055257_0021.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
