A practical treatise on the diseases of the skin : arranged with a view to their constitutional causes and local characters / by Samuel Plumbe.

  • Samuel Plumbe
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical treatise on the diseases of the skin : arranged with a view to their constitutional causes and local characters / by Samuel Plumbe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library at Emory University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library, Emory University.

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    of Malpighi for its existence ; the question has however now, I think, been set at rest by the report of MM. Breschet and Roussel de Vauzeme.* As these gentlemen's views cannot be out of place here, I may submit a brief summary of them. Their inquiries seem to have been conducted under circumstances exceedingly favourable, and the results are likely to carry convic- tion to all who have confidence in the powers of the microscope, and belief in the existence of uniformly analogous structures in the organs of animals having similar offices with those similarly designated in man. To have been defeated ourselves in arriving at satisfactory conclusions by measures of the same nature as those employed by others, is no reason why we should withhold confidence from them, when, as I must confess is the case in these gentlemen's inquiries, they produce reasonable evidence of their success. They appear, moreover, to have entered the field with the utmost caution, distrust- ing the microscope, and confessing that they were often deceived by it,—a fact which entitles them to much more confidence than is due to the professed and sanguine microscopist, who is but too apt to deal with illusions as realities. The skin of the whale and other cetacea appears to have been rendered largely instrumental, in this inquiry, to the establishment of the opinions now promulgated by MM. B. and R., and, doubtless, comparative anatomy generally, as regards the structures in question, has been scientifically and liberally drawn upon. The results of these inquiries, they say, leads them to consider the skin as formed of six constituent parts. 1. The dermis. A cellular canvas, dense, fibrous, enveloping and protecting the capillary blood-vessels, the lymphatics, the nervous filaments, and the parenchyma of other organs contained in its substance. 2. The papillae. The organ of touch, termination of the nervous system, developed under the form of nipples, slightly inclined, ter- minating in blunt points, concealed under several envelopes. In the whale, the summits, or points, are olive formed, while in man they are conical. 3. The perspiratory apparatus. The organs of secretion and ex- cretion of perspiration. It is composed of a glandular parenchyma and the sodoriferous canals. The parenchymous, or secretory organ, is seated in the dermis, and from it arises the excretory canals, spirally shaped, and taking their course obliquely, passing between the papillae, and terminating on the surface of the cuticle. 4. The apparatus of inhalation, or absorbent canals. These canals resemble lymphatics, they are situated in the corneous substance or mucous body which forms the bed of the external dry cuticle, for the latter is dependent on the former for its production and support. These inhalent vessels do not appear to have open mouths on the * Nouvelles Recherches sur la Structure de la Peau. Paris, 1835.
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