DESCRIPTION. 255 



reaction, from its passive to its active form ; from the power of 

 inertness to the power of actual resistance. Whatever is continent 

 and tenacious in the body, sends its representatives to the assembled 

 fibres of the corium. The compression that they jointly exercise, is 

 facilitated, and at the same time mitigated, by the mode in which 

 they are put together, whereby they constitute myriads of tent-like 

 orifices, with the broad part of the tent towards the fat, and the 

 peak towards the surface ; a solid space of corium being left between 

 these tented pores, which are filled with little bags of fat, and with 

 serous fluid, upon which the contraction of the skin first takes effect. 

 In this way the force is communicated almost through fluids, with 

 the utmost power to the general surface, but with the least violence 

 to the parts. The contractility of this envelope is a measure of the 

 tone and strength of the body; it is conspicuous in bracing winter 

 mornings, and in cold bathing, which make us notably tighter and 

 more compact. 



The corium, in its elastic life, not only prevents the loss of mus- 

 cular force, or embanks the streams of will, but it has the material 

 design of preventing the disorderly entrance of substances from 

 without, and the undue alienation of fluids from within. This func- 

 tion supposes in the skin a discriminating power, or sense of touch 

 — a like and dislike — to inform the brain of whatever goes on at 

 the outposts ; and also an active power, to enable the skin to obey 

 its consequent decrees. That which feels and acts in these subtle 

 purposes, is the next layer of the skin, the papillary cutis, more 

 superficial than the corium. This is an encampment of small conical 

 tents co-extensive with the surface of the body, differing however in 

 different parts, both in the thickness with which the papillae are 

 set, and in their size and power. The papillary substance is a 

 Briarean limb put forth from the corium, consisting also of fibrous 

 elements, and quick with blood distributed in meshes of inconceiva- 

 ble fineness which pervade the papilla, and communicate with similar 

 networks in the layer underneath. Our finger-ends are a type of 

 all the papillae, and like the fingers, the papillae are instruments both 

 of feeling and prehension. They are eminently movable, and being 

 provided with nerves, and grouped together in different forms, they 

 constitute with the corium, of whose grasp of the whole body they 



