THE TRANSPIRATIONS. 261 



breathed out during the same time by the lungs. The skin is 

 therefore our greatest theatre of substantial change, just as the 

 sense of touch is the most influential of the senses, impressions 

 upon which will alter the mind when other means have failed. 



The perspiration is of use up to the moment of its ejection ; nay, 

 after quitting the frame, it partially remains on, and around, the 

 surface, fomenting the cuticle by its watery portions, anointing it by 

 the oily, and providing it with suppleness, and power of intelligent 

 motion or animal fluidity. Take away this natural cosmetic, and 

 what a dried and painful expanse is the skin ; as in fevers, each 

 joint of the tesselated surface grates upon its hinges, until the 

 dulled sense is stung with a misery that rouses the whole nervous 

 system for its removal. Nothing can show more clearly the great 

 though gentle power that the cuticle exercises in health, when it is 

 soft and pliable — its power of reaction as the general bond of the 

 skin, and of performing the functions included under this reaction 

 — than the disadvantages that result when this thin varnish, as it 

 is considered, is either removed, unhealthily produced, or not suf- 

 ficiently fomented with its appropriate emollients and unguents. 

 The interests at stake in the suppleness of the cuticle are known 

 instinctively by savages, and tribes that despise dress, yet protect 

 themselves by a garment of oil and red ochre, which serves as a 

 supplement to the perspirations, as well as takes the place of other 

 clothes. Our own oils, perfumes and pomades come from a similar 

 instinct, and every one must have experienced that dryness, whether 

 of the skin or hair, is more than a detriment to comeliness — that 

 it amounts to discomfort, verging fast towards pain.* 



Besides the sensible perspiration, another species used formerly 



* The use of the cuticle, as we have seen, is to modify the sense of touch, 

 or to produce a more external sense by reducing the papillary keenness and 

 liveliness to earthy conditions. It is not what the cuticle seems, but what it 

 does, that shows what it is. It produces the most general sense of all, which 

 sets in motion the next wheels of sense according as itself is moved. Hence 

 scaly and cuticular diseases are full of annoyance, and subvert the sense as 

 effectually as diseases mainly affecting the other layers. Hence too the pleasant 

 effect of cleanliness and ablutions. In considering the penetration of effects from 

 without, it is best to think of the cuticle as not a layer but a sense, and that sense 

 the outmost, and therefore the first determinant of the quantity and quality of 

 feeling that comes in. 



