270 THE HUMAN SKIN. 



under kindlier seasons. The expansion of the breathing skin is 

 the enlargement of every pore of the lung order, and causes the 

 absorption of the various influences in which the skin is plunged. 

 This is the active cause of the sympathy of the skin with the air 

 and the powers that it contains. The state of the mind or the 

 animation of the brain and nerves is in like manner concerned in 

 the relation that the skin holds to those parts of nature which lie 

 above the air. 



Thus the skin is a natural balancer of temperature, because it is 

 the medium between two fires — those, namely, of the body and the 

 sun. It is a remarkable circumstance indicating the self-possession 

 of the body, that its heat varies but little with climate, or the sea- 

 sons. Standing at about 100 degrees of Fahrenheit, it repulses the 

 equatorial fervor, and the northmost cold. Undoubtedly this is due 

 in the last place to the mettle and temper of the skin. It sprinkles 

 its heated envelope of atmospheres with abundant vapors, cooling as 

 they rise ; for the supply of which our thirst is commanded in the 

 sultry hours : on the other hand, when the outside weather is incle- 

 ment, and winter howls, the skin fastens up its infinite shutter-work, 

 and the fires are fed with liberal materials, which then must be taken 

 according to hunger, which prescribes the fuel. 



The skin then suitably,- or sensibly, gives out and takes in what 

 it requires, this being the sum and substance of inhalation, exhala- 

 tion, and the intermediate touch ; and the sphere surrounding the 

 skin serves as a medium to attemper, humanize, and convey to the 

 body the forces of the external world j much as the atmospheres re- 

 ceive the rays of the sun, and convey them to the planet. 



Whither does the skin go ? or where does it end ? It may be said 

 that it is continuous with itself, and ends nowhere, as it begins no- 

 where. True, but it is more circular than this. For besides that 

 it covers the whole body, it passes in along the great thoroughfares, 

 only assuming a thinner and moist surface, and constitutes the lin- 

 ing of the nostrils, the windpipe and the lungs ; it also enters by the 

 mouth into the alimentary canal, and therefrom into the depths of 

 the liver and the pancreas ; and by other ways into other viscera, 

 and into all the glands. These are its highroads ; as for its private 

 paths, they are innumerable. It passes down every hair-follicle, 



