OF THE SKIN. 137 



arrangement and size of the cells, the epidermis is precisely 

 like that of the European, it is the perpendicular cells of the 

 deepest part of the mucous layer which are darkest (dark brown 

 or blackish-brown), and they form a sharply-marked fringe con- 

 trasted against the clear corium. To these succeed clearer but 

 still brown cells, which are accumulated particularly in the 

 depressions between the papillae, but are also found on their 

 points and lateral portions in many layers ; finally at the 

 boundary close to the horny layer there follow brownish-yellow 

 or yellow, often rather pale, more transparent layers. All 

 these cells are coloured throughout, with the exception of their 

 membranes, and especially the parts round the nuclei, which, in 

 the internal layers, are by far the darkest portions of the cells. 

 The horny layer of the negro also inclines to yellow or brownish. 

 In the yellowish skin of a Malay head in the anatomical col- 

 lection at Wiirzburg, I find the same appearance as in a dark- 

 coloured European scrotum. It follows, then, that the epidermis 

 of the coloured races is, in no essential point, distinguishable 

 from the coloured regions in the white man, and it even agrees 

 in nearly all respects with that of certain localities (the areola 

 of the nipple, for instance). 



{.Pathological coloration of the epidermis (freckles, mothers' 

 marks, kc.) according to Simon, Krause, Barensprung, and 

 my own observations, is produced exactly as the more in- 

 tensely-coloured spots in the white man, and as the colour of 

 the negro's skin. Pigment deposits in the corium and in the 

 papillse, such as may be seen in cicatrices, after chronic inflam- 

 mation of the skin, and frequently as in ichthyosis and many 

 ncevi, associated with a coloured epidermis, in which the pig- 

 ment is developed directly from the blood-corpuscles and their 

 colouring matter, must be carefully distinguished from the fore- 

 going. Numerous instances of partially or entirely white 

 Negroes and of black Europeans, not as a consequence of 

 change of climate, but as a congenital or subsequently arising 

 abnormal condition of the skin, have been noticed (see Hilde- 

 brandt. — Weber, II, fig. 526; Flourens, Compt. rendus XVII). 

 But, for the future, it will have to be remembered, so far as the 

 dark coloration of Europeans is concerned, that it may also 

 arise from a deposition of the colouring matter of the bile.] 



