EXTRACT VII. 



THE INCIDENCE OF SKIN AFFECTIONS, ERUPTIVE AS 

 WELL AS DESTRUCTIVE, AND MAL-NUTRITIVE, 

 DETERMINED BY THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE 

 CUTANEOUS NERVATURE. 



THAT the exanthemata, febrile and non-febrile, are nervine 

 in origin, with very few exceptions, we are convinced there 

 can be no doubt, and that many of the non-exanthematous 

 diseases, involving the structural elements of the skin, 

 are nervine, we also think there is ample evidence to 

 prove ; thus such diseases as perforating ulcer and rodent, 

 or cancerous, ulcer of the skin, leucoderma and sclero- 

 derma, exactly coincide with certain areas of sensory 

 nerve distribution, and certain points where the cuticular 

 or afferent nerve trunks debouch on the under surface of 

 the skin, to traverse the thickness of the dermal layers 

 and areas, and, therefore, where nerve energy and nerve 

 protoplasm are circulating with a greater combined in- 

 tensity than at the remote terminal arborisations, where 

 dissipation of both energy and protoplasm are more easily 

 and safely effected, amid the general terminal and sur- 

 rounding structures, or in non-fulminating proportions. 

 The two first-named ulcerative processes belong to the 

 former category ; while the two latter, which may be said 

 to implicate the cutaneous textures in a non-disintegrative 

 way, may be regarded as affecting the peripheral expansion 

 of the involved nerve trunks, and producing alterations in 

 pigmentation and terminal histological arrangement only. 

 The anatomical and histological distribution of the cutane- 

 ous nervature renders the occurrence of these somewhat 



