ALBINOES. 419 



so as to be blistered, if exposed to them for a short time ; this 

 circumstance renders it probable that the coloring matter in 

 the rete mucosum of the blacks, was originally designed to 

 protect their skins from the very powerful rays of the sun to 

 which they are exposed. 



There are some persons to be found, amongst most of the 

 different races of men, who are born with this peculiar whiteness 

 of the whole skin, which continues during life. In these 

 persons, the hair has a remarkably white color, and the eyes 

 are without the pigmentum nigrum. They appear to be in a 

 state of imperfection, and are unable to endure the ordinary 

 light of day. They are generally designated by the epithet of 

 Albinoes. 



The texture which exists between the cutis vera and the 

 epidermis is probably the principal seat of several important 

 cutaneous diseases ; as the Scarlatina Pemphigus, &tc.* and 

 from what has been stated, there is good reason to believe 

 that the small-pox, also, commences in it. It is, therefore, 

 much to be wished that its structure was more precisely ascer- 

 tained. 



The variety of diseases which have their seat in the skin, 

 as well as the important functions which it exercises in health, 

 have led modern anatomists to believe that it was formed of 

 more than the three layers that Malpighi assigned it, and 

 induced them to investigate its structure with scrupulous care. 

 From the innate difficulties of the subject, its anatomy cannot 

 as yet, however, be considered as satisfactorily made out, for 

 its investigators have too frequently resorted to hypothesis, 

 when the means of demonstration failed them. The doctrines 

 of the learned and judicious Malpighi, which have been admi- 

 rably detailed above, were generally admitted by anatomists, 



* In severe cases of the scarlatina, at the termination of the disease, large 

 portions of the cuticle are sometimes detached from the cutis, so that several 

 practitioners have seen the whole cuticle of the hand come off like a glove. As 

 the texture of the cutis does not appear to be altered in these cases, and the 

 cuticle is also unchanged, the cause of this separation must exist in the inter- 

 vening structure which connects them. 



