64 PERSONAL APPEARANCES IN HEALTH AND DISEASE. 



The barbaric habit of wearing earrings might almost be 

 considered a harmless one, for it does not much alter 

 the shape of the ear-lobe, were it not that the act of pierc- 

 ing the lobe and inserting rings is apt to be followed, in 

 young children especially, by troublesome inflammation 

 of the skin at the part pierced. It is no uncommon thing 

 to find, among the lower classes, mothers nursing infants 

 a few months old who are already in the possession of the 

 coveted ornament. 



But it is time to turn from this section of our subject, 

 so leaving the question of deviations of form (although 

 much more might be said of them did space permit), we 

 pass to those of changes in the colour of the body ; and 

 in the first place let us make clear upon what this colour 

 depends. 



CHAPTER VI. 



. THE COLOUR OF THE HUMAN BODY. 



WHAT is the cause of the red colour of the blood? It 

 took a long time to answer this question. Men had to 

 wait until the microscope was first applied to the investi- 

 gation of the blood by Malpighi, about two hundred years 

 ago, before it was answered. And then it was found that 

 this blood this red fluid was really, so far as its fluid part 

 went, colourless, but that with the colourless fluid or serum 



