408 TEGUMENTAL SYSTEM. 



foot, seems not to admit of a doubt ; and yet in what manner the 

 process of production is carried on, no one has yet been able to 

 discover. For every practical purpose, probably it is enough for 

 us to know, that, if from any cause the cutis vera be denuded, 

 the cuticle will be speedily reproduced ; from which we may con- 

 clude that its formation is a process neither difficult nor expen- 

 sive to the animal economy. It is destitute both of nerves and 

 vessels*. 



Sensibility. — Being semi-transparent, colour, as has been ob- 

 served, is imparted to it by the subjacent skin ; and by parity 

 of reasoning we must account for its assumed sensibility : for, in 

 reality, the sensitiveness it appears to possess is solely attributa- 

 ble to its intimate connexion with the highly sensitive cutis under- 

 neath : the animal feels through it and the hair somewhat in 

 the manner which we do through a thin furred glove. Those 

 parts therefore where the cuticle is thinnest, are, cateris paribus, 

 the most susceptible of impressions : the lips and nose of the 

 horse instance this; and, in us, the extremities of the fingers, in 

 which the proper sense of feeling is known to reside. That the 

 cuticle itself has no sensation whatever, the simple cutting of a 

 corn in man is a sufficient attestation of. Herein may be said, 

 therefore, to consist the chief use of the cuticle — to protect the 

 cutis from immediate contact with foreign bodies or agents, and 

 to moderate its extreme sensibility. 



Density. — The cuticle does not vary a great deal in thickness 

 in the horse ; but in the human subject, in the palms and soles, 

 its substance far exceeds that of any other part : indeed, in the 

 latter, it is very apt to grow morbidlj/ thick in places, the effect of 

 external pressure, and this is the nature of what is called a corn — 

 a very different disease from what has been absurdly so named in 

 the horse's foot. The only approach to a corn that we meet 

 with, are those horny or cuticular exuberances growing upon the 

 inner parts of the arms ; these, however, cannot be viewed as mor- 



* " It has no perceivable circulation. The exhalents and absorbents 

 that traverse it, do not belong- to it. No morbid appe£.rance that argues 

 organic sensibility happens in it. It does not inflame; it is passive in all 

 cutaneous affections, and never participates of them, notwithstanding its 

 continuity. Corns (in the H. S.) and otlier excrescences from it, are inert, 

 dry like it, and without vascularity : they are only painful in consequence 

 of the pressure they give to the nerves underneath, and not of themselves. 

 No pain is ever felt in the cuticle ; it is worn by friction, like other inor- 

 ganic bodies, and, like them, is afterwards reproduced." 



" From all this, its life is extremely obscure; I doubt even that it really 

 has life. I feel inclined to consider it as a semi-organic body, nay, even in- 

 organic, that nature has interposed between foreign agents and the truly 

 organized cutis, as a medium of intercourse and gradation." — Bichat, 

 Anatomie Ge'ne'rale, tom. iv. 



