296 DERMOID SYSTEM. 



Q. Do you not beg the question, in asserting the ex- 

 istence of cutaneous absorption, as the term is ordinarily 

 accepted ? 



#. The following considerations establish its existence. 

 The sub-cutaneous absorbents are vastly too numerous in 

 proportion, to carry back the fat and serum of the parts; 

 they must therefore have other offices. Mercury, can- 

 tharides, emetics, and purgatives, are evidently absorbed. 

 Bichat, while in a dissecting room, breathed through a 

 tube communicating with the external air, yet his breath 

 was as fetid as if he had inhaled it by breathing the air of 

 the room. This proves that there is some other route for 

 the vapour of the dissecting room, than by the lungs; this 

 is the skin. 



Q. What reason is there for denying the nervous trans- 

 mission of these metallic and other odours and vapours? 



#. The fact that in certain punctures the whole course 

 of the absorbents and glands is affected ; and particularly 

 that by frictions, and transfusions into the veins of the 

 same substances used in frictions, similar effects are pro- 

 duced. 



Q. How do you account for the experiments which dis- 

 prove cutaneous absorption? 



4#. They are explained by the ever-varying sensibility 

 of the skin. This is witnessed every day in the reception 

 or rejection of contagions, such as the vaccine and small- 

 pox. 



Q. What persons and circumstances are most favour- 

 able to cutaneous absorption? 



t/?. Children and women are the persons most suscep- 

 tible of contagions; and, as during sleep and hunger the 



