376 MORBID ANATOMY OP THE SKIN. 



and blood-vessels ; in short, every facility is afforded for tlie 

 extension of a subcutaneous suppurative process. 



We must keep tliese facts continually before our eyes in 

 studying the acute inflammations of the skin. They shed a flood 

 of light upon the course of phlegmonous abscesses, when the 

 corium shows only too well its capacity for hindering the escape 

 of the pus accumulated underneath it. No important novelty is 

 contributed to pathological histology by the study of this form 

 of inflammation. It simply exhibits suppuration and abscess- 

 formation in its most typical form — and on the largest scale — 

 such as has been described already in the General Part of this 

 work (§ 94, et seqq.). 



The most exquisite example we possess of chronic inflam- 

 mation affecting the skin, is aflbrded by the so-called Sclero- 

 dermia adultorum (not to be confused with sclerema neonatorum 

 or with elephantiasis). Rasmussen makes an infiltration of 

 the perivascular sheaths with small cells the starting-point of 

 the textural alterations (^Hospital- Tidende^ 1867). Extending 

 farther, this leads to a more diffuse production of young con- 

 nective tissue, which subsequently contracts and causes a 

 peculiar puckering of the cutaneous surface. The skin grows 

 smooth and shiny, and is very closely applied to underlying 

 parts, e.g, to the condyles of the humerus in the neighbourhood 

 of the elbow-joint; distortions and deformities arise in conse- 

 quence, just as if the affected regions of the skin were cicatrices. 

 We shall meet with precisely analogous conditions in the liver 

 and the kidneys, where they receive the name of cirrhosis and 

 granular atrophy. 



/?. Hypertrophy, 



§ 319. One of the most peculiar and interesting of all the 

 diseases to which the skin is liable. Elephantiasis Arabum, must 

 be regarded as a hypertrophy of the corium and subcutaneous 

 connective tissue. It owes its name to the striking resemblance 

 between the lower extremity of a man aftected with this disease, 

 and that of an elephant. The skin, prodigiously thickened, 

 hangs in wide baggy folds about the leg and ankle, so that the 

 toes can barely be detected peeping out from under them. On 

 section, we recognise the famihar structure of the cutis, only 



