THE HEALTH OF THE SKIN 



blood vessels; and the epidermis, which protects them 

 all and keeps them out of sight. Each layer is as thin 

 as paper. 



After you have had a warm bath some day, rub your 

 hand hard over the damp flesh and see how much you 

 can roll up. A good deal of it is dead 

 epidermis, which should be rubbed off. 

 In truth, we shed our epidermis some- 

 what as a snake sheds his skin; only the 

 snake loses all his skin at once, while we 

 lose ours a little at a time. More than that, 

 his dead skin can do no harm to any one, 

 whereas ours may carry deadly disease. In 

 fact, scarlet fever, smallpox, and measles 

 may go with any piece of epidermis which 

 peels from people who have those diseases. 

 That is why children are kept out of school 

 until they are quite through shedding the skin they had 

 while they were sick. They must not share their epider- 

 mis and their disease with other children. 



So far as the skin is concerned the sweat glands play 

 an important part. Each separate one of them is a tiny 

 twisted tube under the dermis. It runs up in a crooked 

 fashion through both layers of the skin and gives an 

 extra twist or two just before it comes to an end on the 

 surface of the epidermis. Each pore of the skin that you 

 see is the mouth of a separate sweat gland. These glands 



