270 PERSPIRATION. 



considering its pellucidity and delicacy, so that it resists suppura- 

 tion, maceration, and other modes of destruction, for a great 

 length of time ; and it is reproduced more easily than any other 

 of the similar parts. " 



The cuticle separates during life by any irritant that causes a 

 copious secretion below it ; and by putrefaction after death, when 

 the subjacent parts liquefy, and it retains its firmness. It is com- 

 posed of gelatine and a cartilaginous substance like coagulated 

 albumen, with perhaps a trace of salts of lime. 



" It is " a kind of " horny lamella, and adheres to the subjacent 

 corium by the intervention of a mucus, and by numerous very 

 delicate fibrils which penetrate the latter. f 



" The human cuticle, in certain diseased states, exhibits the same appearance as 

 in the Englishman called the Porcupine Man, who laboured under a cutaneous 

 complaint, which he transmitted to his children and grandchildren. Vide W. G. 

 Tilesius, Beschreibung und Abbildung der beiden sogenannten Stachelschwein- 

 Menschen (Porcupine Men). Altenb. 1802. fol. 



" The innumerable polyhedrical papilla? and horny warts which I witnessed upon 

 every part of the skin of these brothers, excepting the head, the palms of the 

 hands, and the soles of the feet, bore some resemblance to the skin of the elephant, 

 especially about the vertex and forehead of the animal." 



One of this family exhibited himself a few years ago in Bond Street, and pre- 

 sented himself again lately at our schools of medicine. He was thirty years of 

 age, and stated himself to belong to the fourth generation of the descendants of 

 a savage who was found in the woods of America and had the same condition 

 of skin. He informed me that it is transmitted to every male without exception 

 in the male line, but has never appeared in the females or their male offspring : 

 and that the horny warts first show themselves at two months from birth ; are 

 constantly growing, though most in summer; and are constantly being shed, but 

 particularly in winter, till the thirty-sixtli year, after which they are never shed, 

 but continue to grow ; so that in this man's father, who was eighty years of age, 

 and lived in Suffolk when I saw the man, they were of very great length. They 

 are set so close together, that their tops form a tolerably smooth surface, unless 

 they are separated by extending the skin. Nearest those parts in which there are 

 none, they gradually become smaller. Besides the parts mentioned by Blumen- 

 bach, the glans penis, I understood, was free from them. An arm of this family 

 is well represented in Dr. Alibert's Description des Maladies de la Peau. See also 

 Ph. Tr. 1731, for the first case known in the family. 



" Similar, also, to the horny warts of this family are corns and the brawny 

 cuticle of the feet in those who walk barefooted. Vide Carlisle on the Produc- 

 tion and Nature of Corns, Med. Facts and Observations, vol. vii. p. 29." 



f " W. Hunter, Med. Observations and Inquiries, vol. ii. p. 52. sq. tab. i. 

 fig. 1, 2. The conjecture of this eminent man that these iibrils are vessels 

 hich excrete the perspirable matter is, I think, improbable." 



Cloquet, however, says they appear to be exhalants and absorbents. I.e. ibid. 



