EFFECTS OF VARNISHING THE SKIN. 
727 
skin is increased by exercise, a rise of temperature, and by any cause 
which produces increased vascularity of the skin, such as friction, warm 
baths, and electric shocks. 1 It is also said to be influenced by food 
and by exposure to Light. 2 
The experiments of Gerlach, Rohrig, and others show that the skin 
of animals will absorb carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulphuretted 
hydrogen, and the vapour of chloroform and ether. 
The effects of varnishing the skin. — The old theory, held by Galen, 
Sanctorius, and others, that many diseases were due to the retention of 
waste substances which in a normal condition would have been dis- 
charged from the body, received great support from experiments in 
which the skin of animals had been covered by an impermeable layer 
of varnish or ointment. At the same time it was held that the results 
showed the imperative necessity of cutaneous respiration and perspira- 
tion. The symptoms observed after the skin of an animal was varnished 
were restlessness, shivering, increased rapidity of breathing and heart- 
beat, soon followed by "slow respiration and pulse, a fall in temperature 
to 20° or 19°, the discharge of albumin in the urine, spasms, and death. 
Examination of the body after death showed congestion of the skin, 
subcutaneous tissue, muscles, and internal organs. 3 
The earliest experiments appear to have been made by Fourcault, 4 
Ducros, 5 Becquerel and Brechet, 6 Gluge, 7 and Magendie. 8 The tempera- 
ture was observed by Gerlach, 9 who obtained the following results for 
a rabbit and a horse, after their skins had been covered with a layer of 
linseed oil : — 
Animal. 
Temperature Before. Temperature After. 
Rf.marks. 
Rectal. 
Cutaneous. 
Rectal. Cutaneous. 
Rabbit 
Horse . 
39°7 
38° 
38° 
35° 
28° 
32° 
26° 
29° 
At time of death, 
thirty hours after 
varnishing. 
On the sixth day 
after varnishing. 
Death on eighth 
day. 
Edenhuizen 10 showed that death followed even when only one-sixth 
of the total cutaneous surface was varnished ; he believed that the 
symptoms were due to an alkali which he found in the skin. A further 
advance in knowledge was made when Valentin 11 discovered that the 
discharge of carbon dioxide from the lungs was reduced to one-eighth or 
1 Gerlach, Aubert, Rohrig, Barratt, loc. cit. 
- Fubini and Ronchi, loc. cit. Here other references will be found. 
3 Valentin, Arch. f. physiol. Heilk., Stuttgart, Bd. xi. S. 433. 
4 Compt. rend. Acad. d. sc, Paris. Mars 16, 1837. 
5 Notiz. a. d. Gcb. d. Xat.-u. Heilk., Weimar, 184], Bd. xix. 
6 Arch. gen. dc med., Paris, 1841, tome xii. p. 517. 
7 Ahhandl. z. Physiol, u. Path., Jena, 1841, S. 66. 
8 Gaz. mid. dc Paris, Dec. 6, 1843. 
9 Arch. f. Anat., Physiol., u. vrissensch. Med., 1851, S. 431. 
}° Nachr. v. d.h. Gesellsch. d. Wissenseh. u. d. Georg.-Avg. Univ., Gottingen," 1861, 
S. 288. 
11 Arch./, physiol. Heilk., Stuttgart, Bd. ii. S. 433. 
