354 INFLUENCE OF THE CUTANEOUS SECRETIONS 
physiological and pathological phenomena originating in the double 
function of inhalation and exhalation of the cutaneous system.” 
M. Fourcault’s experiments are no less novel than important. 
In signalizing them as such to experimentalists, the Academy will, 
we trust, be rendering a service to science. 
These united considerations it is which, in the opinion of the 
Committee, justify voting for 2000 francs as honourable recompense 
to Dr. Fourcault. 
A physiological fact of great consideration, and one that sets in 
conspicuous light one of the most important functions of the skin, 
is the asphyxia so surely induced by stopping up all the pores of 
this vast sieve (the skin), notwithstanding those of respiration are 
so widely opened that the freest passage is given to the air. 
Before, however, we consider this experimental fact in the mani- 
fold consequences deducible from it, we think it will be useful to 
place before our readers some observations through which they 
will quickly perceive the effects of complete or sudden suspension 
of these cutaneous exhalations on the general functions of the 
organism. The first we shall submit is a clinical observation. 
General Burn of the Skin — Death on the Thirteenth Day — 
Autopsy. 
A mare, through standing in a stable adjoining a building which 
caught fire, became enveloped in a volume of flame. A farrier, 
called to the case, covered the mare’s skin from head to foot with 
poplar ointment. The next morning she was brought to the Col- 
lege. 
The STATE OF THE MARE ON HER ADMISSION was sadness and 
depression ; eyelids tumefied, scorched, and half-closed; lips black 
and dry and chapped ; skin burnt about the hind quarters, thighs, 
dugs, vulva, anus, tail, on each side of the belly, groins, flanks, 
and sides. 
The case was considered as hopeless, not so much on account of 
the lesions received, as for the troubled functions necessarily con- 
sequent on such lesions. 
Treatment. — A general soaping and washing ordered, to re- 
move the grease with which she had been plastered, which by its 
presence obstructed parts of the skin untouched by the fire ; after 
which Goulard lotion and cooling ointment were applied. In spite 
of all that could be done, however, the animal sank and died. 
Death was not caused in this case exclusively by the suspen- 
sion of the vaporous and gaseous perspiration over a great extent 
of cutaneous surface ; no doubt other causes, such as injection from 
the purulent matter generated, and the exhaustion occasioned by 
