The Savannah morning news., 1901-01-11
SKIN, HAIR AND NAILS.
The "GOOse-FIeshy" FeeIing-MiI-
lions of Glands and Their Func-
fianrns

tiOns.
Harvey Sutherland, in Ainslee's.
1t is a favorites smile with educators
that each human life is a volume whose
pages are blank at BIRTH but are written
upon more and more as the years pass.
1t will be good deal for most of us if
we know all there is to be known about
the binding OF this volume. What, the
skim" l fancy / hear someone say.
What is there about the skin that would
interest anybody except, maybe, a doc
! tor?'
| BY the skin alone we become cognizant
OF ourselves and of what is about us. The
| hardness of candy is determined by the
teeth. which are not bony structures, but
notifications of the epbhelium, the thin,
| papery cover to the skin So are the fin>
| ger nails and the hair.
| Psychologists are now wrangling over
| the point whether we are afraid because
! our skin gets goose-heshy and wet with
perspiration and the muscles all of
| tremble because of the sudden cold that
comes from the moistened surface, or
whether our mind Derceives that there is
| danger. l do not know, but it seems to
me that long, long ages ago, when the
animal man had fur on him, instead of
the delicate, useless fuzz or lanugo that
! now covers his body it was of very great
use to him in a moment of peril to have
! that fur stand up so that the attacking
/ beast could not get firm grip with its
| fangs; it was of great use to him that
/ he should sweat profusely and suddenly
so as to become what we call "a slippery
customer to handle" and the shivering
must have helped him to wiggle out OF a
tight place more than once.
/ he Chi &c ole a
Man is not so far removed from those
animals that swim in their nourishment
and take their meals through their pores
that he has wholly lost the trick OF IT.
l have not been able to find any re-
corded experiments of men bathing in
soup and coming out with the fine, com
Portable feeling that one has after dining
well; but it is well known that shipwreck-
ed sailors relieve their thirst by soaking
their clothing in the salt water that they
dare not drink. A man after coming
out of hot bath will find that he has
! lost a pound or two of the weight he
had when he stepped into it. But in
couple of hours, though he neither eat
nor drink ia the meantime, he will regain
his weight. His skin has absorbed the
missing fluid from the air.
That the skin is intimately connected
with the lungs is proved by the fact that
/
colds, for instance-are almost always
traceable to a checking of the perspira-
ton so that the impurities of the blood
poison us. Everybody knows the story
about the little boy that was covered with
gold leaf as a cherub for some Roman
pomp and how he died in agony few
| hours afterWard. Narnish an animal and
| it will die in from six to twelve hours,
say some authorities. This incontroverti-
/ Al
| incontrovertible, that nobody ever heard
of any case of tarring- Misunderstanding that
killed the victim He might have had all
kinds of trouble in getting the stuff off
and he might have felt a certain shock
to his pride, but he didn't die that any,
| body ever heard of.
1t may be interesting to know that one
perspires more on the right side of the
body than on the left, and that the skin
of the palm of the hand exercises four
and half times as much proportionately
to the surface as the skin of the back.
The pores in the ridges of the palm num-
Der as many as 5000 to the square inch.
They are scarcest on the back where they
are only 400 to the square inch. These
pores are not simple holes or perforations
in tl1e hide. as some imagine, put are lit
tie pockets lined with the same epithelium
or pavement stuff that covers the external
of the body. They run straight down into
the deepest structure of the skin. and
there they kink up and coil around till
they look like fishing line that has been
thrown down wet. Inclosed in this knot
are little veins that leak the perspiration
through the walls of the tube and il wells
up to the surface of the skin. 1t is esti-
mated that the average-sized man has T.
100000 of these sweat glands, aggregating
tweniy-eight miles Of tubing. Think of
it, Twenty eight miles if all those tiny
tubes could be Strengthened out and put
end to end! These figures wonderful
though they may seem, are on the best
best medical authority. They are the fig
ures of men who have given their liyese
to the study of this subject.
There is just as good medical authority
for the statement that there are 2400. coo
sweat glands on the human body, each
one-fifteenth of an inch long, and that
their aggregate length is two miles and a
half! Think Of II! Two miles and a half,
! find only one figure, however, for the
amount of liquid secreted by the skin of
an average person in a year though It is
evident that the quantity must vary
greatly according as the person works in
an ice house or rides a bicycle up hill
From the average person in a years time
there oozes through the pores Of the skin
1850 pounds Of water
The Skirn, pelhS secretOfy organ. all
the fluids that promote. she processes of
life are within its province But to con
slider them would be practically writing q
treatise on physiology, so ! shall have
to stick to what We commonly think CT
as the skin. Most Of its secretion Is an
oily substance that keeps the epithel-
lum and the hairs soft and pliable The
sebaceous glands always open into q hair
tube. with the exception of a few spots
like the palms Of the hands. the soles Of
the feet, the eyelids ana the first joints