Volume 2

Health lectures for the people.

Date:
1883-1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health lectures for the people. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    66/600 (page 54)
    pressions:—In the deeper layer of the skin by small seed-like bodies attached to the branches of the nerves, on the surface of the true skin by small bodies called touch-bodies in certain of the papillae, (b), fig. 2, and lastly, by bulbous swellings in the cuticle. Fig. 2. Diagram of papillse of true skin showing loops of the blood-vessels; touch-bodies or nerve endings; and nerves. By being placed in the papillae, these touch-bodies are under more favourable conditions for the reception of certain kinds of impressions than if they were imbedded in a flat surface. Im- pressions made upon the surface are, by means of these ter- minations, and the nerves, rapidly conducted to the spinal cord and brain. There is therefore in the skin an extensive appar- atus by means of which we may soothe or stimulate either a part or the whole of the system. The sensitiveness of this apparatus you all know from the effect of heat, cold, and various kinds of stimuli, not the least memorable of which, perhaps, is that stimulus to application to study inflicted by the schoolmaster at his discretion. Of blood-vessels there are extensive networks both in the super- ficial and in the deeper parts of the true skin, those of the super- ficial layer sending loops into many of the papillae (a), fig. 2, thus