General Anatomy, Applied to Physiology and Medicine, Vol. 3 (of 3)Bichat, Xavier
Science
General Anatomy, Applied to Physiology and Medicine, Vol. 3 (of 3)
Bichat, Xavier
Human anatomy; Human physiology
Observe in fact that a thousand different agents, the surrounding
temperature, the air, dress, the fluid in which the fœtus is washed,
the tongues of those quadrupeds who lick their young, carry to the skin
an excitement which is so much the more felt by the fœtus, as it is
not accustomed to it, and as there is an essential difference between
these stimuli, and those to which it had been previously subjected.
It is then that the remarkable sympathy which connects the skin with
all the other organs, becomes especially necessary. Every thing within
soon perceives the new excitements that are applied without. It is
these excitements, those of the mucous surfaces at their origin and
those of the whole of the bronchia, which especially bring into action
many organs hitherto inactive. There happens then, what is observed in
syncope, in which respiration, circulation, the cerebral action and
many functions suspended by the affection, are suddenly roused up by
external friction, by the irritation of the pituitary membrane, &c. The
phenomena are different, but the principles from which they are derived
in both cases are the same.
Then the organic sensibility is also raised. Transpiration is
established. The skin begins to be an emunctory of different
substances, which it did not before throw out; it becomes also capable
of absorbing different principles applied to its surface. The skin
of the fœtus is hardly ever the seat of any kind of eruptions; then
pimples of different kinds frequently appear.
All the parts of the cutaneous organ do not however appear to be raised
to the same degree of organic sensibility. For a long time after birth
the skin of the cranium appears to be the centre of a more active life;
it becomes the frequent seat of many eruptions, all of which denote an
excess of the vital forces. The different kinds of scurf with which
it is covered do not appear elsewhere. In this respect, the skin of
the cranium follows, like the bones of this part and the cerebral
membranes, the early development of the brain, which, on this account
is the seat of diseases in infancy more than at any other age.
The skin of the face seems to be sometimes in less activity. In the
first months after birth, it has not that bright colour which it will
afterwards have upon the cheeks, and which does not commence until the
development of the sinuses and dentition bring to this part more vital
activity for the nutritive work. It is also towards this period that
the eruptions of which this part of the cutaneous system is especially
the seat, like those of the small-pox, measles, &c. begin to take place.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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