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162 observation that the skin is the great external laboratory through which the effete matter passes from the body, and that unless this be in a proper state there can be neither health nor beauty.

It is scarcely necessary for us to give in this brief chapter anything like an anatomical and physiolo­gical description of the skin, since a very few remarks are sufficient to illustrate the principal points which we have to consider, and to go beyond this would lead us into minute delineations of micro­scopic anatomy, which would be out of place in a volume of this kind. It is only its general functions and relations which we are concerned with.

The skin itself, as is known to everyone, is an envelope which contains the whole body within it. It is composed of three separate layers, the outer being insensible, and laid on as a protection to the delicate and tender structures which lie beneath. It is hardly possible to convey to the general reader a notion of the intricate and wonderfully complicate nature of the dermis, or true skin. The capillaries or bloodvessels are finer than hairs, and they are so interlaced and interwoven with nerves that it is impossible to put down the point of the finest needle without wounding several of those minute organs. Here all the blood in the body comes for