Page:Letters on the Human Body (John Clowes).djvu/98

78 and tend to equilibrium or rest. The cutis, again, or innermost skin, serves, in the first place, for a new origin of fibres, and for the end and beginning of the little vessels. In the second place, it serves to cherish the spirits, and as a nurse of the blood, and also to exterminate from them whatsoever is useless. Thirdly, it serves as a sensory of the touch.

I have been thus minute, my dear Sir, in my description of the organ of touch, not only on account of its stupendous mechanism, but with a view to convince you, that it differs, in one respect, from the organs of the other senses, and that the difference is this, that the organs of the other senses appear formed for the promotion of only one object, viz, the particular sensation to which they are appropriated; whereas the organ of touch, in addition to this object, is calculated to promote a kind of translation of substances from one kingdom to another, and by this translation to open a communication between the two kingdoms, and at the same time a reception of the substances communicated. Thus we have just now seen, from the description of the scaly cuticle, or epidermis, that one of its offices is to regulate the proximate communications between the surrounding world and its own corporeal world, which it incloses, viz, by admitting from the air and æther the purer and more wholesome elements which are suited to