Viewing page 92 of 130

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

288 

more on that peculiar secretion which is deposited in the cellular membrane of the skin, and there be-comes its nutriment. A doctrine which receives the strongest confirmation from the case of Henry Moss already stated in the essay.* Moss was among the blackest of the negro slaves in the state;— his wool was precisely of the same appearance which characterizes the whole race;— at length, when he was about middle age, or somewhat above it, the black hue began to disappear and his skin to assume the colour of a clear and healthful white;— and in proportion as the white colour advanced round his head, the wooly substance gave place to straight and soft hair.
Finally, this writer conceives that the black colour of the African skin has not been satisfactorily accounted for, and assigns for his opinion the following reason, which, for an ingenious naturalist, appears somewhat extraordinary; that the scarf, or exterior integument of the skin, is always found to be colourless, which, he imagines, should be the only seat of complexion if it is affected by the sun. † 

*Page 92—95
 † Page 102d of Mr White's discourses. How is it possible that this writer should overlook the influence of the sun in [[continued at end of page 289. 

289 
The scarf skin is known to anatomists to be entirely transparent. The rays of light, therefore, being easily transmitted through its substance, it can be little, if at all, affected in its colour by them. The proper seat of the complexion is in the rete mucosom between the scarf skin, and the cutis vera, where the mucous which fills its cells, not being transparent, arrests the rays of the sun, and suffers some change from them in its substance and colour in proportion to their copiuosness and strength. And it should be remembered that this mucous basis is itself changed in some of its most essential properties, by the influence of climate, of disease, and of various other physical causes. For example, extreme heat, or heat combined with the vapor of stagnant waters, tends to increase the biliuos secretion, which, therefore, in hot, and especially in tropical climates forms a large proportion of that mucous deposit in the cellular members which, by its various tinges, gives the peculiar stain to the complexion. According to the analysis of Dr. Blumen-

[[ † footnote continued]] discolouring the skin, notwithstanding the transparency of the scarf, whenever he should see a Spaniard, or a Portuguese, or compare the hand of a sailor with his own? 

MM

Transcription Notes:
Note that the † footnote goes over the bottom of both pages.