Congenital defect of the epidermis and true skin is a rarity in
pathology. Pastorello speaks of a child which lived for two and a
half hours whose hands and feet were entirely destitute of
epidermis; the true skin of those parts looked like that of a
dead and already putrefying child. Hanks cites the history of a
case of antepartum desquamation of the skin in a living fetus.
Hochstetter describes a full-term, living male fetus with
cutaneous defect on both sides of the abdomen a little above the
umbilicus. The placenta and membranes were normal, a fact
indicating that the defect was not due to amniotic adhesions; the
child had a club-foot on the left side. The mother had a fall
three weeks before labor.
Abnormal Elasticity of the Skin.--In some instances the skin is
affixed so loosely to the underlying tissues and is possessed of
so great elasticity that it can be stretched almost to the same
extent as India rubber. There have been individuals who could
take the skin of the forehead and pull it down over the nose, or
raise the skin of the neck over the mouth. They also occasionally
have an associate muscular development in the subcutaneous
tissues similar to the panniculus adiposus of quadrupeds, giving
them preternatural motile power over the skin.
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