supposing that there are channels made for its passage: Let us only reckon how many Vacuities a Scale has, whereby it is nourisht so as to grow, and that in the space of 1/3 part of a scale there may be 100 such Vacuities, thro which the humours of the body may pass, and that 200 such parts of a scale may be covered with a sand. It will follow then, that the body may exhale out of 20000 places in a quantity no bigger then what a sand will cover.
Hereout might be concluded that our Body is nothing but a Pore, notwithstanding what our Physicians speak of the Pores or passages for sweat, as if there were such places contriv'd by Nature for nothing else. For a drop of sweat though by the pressure of the Air it becomes round, yet it may be compounded of Particles coming from many thousand places.
I took some scales coming from the inward and most callous part of the hand, and found them of the same circumference with them of my Body, but as the one sort were very clear and transparent, so the other were so full of lines and so thick beset with Globules, that they seemed to be composed of nothing else; now we find by experience that the hand not only between the fingers, but in the hollow of it, is subject to be moist, more than other parts of the body; so that tho the scales fall off from the other parts of the body for want of nourishment, yet the scales upon the hands and feet are still kept on by a clammy moisture and fat, which being brought to that place to be evacuated, sticks to the Scales, and keeps them together, leaving only some small out-lets for the thinnest of the matter. By this means the skin of the hand, tho it be nothing but scales, comes to be of an extraordinary thickness, which may be increast by hard labour, whereby the moisture is brought into those parts, and the scales are more
packed and clotted together.
