COMPLEXION has remarked, that the extraordinary pheno menon of the great and extreme variety in the human complexion, as in sonic instances it appeared to proceed from the influence of climate, and in other instances to resist it for a long series of years, which has roused and exercised the speculation of modern philosophers and theologians, was passed over, almost unnoticed, and certainly uninvestigated, by the ancients. Their atten tion was indeed called to the general and striking fact, that under the burning climates of the globe, the human complexion was of the darkest hue : the fable of Phae ton, invented or embellished by the poets, contained in it such an easy and satisfactory solution of this circum stance, that in its more sober and philosophical inter pretation, it was adopted and acquiesced in by the natural historians of antiquity ; but neither their opportunitics of information enabled them, nor, had they possessed these, would their mode of philosophising have led them to detect, and speculate on the exceptions to the general fact, that the blackness of the human complexion in creased or diminished, according as the country ap proached or receded from the equator. Even the black ness of the Ethiopian, (for this name they seem to have given to all the nations who had this complexion, whether they had inhabited Africa or Asia,) though it excited the wonder and astonishment of the ancients, did not induce them to enter very fully or minutely into the investiga tion of its cause. Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Pliny, merely touch upon it rather individually, than with any settled purpose of treating it in a full and satisfactory manner. Pliny, indeed, from the information which the Romans, by their conquests in Gaul and Germany, had gained respecting those nations, was enabled to illustrate and to strengthen the hypothesis which was contained in the fable of Phaeton, and, coinciding with it, in ascribing the blackness of complexion, and crispature of hair, which distinguished the Ethiopians, to their vicinity to the sun, he attributes the fair complexion and yellow hair of the northern nations of Europe to the coldness and moisture of the climate under which they lived.
This hypothesis, so conformable to the most notorious and well-established facts, and which seemed to be firmly grounded on philosophical principles, remained for a long time undoubted and undisturbed, amidst that supericir in formation and more strict and scrupulous mode of reason ing, which entirely destroyed, or greatly modified, the conjectures and opinions of the ancients on other points of physical science ; it was even strengthened among the model ns, by the circumstance, that religion was suppos ed to lend its authority to its truth. A disposition and
tendency to call it in question, and certainly an absolute rejection and disbelief of it, cannot, we apprehend, be traced farther back than the end of the 17th century ; and what is worthy of remark, one of the first who main tained that climate alone could not produce the negro blackness, was Mr Boyle,—a name which ought to secure this opinion equally, and at once, from time charge of want of philosophy and want of religion. Boyle's Works, abridged by Shaw—Experiments and Observa tions on Colour, vol. ii. p. 42.
The full and methodical discussion of this curious and important subject, requires that we should call in the aid of physiology, as well as of the geographical history of man ; and that we should, in the first place, cncleavoin to ascertain the scat of colour in the human body ; secondly, that we should examine the different hypo theses which have been thrown out, to account for the immrdiate cause of colour ; the varieties of human coin plexion ought next to be collected and classed ; and, the influence of climate in producing these varie ties, must be investigated and ascertained.
I. The human skin, till the time of Malpighi, was sup posed to consist only of two parts ; the cuticle, epider mis, or scarf-skin, and the cutis or real skin ; but that anatomist, about the middle of the 17th century, disco vered between these a cellular texture, soft and gela tinous, to which the name.; of rete mucosum, and corpus reticulare, have been given. lie demonstrated the exis tence of this membrane at first in the tongue, and in the inner pat ts of the hands and feet ; but by his subsequent labours, and also by those of Ruysch and other anatomists, it has been proved to exist between the epidermis and the cutis in all parts of the human body.