Page 24 - The Miracle of the Immune System

The first defense response of the organism against its dangerous invaders is the
rapid self-repairing of the skin tissue following the infliction of a wound. When such
a wound ruptures the skin, defence cells immediately travel to the injured area to
fight with the foreign cell and to remove the debris of the affected tissue. Later,
some other defence cells enhance the production of fibrin, which is a protein that
rapidly re-covers the wound with a fibrous network. This picture is of a fibrin that
has spread over some red blood cells.

its extremely flexible structure, allowing free movement, as opposed to its
being thick enough to avoid easy rupture, its ability to protect the body
from the heat, the cold, and harmful sunrays are only a few of the features
of the skin that have been specially created for human beings. Here, we
will deal with a particular feature of this extraordinary wrapping paper:
its ability to protect the body from disease-causing micro-organisms. If
the body is considered a castle besieged by enemies, we can safely refer to
the skin as the strong walls of this castle.

The main protective function of the skin is realized via the dead cell
layers constituting the outer section of the skin. Each new cell produced
by cell division moves from the inner section of the skin towards the sur-