Its area is almost two square meters, and it covers everything that we carry within ourselves. The skin is our connection to the outside world. Our antenna. It can transmit and receive signals, and it also feeds our senses. She is the object of sensual desires, our boundary layer, the captivating vessel in which our life is enclosed, and at the same time she is a giant habitat for bacteria, fungi, viruses and parasites. The language we speak and its proverbs attest to how important skin is to us. There are days when a person feels out of his skin, sometimes he gets out of his skin. Thick skin is needed in work; and those who have difficulty accepting criticism are called thin-skinned. When one sees a large spider, one will say, “I don’t itch,” meaning he doesn’t care, and the other will turn pale with fear (this is also about the skin), his skin will run cold, and he will run away in horror, saving his skin. And yet, few people know what the skin really is, how it functions, and how many vital tasks it takes on for us. First of all, the skin protects us from dangerous pathogens, toxins and allergens; it is like a brick wall with an acid coating. At the same time, it protects us from overheating, hypothermia, excessive evaporation of moisture and thus from dehydration, as if it were a kind of natural climate control. To protect us from all these dangers, the skin is in constant contact with our external world: it measures temperature, removes all kinds of fluids and secretions from the body, absorbs light and converts it into heat. In addition, with the help of sensitive cells, hairs and receptors (and there are about 2500 of them per square centimeter on our fingertips) She explores the external environment and objects for us: whether it’s windy outside, cold or dry, or what an object feels like: smooth or rough, soft or hard, sharp or blunt. But that’s not all. Through our skin, we come into contact not only with the environment, but also with other people. Did you know that the messages we receive from the skin play a crucial role in choosing a partner? Everyone’s skin tastes different, and it’s the nuances of smell that attract the right person. After all, nature strives to ensure that our hereditary genes interbreed in the best possible way so that we produce healthy and hardy offspring. After all, when two different skin types meet, it promises a favorable gene crossing in the case of offspring. And there is even a certain political meaning hidden here: the skin does not know racism, it is looking for genetically diverse inputs. One can argue about which is the largest human sexual organ: the brain, because it draws pictures and fantasies and creates attraction, or the skin that we feel during love, which we look at, enjoying, and which visibly changes during sex. Without naked skin, there is no arousal. Without skin, there is no attraction. There is no physical contact without skin contact. Voluptuous thoughts give us goosebumps. Even fetishes are associated with the corresponding symbols: varnish, leather and fur… all these are erotic substitutes for human skin! You might have already noticed for yourself that when dealing with the topic of skin, you have to deal with things that are not accepted to talk about openly. So, for many people, nudity – whether it’s visible intimate parts of the body and a feeling of shame invisible to the eye – is taboo; it is also not customary to discuss the bad smell that sometimes comes from the skin, cellulite, other defects, secretions and other flaws. In short, many things that we are reluctant to talk about or perhaps find unpleasant are related to the skin: dandruff, earwax, acne, fat, sweat, fungus, and the like. And they often prefer not to talk about sexually transmitted diseases, especially when it comes to where such a disease was caught. Skin doctors are always venereologists at the same time (the very word “venereology” comes from Venus, the goddess of love). It not only infects us with passion, but also infects us with syphilis, gonorrhea, warts, herpes, hepatitis or AIDS – all these are diseases that either mostly manifest themselves on our skin or spread through our body from it. For us, skin doctors, none of this is anything nasty, we even find it fascinating. After all, we think and analyze through our senses: we observe, scrape, press, and smell. Because the characteristics, consistency, and smell of a skin disease help us expose the villain who caused the skin problem. The older generation of skin doctors has even found very eloquent and sonorous names for unsightly and generally painful skin conditions for us. So, pimples, spots, ulcers and crusts in newborns are united by the general concept of “skin blooming”; we call the blood network on the shin resulting from varicose veins “purpura jaune d’ocre” (yellow ochre purple) “it sounds so elegant in French!” Red venous thickenings are a “cherry angioma” for us, vascular nevus is a “wine stain”, and light brown liver spots are “coffee with milk stains”. And the skin cracked from dryness, we call eczema “crackle”. Indeed, in this case, the skin does look a little like the cracked, peeling paint on Michelangelo’s frescoes on the arches of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Do you remember this picture about the history of the creation of the world? Naked muscular Adam, reaching out to God to receive his life energy from him… Our colleagues, surgeons or therapists, sometimes laugh at skin doctors, calling us shallow doctors. Of course, it’s completely unfair. After all, our activities have a deep meaning, just like the skin. It interacts not only with the environment and with other people, but also with our inner world. She actively communicates with the human nervous and immune systems. The appearance of our skin largely depends on what is happening inside us: on how we eat, and on what happens to our psyche. The skin is a mirror of the soul, a screen on which you can observe what is happening in the depths of our soul at the subconscious level. As avid forensic technicians, we enthusiastically search for evidence on the skin. Sometimes footprints lead us into the depths of the body. And there we suddenly find out that the marks on the skin indicate psychological problems, stress, lack of mental balance, or tell us about our organs and eating habits. Wrinkles indicate sorrows and joys, scars indicate wounds, botox–bound facial expressions indicate fear of old age, goose bumps indicate fear or pleasure, and acne indicates excessive consumption of milk, sugar, or flour products. Obesity leads to infections in the folds of the skin, and dryness or sweating of the skin sometimes indicates problems with the thyroid gland. The skin is like a huge archive full of traces and clues, overt or hidden. And anyone who learns to read these footprints will be surprised at how often visible signs lead us to knowledge about the invisible. Human skin is an amazing organ, the largest of all that humans have. It’s a miracle!