"The Book of Skin explores the amazingly varied meanings of human skin in Western culture from classical times to the here and now. Every aspect and nuance of skin in history is to be found here: its poetry as well as its pathology, the chromatics of its pigmentation, the destructive rage exercised against it in violent fantasies, the shivering titillations of itch, the intensities and attenuations of erotic touch, blushing, suntanning, tattooing, flaying, stigmata, scarification, moles, birthmarks, massage, ointments and aromatics."--BOOK JACKET.