[Distribution of elastic bodies (elastic globes) in healthy human skin. Studies with a dense grid]

Since the turn of the century, there have been descriptions of corpuscular structures in the human skin. These are situated at the epidermal-corial junction zone. They can be visualized well with resorcinol-fuchsin staining according to Weigert. They may attain forensic significance in the topographic assignment of isolated skin fragments to certain body regions. The research results available so far, which are in some cases contradictory, were checked and the investigations were continued. A total of 584 skin punch samples were taken from the trunk and limbs of a 39-year-old male corpse. Of these, a total of 1752 paraffin serial sections (resorcinol-fuchsin staining) were prepared and investigated for the occurrence of elastic bodies. The investigation essentially showed that in almost all serial sections, elastic bodies were found to have a frequency concentration at points on the limbs. It could not be established that there was a sharp separation of skin areas containing elastic globes and skin areas free of elastic globes. The distribution of elastic bodies is evidently subject to a pattern of its own, which does not display any interrelationships with that of the skin appendages (apocrine and eccrine sweat glands, sebaceous glands, and male body hair). Because the skin of the trunk and the limbs is relatively regularly interspersed with elastic globes, there can only be used in connection with other features (e.g. thickness of the epidermis, skin appendages) to assign isolated skin fragments to certain regions of the body.