Chapter three reads Stedman’s account of the horrors of colonial military life Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam in terms of his fascination with the effects of the violent colonial environment on skin. Having recently displaced dress and religion as the primary markers of human difference, skin was the point of convergence for social narratives of the body in terms of beauty, feeling, health, and race. Skin’s vulnerability and its semiotic ambiguity as a marker of human identity and difference make it the motif through which Stedman tries to make sense of the disease, death and disorder that surround him. Drawing on treatises from the newly emerging discipline of dermatology, this chapter examines cultural concepts of complexion in the context of empire and intercultural encounter and skin’s increasingly important role at the centre of ideas about sympathetic response and sentimental feeling. Situating these ideas in conversation with recent scholarly work on sentimental forms of narrative, this chapter argues that the reciprocal significance of medical and racial theories of skin’s sensitivity and literary models of sentiment can offer new ways of understanding the relationship between race and feeling.