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The Design of Mason Eckhart’s Faux Hide: More Than a Simple Casing
 Mason Eckhart’s faux skin has to be a good deal more than a mere casing. A mere casing would be unbearably hot and conducive to harboring bacteria, especially anaerobic bacteria typically not found on the skin surface.
Most likely this faux hide would consist of several layers, and have several functions well beyond that of a passive barrier. The bottom layer, the one in contact with the skin should have the property of drawing water away from the skin and up through pores to the outer surface. This would not work as efficiently as sweat glands, but it would add some measure of comfort and alleviate the problem of heat.
[Dissipation of heat is a serious issue for Eckhart. The heavy coat he wears may be a portable cooling unit, since we see it in situations where he is outside or likely to be moving about.]
The whole idea of encasing someone in engineered plastics to prevent disease while (apparently) ignoring the more typical routes of infection (mouth and lungs, and to a lesser degree, the eyes) must indicate that the faux hide is intended as a barrier to puncture wounds or paper cuts. Such injuries, introducing bacteria and viruses into otherwise sterile tissue, could be devastating in the case of a compromised immune system.
The faux hide is then likely to have some antibiotic properties, perhaps with antibiotic molecules incorporated into the structure of the lowest layer. Such antibiotics would have to be highly selective; healthy skin is not sterile skin but is hospitable to some flora while preventing deleterious bacteria from becoming established. The polymers are also likely to have some self-repairing properties, minimizing the damage done by a puncture or cut.
Any pores through which water is transferred would come to be clogged with salts, requiring that the faux hide be changed routinely and fairly often. Clogged pores would give rise to the heat problems of a non-porous casing.
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