I've always been led to believe that it's the outer layers of skin which provide the greatest resistance. Once down to the flesh below, the resistance of the body can be very much lower, making shock from sub-cutaneous contact very much more dangerous.

Higher voltages also apparently have the effect of breaking down the insulation of the outer skin.

We had a discussion on this a couple of years ago. Some of you may remember the following link, which shows that under extreme circumstances (and obviously deliberately applied electrodes in this case), the resistance of the body can be very low:


http://www.dc.state.fl.us/oth/deathrow/drorder.html

(See the table of voltage/current/resistance values about one-third of the way down the page.)



[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 04-14-2005).]