Volume 2

Eruptions of the face, head, and hands: with the latest improvements in the treatment of diseases of the skin ... / By T.H. Burgess.

  • Burgess, Thomas H. (Thomas Henry), -1865.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Eruptions of the face, head, and hands: with the latest improvements in the treatment of diseases of the skin ... / By T.H. Burgess. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    47/280 (page 27)
    appearance; but the desquamation is not so abundant in this as in the scaly eruption. This disease, which is the result of inflammation of the dermis with effu- sion, is frequently seen in the form of rings on the cheeks and chin of young people of either sex, of a fair and delicate skin. The rings are studded round with extremely small globular vesicles. Their centre is generally free and the border red. When the her- petic rings are small, the circular border is pretty broad, and the red colour extends beyond the vesicles to the same distance on either side. The vesicles, at first clear and colourless, become gradually opaque, and usually terminate about the eighth or tenth day by desquamation, leaving merely a slight degree of redness behind, which gradually disappears. Herpes circinatus is undoubtedly the result of constitutional disturbance, in which one or other of the organic functions is immediately involved. It is purely a symptomatic disease—an outward manifestation, so to speak, of derangement of the chylopoietic viscera, of the thoracic organs, of the functions of the womb, or of suppression of the hemorrhoidal discharge. It is not a special disease of the skin, for the functions of this organ are almost invariably healthy and well performed in patients attacked by herpes; the pathology of the complaint consists in inflammation of the cutis, followed by effusion of serum, confined within narrow, well-defined limits. The eruptions with which herpes circinatus is most likely to be confounded are—(1:) circular patches of