The relation between the teeth, and certain diseases of the skin and mucous membrane / by W. Knowsley Sibley.

  • Sibley, Walter Knowsley, 1862-
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The relation between the teeth, and certain diseases of the skin and mucous membrane / by W. Knowsley Sibley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    A study of skin eruptions on one part of the body, as the result of an irritation of a neighbouring area, may in some cases he assisted, and in others complicated by, the following dermatological problems. In some subjects, a quite local eruption produced by a traumatism will be followed by a symmetrical lesion on the opposite side, or on some distant region of the body, which has not been exposed to a traumatism or irritation. For example, a dermatitis produced by a trade or trauma on one hand, may be, and often is, quickly followed by a similar lesion on the opposite side. So again, a traumatic dermatitis on one part will frequently rapidly spread for a considerable area to the adjacent skin regions, tar beyond the seat of irritation. Further, a local irritation such as is produced, for instance, by pediculi or scabies on one part of the body, is frequently rapidly followed by an irritable skin eruption over regions far removed from the offending organisms, and long before the parasites have had an opportunity of spreading. Pediculi capitis may be the cause of a general irritable skin eruption over the whole body. Eruptions on the face of children are frequently caused by pediculi on the occipital region of the hairy scalp. I wish to insist upon the peculiar reflex, or perhaps sympathetic, nervous skin phenomena illustrated by the above remarks, as showing what an extraordinary sensitive trophic condition of skin is present in many people, and how this complicates still more any attempt at making dogmatic statements, or drawing definite mathematical con- clusions, as to the origin of a given skin lesion. Before studying some of the diseases individually, and attempting to prove a connexion between them and the condition of the teeth, it is necessary to make some observations on the cutaneous nerve distribution of the region under discussion. The areas of nerve distribution to the skin of the head and face, however, are much more complicated than is ordinarily supposed. It is well known that tender areas of the skin, after the destruction of definite branches of the fifth nerve, often by no means correspond to the acknowledged distribution of the same branch of this nerve. So again, the position of headache in people suffering from errors of refraction may be on almost any part of the scalp. Some of the dental branches of the fifth nerve, however, according to Dr. Head, have a very definite reflex area of pain distribution, when they are irritated or inflamed. For example, pain from caries of the upper incisors is referred to the fronto- nasal area, and that from the two upper bicuspids, in some cases, to the maxillary area, in others to the temporal, but never to both regions in