Diseases of the skin : a manual for practitioners and students / by W. Allan Jamieson.

  • Jamieson, W. Allan (William Allan), 1839-1916.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diseases of the skin : a manual for practitioners and students / by W. Allan Jamieson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    91/654 (page 69)
    derates, and a form in which the olein of the sehnm is in too large a relative quantity, and stands on the surface in minute drops. The symptoms and the results vary according as the parts implicated are or are not covered with hair. The scalp, both in infants and in adults of both sexes, is by far the most frequent seat of the disease, and there alone is it productive of any really serious consequences. In the infant it is but a per- petuation of that free production of oil and more rapid epidermic regeneration, which goes on during intra-uterine life, probably as a result of the macerating effect of the warm liquor amnii. The seborrhceic masses are most apt in infants to accumulate first and most extensively in the neighbourhood of the anterior fontauelle. Even when these are washed off they soon repro- duce themselves, but a popular prejudice against meddling too much with the open of the head, a remnant of imperfect anatomical knowledge, is often the cause of the thickness and hardness which the masses attain. When the accretions are removed the surface beneath is seen to be pale and slightly moist. At times it is reddened, or even eczematous. These latter appearances are due to the irritating effects which the secretion, become partially rancid, has exerted. In adults also the drier form of seborrhcea is much more common on the scalp than the oily. In them the typical kind is that in which there are masses of thin, dirty white or yellowish bran-like scaly particles, easily loosened, and feeling and looking greasy. But it occurs also as glancing white, hard, shining particles, which fall over the clothes in showers when the hair is brushed, and which constitute the most common kind of dandruff. This latter form not infrequently owes its origin to a superficial chronic dry eczema, and is described as pityriasis capitis. Auspitz regards this latter form as an atrophy of the epidermic formation, and not as a seborrhcea, yet under the microscope the products in both cases are similar, the amount of oil present being relatively greater in the one than the other. In either case the growth and nutrition of the hair