The skin in health and disease.

Date:
[1888?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The skin in health and disease. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    it is firmly adherent. Nails grow from the root, just as do the hairs, and only slide over their matrix or bed, so that an injury to the matrix, such as slivers beneath the nail, or run-arounds, or even a bad bruise, need not cause a disfigured nail other than of the portion directly injured; whereas, injury or disease of its root will generally cause a distorted and disfigured nail I have seen a bruise of the root, and in one in- stance the sting of a bee over the root of the nail, followed by an irregularly formed nail, which lasted for a long time. Thus also eczema attacking the hand may affect the ends of the fingers, or even the sides at the ends, and the nails remain perfect; but when it is located on the back of the fingers, and in- volves the roots of the nails, the latter rarely if ever escape distortion and malgrowth. The nails seldom fail to give indication of sickness which has been at all severe, by an arrest of develop- ment which has taken place in the root at the period of sickness. Some studies have been made in this direction which may not prove uninteresting or with- out value in the present connection, which we will quote from Mr. Wilson. A French physician, Dr. Beau, has observed that the nails of the feet are four times slower in their growth than those of the hands. The latter increase in length one millimetre, that is, two-fifths of a line, or of an inch, in one week, while the nails of the toes require four weeks for the same amount of increase. According to him, the length of the thumb-nail, including the root which is hidden from sight, is eight lines, that is, twenty milli- metres; consequently, the period occupied in the growth of that nail would be twenty weeks, or five months. In like manner, the nail of the great toe,