Volume 1

The science and practice of medicine / By William Aitken ... From the 4th London ed., with additions, by Meredith Clymer.

  • Aitken, William, 1825-1892.
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The science and practice of medicine / By William Aitken ... From the 4th London ed., with additions, by Meredith Clymer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Lamar Soutter Library, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Lamar Soutter Library at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

    915/972 (page 905)
    and it is always absolutely necessary to use, the liquor potassce in the examination of all tonsurant appearances of the hair, of all idiopathic bald patches, and of all brown or yellow-colored scurfs, for sporules arc frequently detected which had escaped observation before liquor potassce had been used (Bazin, Fox, Anderson). Sufficient time must also be allowed for the parts to become transparent under the action of this reagent. The parasitic lesions of the skin are, as a rule, unsymmetrical, and hence they differ materially in this respect from syphilitic cases. They differ also no less essentially from the eruptive diseases of the skin. An eruption is no necessary part of these parasitic lesions; but, from the irritation established in the true skin, eruptions of various kinds may occur. Eruption thus often precedes the detec- tion of a fungus, and, as a rule, very often follows its existence; and they who dispense with the microscope in the diagnosis of skin affections cannot avoid confounding severe eruptive with parasitic lesions, because they disregard the pathognomonic evidence of such lesions already indicated (Fox). The term herpes, therefore, as applied to these parasitic affections, is an objectionable term; be- cause it has been already used to indicate a vesicular eruption, namely, herpes zoster, which invariably exhibits large typical vesicles. There seems to be a peculiar condition of nutrition best fitted for parasitic growths of a vegetable nature, just as some constitu- tions and states of the system are best suited for the propagation and development of entozoa; but the exact circumstances which predispose to the growth of these entophjtk fwigi upon the human body are not better known than those which predispose the body to receive and develop certain morbid poisons of a specific kind, known to multiply during the course of the disease, and to throw off material capable of propagating and spreading the same kind of disease. With regard to the parasitic diseases of the skin and hair, a failure of the vital powers to carry on the healthy processes of life seems ordinarily to be one of the inviting causes of such a development of true fungi as would constitute a disease. A special nidus or soil is necessary, just as a predisposition is necesary in the case of the spread of miasmatic diseases; yet care must be taken in both instances not to confound the co-operating cause with the special or peculiar poison or germ. [Mal-nutrition, and feeble health of the subject seem to favor the development of both vege- table and animal parasites,* and in scrofulous persons they are * [Cl. Bernard states that frogs are subject to parasitic fungi, which in time causes their death ; and that if a healthy frog is put into ajar with others so diseased, he will, for awhile at least, resist contagion ; but if one which has been for some time in cap- tivity, and whose nutrition is impaired, be thus placed, he becomes at once covered with fungous growths.]