I. On the lymphatics in leprosy. II. On the changes in the sweat-glands in cancer and leprosy. III. On the growth of the fungi in ringworm, favus and trichorexis nodosa / by George Hoggan.

  • Hoggan, George.
Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: I. On the lymphatics in leprosy. II. On the changes in the sweat-glands in cancer and leprosy. III. On the growth of the fungi in ringworm, favus and trichorexis nodosa / by George Hoggan. 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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    the hair to understand how in the first instance the fungus gets underneath the latter. So much for the cuticle. Now for the shaft of the hair, which consists of a comparatively solid tube, formed of elongated cells, and surrounding a more or less patent cavity con- taining the loose cells of the pith. The way in which the shaft is formed is easily explained by the manner in which a score of cells growing from the side of the hair papilla are forced, during growth, to compress themselves into the same length of the hair which accommodates the one layer of cells growing from the apex ; but it is not necessary for this inquiry to go further into the point at present than to note that, owing to the locality where that shaft is formed, the ringworm fungus is not likely to penetrate into the shaft from below, as we shall afterwards see to be the case with the fungus of favus. Let us now follow the action of the fungus, as seen in the drawing and specimens under the microscope. That action may be divided into three stages, passing from the point of the hair towards its root. In the first place, the fungus propagates itself as a thin layer, only one spore deep, immediately under the cuticle. The spores grow only laterally, as if from buds, the growth, however, being greater, or budding more numerous, in the direction of the length of the hair than round its periphery. For some time after it shows itself, the spores seem too small to work mischief, lying in regular rows under an undisturbed cuticle, but they represent the thin end of the wedge, which has been firmly inserted, and soon brings about the second stage, when the spores growing larger in their bed, make room for themselves by bursting the cuticle, of the shaft, as the bark is stripped from a tree, and throwing it off altogether. The position is now entirely won by the fungus, which, from inability to attack the compact, elongated cells of the shaft, or the necessity of having convenient access to oxygen, had hitherto confined itself to the lower surface of the hair cuticle; but that cuticle removed, the fungus attacks the now defenceless cells of the shaft underneath, grows between them in rows or sheets, and separates them laterally like the bristles in a brush. The hair is now destroyed and breaks off. These three stages appear much plainer in the specimens than any description I can give of them, and they teach a lesson that would never have been learned upon the shapeless and structureless trunks found in an advanced stage of the disease. I may add that the specimen has not been treated by