Lectures on clinical surgery. Vol. I. Pt. I. On certain rare diseases of the skin / by Jonathan Hutchinson.

  • Hutchinson, Jonathan, Sir, 1828-1913.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on clinical surgery. Vol. I. Pt. I. On certain rare diseases of the skin / by Jonathan Hutchinson. 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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    as a profuse general eruption came under my observation. A gentleman, aged 33, had been for some months under treatment for unquestionable syphilis. Part of his eruption, however, persisted in remaining, in spite of mercurial baths and other measures. In this condition he was sent to me. He had more than a hundred molluscum-spots, most of them of considerable size and many pedunculated. They were scattered over his trunk and limbs. He was delighted when I told him they were not syphilis, and could be easily cured by excision, and at once stripped naked and allowed me to cut away almost the whole of them. We finished the business a week later, and although he suffered subsequently from other syphilitic symptoms he never had another single molluscum-spot. I do not suppose that there is any difierence between these cases and others, excepting in the unusual extent of the disease. A curious point in the history of molluscum contagiosum is its easy curability, I may almost say its tendency to spontaneous disappearance. It is not often that a case lasts longer than six or eight months, whether treatment be used or not, and this is probably to be explained by the two facts that the disease is not very easily communicable and that the individual tubercles are of short duration. In conclusion, let me just add that molluscum conta- giosum seu sebaceum stands quite alone, and has no connec- tion whatever with other diseases of the same substantive name. 1