[On the analogy of ringworm, and of some other skin diseases, to fairy rings].

  • Brown, Robert E.
Date:
[1847]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: [On the analogy of ringworm, and of some other skin diseases, to fairy rings]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    substance existing in greatest abundance at the periphery of the circles, which appears to be the soil from which they spring, and on which they flourish. The plants are very low in the scale of organized bodies, consisting simply of long, regularly-jointed, cylindrical filaments, terminating at their extremities in round or oval globules, which are probably the sporules of the plant. On examining a circular patch of the disease microscopically, the plants may be observed as filamentous lines, springing from the outer parts of the circle, and radiating inward towards the centre, where they generally terminate in a row of the sporules to which we have above alluded. About the centre itself, there may be observed a great accumulation of these beads or sporules, mingled with epi- dermic scales, and agglutinated together by exudations from the plants and the animal tissues.* Having in the foregoing pages described the facts relating to the fairy rings, and to the tinea favosa, which are necessary for my present purpose, I shall now endeavour to point out the ana- logy which 1 conceive to exist between them. The growth of the mycodermata begins in the first instance, as I have already stated, at a point. The soil, or other source of nourishment connected with this point, cannot be expected to last very long; especially when it is taken into account how comparatively great a quantity of highly organized sporules and secretions the plants throw off, and which constitute some portion of the scurf and scales that perpe- tually separate themselves from the affected part. When the soil, therefore, at the point upon which the plants first spring is ex- hausted, they seek for nourishment on the parts exterior and con- tiguous to it. This, in its turn, is gradually exhausted of the required pabulum, and a further extension takes place; and so the circumference of the circle gradually and constantly progresses outwards, in the same way as the fairy rings. Exterior to the circle, of plants, the skin is slightly reddened and inflamed, presenting the appearance of an outer ring. This may possibly arise from a cause similar to that which Dr Wollaston thinks gives rise to the outer circle of withered grass which is seen in the fairy rings:— to wit, the abstraction of nourishment by the plants from the parts beyond where they actually grow. The effects upon the skin of such an abstraction of nourishment would doubtless be to excite ' c. x » * some degree of inflammation in it, by stimulating it to increased action; and this would manifest itself by a reddened appearance. When two or more circles of tinea meet, they do not cross or continue themselves into each other; but, coalescing, they form, * For much of my information respecting the vegetations and microscopical ap- pearances of tinea favosa, I am indebted to a Memoir on these subjects by Dr T. H. Bennett, published in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Vol. xv.