The sunburnt appearance of the skin as an early diagnostic symptom of supra renal capsule disease / by Isaac E. Taylor.

  • Taylor, Isaac E. (Isaac Ebenezer), 1812-1889.
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The sunburnt appearance of the skin as an early diagnostic symptom of supra renal capsule disease / by Isaac E. Taylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    but in his cases, the pigment embraces the whole of the scalp and ears. This was not the case in the patient at the New York Hospital, for we had the line of demarkation very evi- dent, and also the pigment on the lips, although the whole body is tinged of a mulatto color. The general history of the cases correspond with those of Dr. Addison, except the appearance of the skin, and the emaciated condition of all the patients, except Bishop. The emaciation is not as great as is noticed in phthisis, though it is very distinct. Dr. Addison's plates represent a dirty brown or mulatto or West Indian color, and all his cases have the scalp tinged except case 9, which appears to have been free or not continued to the face by the lithographer as the whole face is not lithographed. Dr. Jonathan Hutchinson, in his series of cases published in the Medical Times and Gazette, for December 1S55 and 1856, has appropriated the term bronze to the discolora- tion, which, as he conceives, conveys a good idea of the exact character of the appearance of the skin in the disease. He compares it to the color of a bronzed statue from which the gloss has been rubbed off. This, it appears to my mind, and many of my professional friends who have seen them, as inapplicable to the cases I have reported; and I think it would have a tendency also to cause the disease to be over- looked in its early stage, if that appearance of skin was sought for and expected to be found as diagnostic of the disease in its early stage. From the cases reported by Dr. Addison and others, and my own, it will be remarked that this affection may spring up whilst another disease is progressing; and that it may, and generally does exist as a disease by itself; that the disease, judging from the number of cases that have come under my observation in the course of two months' service in the hospital, cannot be very rare; that it must have existed in many cases which have never been recognized; that the discoloration may take place in rather a rapid man- ner, when the disease may be of an acute character, and that the discoloration may be gradual in its appearance, and be- come extensive when the disease is of a chronic nature, and exist for, it may be, years, owing to the peculiar diathesis of the patient, whether of the tuberculous or cancerous or fibrous, as nearly allied to the rheumatic ; that it requires a longer time for the development of the pigment when it becomes of the mulatto or West Indian hue, and more univer- sal, while in the early stage it is like a person who is sun- burnt, and further, that the result of all the cases have pro-