The hygiene of the skin, or, The art of preventing skin diseases / by A. Ravogli.

Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The hygiene of the skin, or, The art of preventing skin diseases / by A. Ravogli. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    to a disturbance of nutrition, because of an irritation of the nerves regulating circulation and nutrition of the skin. There are undoubtedly certain skin eruptions strictly limited to the course or distribution of certain nerves, either upon one or both sides of the body. The course of the nerve can be accurately traced out, oftentimes, by the dis- tribution of the eruption. We know that these diseases are due to alterations or irritation in that particular nerve or nerves. In the case of the exanthems, the eruption is so widely distributed that we must consider the irritation to be of central origin, thus producing spasm and subsequent paresis of the vasomotor nerves, and consequently a change in the tonus of the blood-vessels. This theory finds support in cases of paralytics, who, becoming affected with an exanthem, as small-pox or scarlatina, have the paralyzed side of the body entirely free from the eruption. The condition of the nutrition of the skin has also an influence upon eruption of an exanthem, because in cases of ichthyosis in which small- pox occurs, the pustules of the latter do not appear when the ichthyosis is present. The elementary forms of eruption, the papulae, macula?, and pustulse of these diseases, follow in their distribution the lines of the skin and the disposition of the glands. The capillary blood-vessels are arranged as a network about the glands, and it is here that the eruption is most abundant and best developed. This fact supports Auspitz's idea, that the exanthematous eruption comes from a disturbance of the vasomotor nerves. The nerve disturbance produces hyper- semia and stasis in the vessels, these produce inflammation, and inflammation causes an exudation and disturbance of nutrition. It is not my purpose to describe the individual exan- thems, but I wish rather to speak of these diseases from a hygienic stand-point, and especially as regards the preven- tion of their spreading. As every one knows, there is a