Selected monographs on dermatology / P.G. Unna [and others].

Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Selected monographs on dermatology / P.G. Unna [and others]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    375/636 (page 357)
    P B E F A C E. The general proposition that the physician should be familiar with the effects of every drug that he employs in the treatment of disease is axiomatic. He should not only be acquainted with the drug's normal typical mode of action, but also with its abnormal or incidental effects, the more especially since, in the case of drugs as in the phe- nomena of every-day life, it is often the unexpected that happens. The abnormal phases of drug action are comparatively an unexplored field. While it has long been known that erup- tive disturbances of various kinds may result from the use of certain drugs, yet the number of drugs in common use capable of causing cutaneous disorders, the clinical appear- ances which they present, and the conditions which influence their development, are not sufficiently familiar to the pro- fession. The changes in the skin caused by drugs derive a special practical interest from the fact that they sometimes simulate very accurately the eruptive fevers and other idiopathic affections of the skin, and it is important that the physician should be able to differentiate the clinical features, and correctly interpret the pathological significance of phenomena so widely different in their mode of origin. It is only within the last few years that this subject has received much attention from the profession. When the enormously large number of cases of drug eruptions which have been recently reported is contrasted with the com- paratively few formerly recorded, it is evident that a prolific cause of cutaneous disorders long escaped recognition.