A manual of clinical medicine and physical diagnosis / by Thomas Hawkes Tanner.

  • Tanner, Thomas Hawkes, 1824-1871.
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of clinical medicine and physical diagnosis / by Thomas Hawkes Tanner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Audouini, but it is doubtful if it exists. The disease is probably an atrophy of the hair bulb only. Tinea Versicolor, or Chloasma, makes its appearance •generally on the front of the chest or abdomen, in the form of small spots of a dull reddish colour, which gra- dually increase in size, and assume a yellow tint. It may last from a few days to many months or years. It is contagious. According to Eichstedt, this disease is caused by a cryptogamic plant—Microsporon furfur. Zn Onychomycosis, the nails are rendered opaque, dry, and brittle by the attack of a vegetable parasite. The only diseases dependent upon the presence of animal parasites which we shall notice are scabies or itch, and prurigo pedicularis. Scabies or itch is the chief animal parasitic disease, and it is due to the presence of the acarus scabiei, and is a contagious disease—contagious in that sense which im- plies contact—consisting of a vesicular eruption, present- ing a number of watery heads, more or less distinct from ^each other, and attended with violent itching. From the vesicles runs a furrow, in the end of which the acarus lies, ^nd is visible oftentimes as a white speck. This furrow or cuiiiculus is diagnostic. Scabies may attack any part of the body, with the exception of the head and face; it most frequently occurs in the flexures of the joints, especially betwixt the fingers, and around the end of the wrists, the front of the arm, the belly, and upper line of the penis. The result of the irritation of the acari and the scratch, ing is to induce other forms of eruption, such as lichen and ecthyma, hence scabies is usually multiform. The following are the diagnostic points in scabies, but the only really conclusive proof of its existence in ordinary cases is the discovery of the furrow and its acarus :- 1. Absence of febrile disturbance. ' 2. Absence of rash from the face and head (this is the rule); its absence from the posterior surface of the arm or body. 3. The seat of the eruption: where the cuticle is thin —as for instance, the interdigital spaces, the anterior sur- face of forearm, front of the body below the nipple-level, about the mamma of women, along the front of the penis in men; in the seats of pressure—as for instance, about