On the local treatment of chronic eczema and impetigo / by John Hughes Bennett, M.D.
- John Hughes Bennett
- Date:
- [1849]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On the local treatment of chronic eczema and impetigo / by John Hughes Bennett, M.D. 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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![0 ON THE LOCAL TREATIMENT OF CHRONIC ECZEMA AND IMPETIGO. BY JOHN HUGHES BENNETT, M.D., F.R.S.E., PKOFESSOH OF THE INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE, AND ONE OF THE CLINICA. PROFESSORS, IN PROFESSOR O* UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH. [FROM THE MONTHLY JOURNAL OF MEDICAL SCIENCK, AUGUST 1849.] Eczema essentially consists of diffuse crops of minute vesicles, and Impetigo of groups of small pustules, wluch breaking, and their con- tents concreting on the surface, form a crust or scab. In the first disease this scS) is thin and laminated ; in the second, it is rough knotty, and prominent; and in eczema impetigmodes we observe the promhJent crusts of the one, united with the lammated and often Wuraceous surface of the other. These characters, although they are easily distinguished in acute cases, become gradually more and more obscure in such as are chronic, until at length the skm as- sumes an unusual degree of induration, covered with a crust more or less thick, portions of which occasionally separating exhibit a uni- form dark red surface. There is almost always either intense itch- ing, or a feeling of burning or smarting, often very painful—symptoms which continue when the eruptions have lost then- original distinctive characters, and merged, as it were, into one another. The acute form of these diseases will frequently be found connected with general derangements of the economy, without a proper manage- ment of which no local treatment will be of much advantage. ^ Of these in young persons a scrofulous taint, and in older oiies various forms of dysp^epsia, connected with oxaluria, or the lithic acid and phosphatic diatheses, are the most common. I need not dwell upon the importance in all such cases of instituting an appropriate con- stitutional treatment, which not unfrequently is in itself sufficient to remove the local disease. It is in this manner that sometimes acids, sometimes antacids, and at others cod-liver oil, or nutritive diet, and the mineral tonics, especially arsenic, are so useftil. ^ There are other cases, however, where there is little, if any, con- stitutional disturbance, and where the disorder originates in, and is maintained by, local irritation, as on the hands and arms of stone- masons, grocers, bakers, cooks, reapers, and so on; and between HrTlTERT-AND AND KNOX, OEOROE STREET, EDINBUBGH.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21474849_0003.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
