Variola, vaccination, varicella, cholera, erysipelas, whooping cough, hay fever / by H. Immermann [and others] ; edited with additions by John W. Moore ; authorized translation from the German, under the editorial supervision of Alfred Stengel.

  • Immermann, H.
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Variola, vaccination, varicella, cholera, erysipelas, whooping cough, hay fever / by H. Immermann [and others] ; edited with additions by John W. Moore ; authorized translation from the German, under the editorial supervision of Alfred Stengel. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    whatever on the skin. At the same time he strongly recommends the early separation of the crusts, whether on the face, scalp, or elsewhere. This, in his opinion, can best be accomplished by the application of linseed-meal poultices, sprinkled with iodoform. On the face the method most agreeable to the patient is to cut a mask of a single thick- ness of lint, with apertures for the eyes, nose, and mouth. Then to smear a thin layer of linseed-meal poultice on this, taking care to put on the surface a little vaselin in which iodoform has been mixed, and to apply this poultice to the face, changing it every two hours. The treatment of smallpox by the continuous warm or tepid bath has been strongly advocated by Hebra, Stokes and Hawtrey Benson, of Dublin, and others.*] [The red light treatment of smallpox has in recent years attracted much attention. It will be remembered that John of Gaddesden, in the fourteenth century, surrounded his smallpox patients with red curtains, red w'alls, and red furniture of all kinds, for in this color there was, he averred, a peculiar virtue. After the lapse of five centuries the therapeutic skill and clinical acumen of the “Rosa Anglica” are vindicated so far as the treatment of smallpox by red light is concerned. In 1871, J. H. Waters, of London, and W. H. Barlow, of Manchester, boi-e testimony to the usefulness of the exclu- sion of light in the treatment of smallpox. In a suggestive paper on the effects of light upon the skin, Niels R. Finsen, of Copenhagen, in 1893, suggested the treatment of smallpox by complete exclusion of daylight; or, what would doubtless have the same effect, by the use of tightly closing red curtains, or, better still, windows of red glass. Effect was given to his views with success by Lindholm and Svendsen, of Bergen, in the same year. Since then, Juhel-Renoy, of Paris, J. Marshall Day and J. W. Moore, of Dublin, Feilberg, of Copenhagen, and others, have borne witness to the advantages of this method in checking inflammation of the skin in smallpox and so limiting the amount and intensity of the eruption. The view that it is the chemical and not the caloric rays of the solar spectrum which are active and have to be intercepted, and also that the skin affection induced by strong electric light is identical with solar erythema, was first advanced by Charcot in 1859, but was not proved scientifically until 1889, when Widmark, of Stockholm, determined that it is exclusively the chemical rays in sunlight, especially the ultra-violet rays, which are active in causing both pigmentation and solar eczema. The so-called chemical or actinic rays, which are essentially situated in the blue and violet, and * Dublin Jour. Med. Sci., vol. LIII, 1872.