Volume 1
The science and practice of medicine / By William Aitken ... From the 4th London ed., with additions, by Meredith Clymer.
- William Aitken
- Date:
- 1866
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The science and practice of medicine / By William Aitken ... From the 4th London ed., with additions, by Meredith Clymer. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Lamar Soutter Library, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Lamar Soutter Library at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
943/972 page 933
![The fungus foot is confined to the natives of India who go about with naked feet, and the spores might easily be introduced through some scratch, oven were it impossible for them to penetrate by the pores of the skin. When once introduced beneath the cuticle, a Bingle spore might soon perform the work of destruction, spreading in every direction, and, according to the peculiar condition of the secretions, the mycelium might put on a hundred different modes of growth. Besides, if the fungus is capable of causing the absorp- tion of solid structures like bone, it is easy to conceive that a spore, in contact for some time with a moist foot, might penetrate the cu- tiele simply by absorption. Cleanliness, in the first instance, seems to be a preventive; but when the fungus is once established, there seems to be no cure save amputation—which, happily, when re- sorted to in time, appears to be completely successful, as the dis- ease never spreads beyond a certain point, though, if it be allowed to take its course, death will ensue from the exhaustion consequent on pain and the continuous discharge. [Dr. Carter (loc. cit.) states that he had received word (1863) from an intelligent medical man, that he thought he had eradicated the disease by the free use of strong nitric acid.] In some cases it would seem as if the foot had been in a diseased state when the fungus was introduced; at least, the history of one case, which apparently commenced with aboil on the instep (which was treated by native doctors, a thorn being used several times as a lancet), indicates a lesion such as might well encourage the growth of a fungus parasite. It is more than twenty years since surgeons in India first took notice of this affection of the foot, in their official reports ; and one of the earliest to notice the disease was Dr. Colebrook, of Madras, then Zillah-surgeon at Madura, where the endemic character of the malady was first recognized by the term Madura foot. An in- teresting account of the disease was afterwards published by my friend Dr. G. R. Ballingall, who was the first to describe the micro- scopic peculiarities of the disease; and he was led at once to dis- tinguish at sight the tumor of the foot from any simple scrofulous affection ; and to detect the prominent features by which he recog- nized the fungus foot as something sui generis. Cases of diseased referred to in the text (p. 930), visible to the unaided eye as reddish grains (like Cayenne pepper), when examined under the microscope, exhibit a bi- or multipar- tite arrangement; when single they are oval, and resemble, more or less, the bodies described in the first variety, but possess the property of multiplying themselves by subdivision, and their color is different; their cellular structure is not apparent, but may have existed. The crystalline envelope is absent, though, as in the other varie- ties, there is much free fat of a pink tinge. Some experiments made by Dr. Carter indicate a common origin of the two most common forms of the fungi.]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21196606_sciencepracticeo00aitk_0943.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
