On the psoriasis or lepra / by George Gaskoin.

Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the psoriasis or lepra / by George Gaskoin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    occur in a meadow field and as they occur in contagious ringworm, is not very discordant, both of them depending, it is said, on fungi, which, as they grow, exhaust the 'pabulum in the soil, and have to seek for further nutrition beyond; and some such is the explanation given by Actuarius, as quoted in the text of Bateman, about this creeping com- plaint or herpes, namely, that like fire it exhausts the material on which it feeds, and then travels on to seek for more. But siuee this our lepra does not depend for its progress on any such fungi or parasitic growths, the expla- nation is not apposite, so far, at least, as the pabulum is concerned. The rationale would seem to lie in an anato- mical condition of the part which has been conjectured to be in the distribution of the vessels. Very marvellous is it, and almost past belief, to see large red rings of little breadth which have sprung from a tiny spot, and yet one must believe it to be thus, so many patients explaining it that way ; and often one of the spots increases so tardily in size as to remain for months, nay, for more than a year, quite small, that is to say, no bigger than a silver threepence, and then all at once it will take upon it to extend and grow rapidly by its outer edge, and so become a ring or a patch according as it heals in the centre or not. Such rings are called Psoriasis annularis—P. orbicularis ; very frequently they are oblong or ovoid. The same are described in the papula of Celsus and herpes of old medicine ; and Alibert adopted the word herpes in this sense to express not only this but all forms of psoriasis; and to this hour, when the French dermatologists express such action, that is, such centrifugal growth, they describe it as herpetiform, the herpes which they intend being essentially a creeping complaint, not sudden and inflammatory like that of Willan^s adoption. The same disposition to a circular form is found in the palm of the hand and also in the flat of the foot; in the former it flxed the attention of the admi- rable B;ayer, and constitutes his Psoriasis paImay'ia centrifuga. And that the rings of lepra are thus formed I am the last to denv, and what further confirms this view is that when a
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