Diseases of the nose and its accessory cavities.

  • Watson, W. Spencer (William Spencer), 1836-1906.
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diseases of the nose and its accessory cavities. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    the surface and removing any adlierent scales that may have accumulated beneath it. Subsection 3.—Comedones, Acne, Sycosis, Crutta Rosea. Comedones appear frequently in young persons at about the period of puberty, on the alee and bridge of the nose, though they also infest the forehead, chin, cheeks, and shoulders. The comedo consists of a distended hair-follicle, the secretion of which, instead of passing upwards with the hair and lubricating it and the surrounding skin, becomes dry, indurated, and moulded to the form of the follicle. Its upper extremity, lying at the level of the orifice of the follicle, is marked as' a black spot (of the size of the point of a pin, and sometimes as large as a pin's head or larger) visible to the naked eye. These spots some- times become surrounded by a small elevation, which marks the distension of the follicle with its retained secretion, and some- times the skin over this raised surface becomes inflamed, sup- purates, and forms a pustule. This later stage of the comedo constitutes acne. In the earlier stage, before redness and inflanmiatory swelling have come on, the contents of the follicle can be squeezed out between the two thumb nails in the form of a whitish-yellow worm-like thread, of about the thickness of a piece of sewing- cotton, and in some cases of the thickness of a piece of whip- cord. These worm-like threads consist of closely-packed ej)i- dermic scales, which here and there exhibit an opaquely-dotted appearance, due to the presence of oil globules and a few free oil globules. The black spot on the top of this yellowish mass, which comes away with it, consists of a hard superficial layer of epidermic scales impregnated with dirt. Among the contents of the obstructed follicle is a small six-legged parasite, the steatozoon or acarus folliculorum, described accurately by Dr. Beale,* Mr. Erasmus Wilson,*]- and others. * Journal of Cutaneous Medicine, yol. iii. Xo. 2, Oct. 1869. f He gives a detailed description of it in his -work on Diseases of the Skin