Alopecia / by Edward Wigglesworth.

  • Wigglesworth, Edward, 1840-1896
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Alopecia / by Edward Wigglesworth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    from the above-mentioned defenders of the faith any of their positive evidence. Forme, therefore, the parasite is, to say the least, not proven. Let us see what the alleged arguments in its defence amount to. Gruby,* in 1843, an- nounced the discovery of a microscopical fungus, vrhich he dubbed Microsporon audouini. But this is mere assertion,f and, in fact, the only argument at present adduced by the adherents of the fungous theory is the purely negative one of asserting that all cases where no fungus is found are cases in which the disease is at a period of development where the spores are nU, or so small as to elude observation. But posi- tive proof of fungous existence no one has yet given. J Gruby's case was probably a Tinea tonsurans, or an Alopecia areata accompanied by seborrhoea, or an accidental case of complication with some fungus wandering at large in the atmosphere. One case is hardly enough to justify us in adopting his views, particularly when we consider the con- fusion at that time still existing between Alopecia areata and Tinea tonsurans, the latter of course containing fungi. Add to this the inferiority of the microscopes of that day and the lack of suitable means for such a powerful transmission of light as would enable one to examine the interior of the hairs. Moreover [I quote Bazin himself], the larger portion of the memoir of M. Gruby is only a romance. It is precisely such pseudo-scientific, romantic, visionary theories of French- men, that patient, laborious, exact German investigation has been for the last twenty years successively and successfully strangling. The material fall of Paris is typical of a new era in more ways than one. * Comptes Rendus, 1843, t. xvii. p. 301. Vide, also, Malmsten ; Archives de Mueller, 1848, p. 7. t Centralblatt f. d. Med. Wissonschaften, 1871, No. 9. I Erasmus Wilson, F.R.S. Diseases of the Skin. Ed. vi. p. 722.
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