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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    Bazin* himself seems to have lost his reason and literally wallowed in spores. Not content with one sort of fun- gus, the Microsporon audouini, whose results he must needs subdivide into two forms, he added another, the Mi- crosporon decalvans. Tliis latter parasite, existing only by his bounty, he was compelled to thrust forth and re- nounce in his edition of 1862, and his two forms result- ing from the former, he is also at last content to classify under one head, Tcigne pellade, though even of this he must needs make a true and a false. Being reduced to one funo'us he demands all the more the liberal distribution of this one, and asserts its existence in the skin and nails, causing local disease of these parts. This theory he took first on trust, and, Avheu at last he met with a case, was com- pelled to confess its '' similarity to the disease of the nails produced by the Trycophyton of Tinea tonsurans. The co- existent Pe^ixde of the head loses rather than gains by this discovery. Let me quote a remarkable sentence of M. Bazin.f Le JVIicrosporon epidermique et le Microsporon xingueal [si tant est qu'il existe] sont faciles a constater. If the latter is so facile a constater, why does he have any doubt of its existence ? Finally, the fact that he speaks of the fungus at all as so very readily to be proved by observa- tion, while the best observers almost to a man are utterly unable to find it, looks as if M. Bazin must be mistaken in regard to the identity of what he finds with^ fungus, or that he confounds Alopecia areata with the parasitical disease Tinea tonsurans. I have myself seen him make tliis last mistake and proved him in error by the aid of the microscope. IMoreovcr, to substantiate his theory, he puts but a single witness on the stand, and that one a most wretched-looking * Bazin. Rccherches, 1853. t Bazin. Affections Cutan. Parasitaires, p. 219. 2
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