Page:Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, volume 1.djvu/320

 tinue these investigations, and enlarge for publication the paper he had read. It was very difficult to realise from a verbal description the appearance of a skin disease, and if the subject could be adequately illustrated it would be of great advantage. The question of the animal origin of a number of skin diseases was interesting. Certain skin diseases in this country were connected with similar diseases in the lower animals, and it was quite possible that in the future it would be discovered that those of the Tropics were similarly related to domestic and other animals. He had considerable scepticism with regard to the value of cultures. He believed that occasionally a reliable culture was obtained, but one could hardly expect, under ordinary circumstances at all events, to get a pure culture from a skin scale. If scales from Tinea imhricata were put in a sterilised bottle and kept for a week, they became covered by an extraneous growth, showing that the skin was contaminated by some additional fungus to that which caused the disease. The only way of preserving, without actually destroying, the fungus of Tinea imbricata was to dry the scales, place them in a bottle also carefully dried, and then to hermetically seal it. In that way the fungus could be preserved for an indefinite period, but otherwise the results of cultures must be very carefully discounted. The cheapest, the most rapid, and the method best appreciated by the native for the treatment of Tinea imbricata was to paint him with iodine liniment, as strong as it could be obtained. A man with a thick skin did not appreciate mild treatment; if he felt the remedy acting on the skin with a certain amount of pain and burning, he thought an efficient drug was being used, and the efficacy of these drugs as a rule was in proportion to their irritating qualities. It was necessary to confine the paint to one half of the body at a time; care should be taken also not to cover the whole of a limb