– Many diseases manifest themselves in inflammatory affections of the skin. certain fevers, such as typhus, measles, scarlatina, small-pox, have some of their most characteristic features in the peculiar inflammations they cause in the skin.
These are examples of acute diseases. But chronic diseases or disease-possibilities or tendencies (“diathesis” as they are technically called) also manifest themselves in appearances on the skin. The gouty, the scrofulous, the rheumatic constitutions often declare themselves is eruptions on the skin, and the patients are frequently better in general health when these eruptions are out. The skin may be affected locally as well as constitutionally, but care should be taken to treat patients constitutionally, and not locally, when the disease is constitutional. Of eruptions the commonest are ACNE OR PIMPLES, ECZEMA, ERYSIPELAS, ERYTHEMA, NETTLE-RASH, SHINGLES or “moist tetter,” PSORIASIS or “dry tetter”, and the treatment of each of these will be found under its proper heading.