SKIN DISEASES AND THEIR CURE
There are still persons who believe that every disease of the skin can be successfully treated with a salve, a lotion or a powder. This belief and the advertisements of nostrums for the treatment of skin disease are a reflection of the actual knowledge of such conditions held even by the medical profession a quarter of a century ago.
Today the methods of treatment of skin diseases include practically every form of apparatus, every method of medical administration known to medical science. This advance is a reflection of the application of knowledge in physics, chemistry, biology and bacteriology to medicine, and of a more thorough comprehension of the fact that the skin is not merely a protective covering for the body but an organ whose condition reflects that of the other tissues and influences them definitely.
Perhaps the greatest advance has been the X-ray and the knowledge that application of its rays would affect not only tumors, whose cause is unknown, but also inflammations and degenerations of the skin produced by parasitic organisms. Not only the rays of the X-ray tube, but also those of radium, of the sun and of the ultraviolet lamps are known to have definite effects on the skin. Radium is used for destroying cancer of the skin, masses of veins, birth marks, moles and similar unsightly excresences. As Dr. Fred Wise indicated at a recent meeting of specialists in diseases of the skin, the physician is no longer limited to any single form of treatment, but may attack such growths with any of the destructive rays that have been mentioned; he may freeze them with carbon dioxid snow; he may remove them surgically with the knife; he may dry them by passing an electric current through them, or cut them with a needle whose cutting power depends on vibrations produced by electric waves. In attacking certain parasitic diseases of the skin, the specialist reaches them through the blood, injecting combinations of dyes and metallic elements or specific drugs which produce the immediate death of the parasitic organisms when they come in contact with them.
There still remain infections and diseases of the skin which are not easily amenable to treatment. Pemphigus, in which there are tremendous wheals, blisters and similar eruptions, is not known to yield easily to any form of treatment, although it may be benefited on occasion by the use of drugs such as arsenic and quinine. Generalized changes of the nature of the skin resulting from disturbances of the nervous system and of the glands sometimes resist every form of medical attack. Research in the field of skin diseases is one of the most promising opportunities for investigation to the medical man with research instincts.