Sporotrichosis.

  • Nixon, John Alexander, 1874-1951.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Sporotrichosis. 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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    Sporotrichosis as a clinical entity has only lately come to be recognised as comprising a large group of lesions dependent upon a definite infection comparable to granulomata, such as syphilis, tuberculosis, and actinomycosis. In England little has been heard of the disease, perhaps owing to its e.xtreme rarity ; but in France de Beurmann and others have devoted much time and pains to the separation of this condition from those with which until 1903 it had always been confused and grouped. The polymorphism of sporotrichosis is equal to that of either syphilis or tuberculosis. As de Beurmann writes : “ Sporotri- chosis starts in the great majority of cases without affecting the general health, without fever, gastro-intestinal troubles, or wasting ; the disease confines itself to cutaneous or subcutaneous localisations. . . . The lesions in or beneath the skin evolve slowly and coldly. . . . Still, all the observations do not agree with this usual type of a chronic and torpid affection. There are sporotrichoses with a sudden onset marked by general disturbance and fever ; as in acute infections the appearance of the lesions is rapid and simultaneous, constituting a true eruption. Others, after an onset more or less sudden, continue under the form of febrile attacks, with profound interference with the general health, gastro-intestinal troubles, wasting, etc., each recrudescence of the disease being accompanied by a fresh gummatous eruption. Others run a subacute course, with wasting and severe anaemia. In all these cases the mycosis behaves like an acute or subacute general infection; it resembles the coccal septicaemias with cutaneous metastases.” Such, briefly, is the epitome of de Beurmann. 1 The first cases recognised were published in America by Schenck,2 and by Hektoen and Perkins, ^ under the title of “ Refractory subcutaneous abscesses caused by sporothrix Schenckii. A new pathogenic fungus,” a description given by Schenck which has been wholly confirmed by subsequent obser- vations. This previously unknown disease, which had long been > Dc Beurmann and Gougerot, Ann. de Dermal, el Syph., 1909, x, 83. - Schenck, Bull. Johns Hopkins Hosp., 189S, ix. 286 (with plates). ^ Hektoen and Perkins, J. Exper. M., 1900, v, 77 (with plates).