OF THE HUMAN SKIN. 67 



parasitic cutaneous diseases, and why also should 

 the community understand something about them 

 and their cause, the fungus? Our answer is sim- 

 ply that these cutaneous affections are liigldy con- 

 tagious^ by the transportation of the spores from 

 one person to another. Every one who has had 

 any experience in boarding-schools, day-schools, 

 children's hospitals, etc., knows how, like wildfire, 

 "ringworm," or "scald head," will spread among 

 the inmates and attendants, and how difficult it is 

 to eradicate these when once started, even with 

 the best attention and persevering labor. It is 

 well known, also, how a barber's shop, whose soaps 

 and brushes are invested with vegetable spores, 

 will spread amongst the customers a parasitic dis- 

 ease, which, together with some others not par- 

 asitic, gets the popular name of " barber's-itch." 

 Some of the vegetable parasitic diseases are more 

 contagious than others. It would also seem as if 

 these affections were at times almost epidemic, yet 

 we know they arise from contagion, or individual 

 contact. 



There is still another method by which the hu- 

 man race becomes infested : namely, from the 

 lower animals, and these pass the parasites from 



