TINEA CAPITIS TROPICA LIS 



2053 



{vide Langham's 'Garden of Health,' 1633), but in or before the 

 sixteenth century the word ' ringworm ' {vide Levins or Levens, 

 ' Manipulus Vocabulorum,' London, 1570) had appeared for the 

 disease tinea circinata. In 1695 WiUis in his ' London Practice of 

 Physick ' devoted a chapter to the subject of the running scab, 

 tetter, or ringworm. 



With a history such as this it is not astonishing that the early 

 English writers on tropical medicine refer to the same disease as 

 seen in tropical countries. 



Thus in 1746, in his work on the diseases of Barbados, Hillary 

 says that it was noticed by the first voyagers to the West Indies, 

 and that it probably is the same disease as that called by the natives 

 cowrap.' He gives a good clinical description of tinea circinata as 

 he saw it in Barbados, and he is supported by Wright (' Essays on 

 the Malignant Fever of the West Indies '), who stated that it was 

 common in Jamaica. 



Winterbottom in 1803, under the term ' herpes,' describes the 

 disease in Sierra Leone, calling it serpigo, ringworm, or tetters, and 

 distinguishing it from kra-kra. 



So far it would appear as though only the body ringworm or tinea 

 circinata was meant by the terms ' tetters ' and ' ringworm,' but in 

 1817 Bateman, the pupil of Willan, who completed his master's great 

 work on skin diseases, published an atlas on the same subject, in 

 which Plate XXXIX. induces Sabouraud tobelieve that he recognized 

 the identity of the two conditions. In 1824 Plumbe showed that 

 inoculation of ringworm of the scalp would cause ringworm of the 

 body, and vice versa. 



These publications appear to have stirred the practitioners of the 

 tropics to study the disease, as it was described in India by Young, 

 in 1826, and in the Malay Archipelago by Lesson, in 1829. 



In 1832 Alibert published the first edition of his celebrated 

 ' Monographic des Dermatoses,' which stimulated the continental 

 medical mind of the day, as is reflected by Smith's description of 

 the disease in Peru, in 1840, and Pruner's in Egypt, in 1847. 



In 1839 Schonlein discovered the fungus causing favus. 



In 1842 Gruby, who had already repeated Schoenlein's observa- 

 tions on the parasite of favus, discovered a new cryptogam in tinea 

 barbae, which was an ecto-endothrix. 



In 1843 he found Microsporum audouini, and six months later, on 

 April I, 1844, he described an endothrix as the parasite of herpes 

 tonsurans. It is, however, but just to state that, without Sabouraud's 

 generous treatment, much of Gruby' s work might have been per- 

 manently overlooked. 



In 1845 Malmsten gave the name of Trichophyton to the parasite 

 of tinea tonsurans. 



It is asked that the reader will kindly observe the spelling of the 

 names of these two genera. Gruby called the one Microsporum, 

 not Microsporon, and Malmsten named the other Trichophyton, not 

 Trichophytum. 



