IX. ODD NOTES 
A. On the Etiology and Treatment of a Skin Eruption known as 
' Prickly Heat ' 
A form of irritating acute skin eruption is widely spread in Para ; by the 
English-speaking folk it is called ' Prickly Heat,' and so far as the description goes 
it seems to be identical with what is commonly understood by the term. 
The chief points to be dealt with at present are : — 
1. Its infective nature. 
2. The living organism associated with it. 
3. The mode of treatment and cure. 
The infective nature could clearly be traced by the course followed upon myselt. 
On the ulnar aspect of each wrist, for weeks after arrival at Para, I was troubled by 
what I took to be an unusually swollen and long-lasting gnat bite. My attention was 
especially attracted to that on the right wrist a few days later by the appearance of an 
irritating patch of redness, with small vesicles about the middle of the forearm, and 
also at the same time a similar condition had spread about the neighbourhood of the 
original papule. I found that the sites corresponded with the points of contact of my 
wrist and forearm with the edge of the table during the use of the microscope ; and it 
appeared clear that the patch on the forearm was due to implantation of the causative 
material from the wrist to the table, and so to the forearm. Not long afterwards a 
patch appeared on the front of the lower part of the chest, which I found was a 
common point of contact for the patch on the forearm. Later observation shewed 
that direct infection by local contact could occur as from a spot on one side of the 
bend of the elbow or fold of the axilla to a corresponding contact point on the other 
side. It seemed probable also that a certain amount of spreading might be due to 
rubbing or scratching ' without antiseptic precautions.' To cut matters short, before 
the condition was properly dealt with it had spread more or less universally. It may 
be added that there was only a slight amount of spreading in the near neighbourhood 
of the initial lesion on the left hand. 
My late helper and colleague, Walter Myers, also suffered in the same way 
about the same period, but except that he was inclined to attribute the initial lesion 
to a gnat bite I am not aware of the course of the distribution. 
Although suspicion attached the original inoculation to the bite of a gnat, which 
if this were the case, would almost certainly have been Stegomyia fasaata, this was by 
