446 ON THE CONTAGION OF ITCH OK MANGE. 
brought about a complete cure on the sixth day So that the 
treatment, which at the hospital Saint-Louis occupied twelve 
days, and at the hospital Des Enfants nineteen days, became 
thus reduced to half the period ; added to which, this ointment 
possessed the advantage of suppressing the eruptions of the 
different forms of complicated psora. 
Things were in this state, when, in the month of April, May 
and June last, M. Bazin, chief of the department for diseases 
of the skin, among which itch came for treatment, was kind 
enough to grant us permission to essay divers anti-psoric pre- 
parations. The result of these novel observations it is that we 
now make public. 
We shall first say a few words about the choice of medicines, 
and of the friction to be preferred ; we shall then make known 
the different experiments we have made, and finish with some 
general considerations on the results obtained. 
The choice of medicines will be regulated by the age of the 
subject, the nature of the disease, the price of them, since advert- 
ence must be made to the poverty of the patients in general ; and 
with the more reason, since the three kingdoms, mineral, vege- 
table and animal, offer to us products of equal efficaciousness. 
For example, from the mineral kingdom, medicine derives 
sulphur and the potassic salts; from the vegetable, juniper 
oil; from the animal, the empyreumatic oils; which different 
productions and preparations are insecticide in the highest 
degree. It is in vain, however, to make choice of a good 
medicine, since the cure will not be prompt and certain unless 
the patient be submitted to a perfectly regular method of friction. 
Where the patient rubs only his lower and upper extremities, 
one time out of four the disease will return. And, supposing 
that the whole body be smeared or even rubbed over with the 
ointment, but only for a minute or so, morning and evening, no 
certain cure will be effected before the twelfth day. But if, on 
the other hand, the patient strips himself, and with his hands 
imbued with the ointment, thoroughly rubs himself for a 
quarter of an hour, first well rubbing his hands and afterwards 
his body, taking from time to time fresh supplies of ointment ; 
and if a similar friction be practised twelve hours afterwards, 
taking care to rub both hands and body with every fresh dip 
made, from one minute to another, into the ointment, he may 
consider himself as perfectly cured, without liability to return. 
An itch consisting of fifty acarus has generally forty of them 
buried in the hands, and the ten others distributed upon the feet 
and genitals, and every part where eruptions appear. The 
thickness and hardness of the epidermis of the hands of 
labourers, independently of the greater number of insects infest- 
