The theory and classification of inflammations of the skin / by A. B. Buchanan, M.D.

  • Buchanan, Andrew Bogle.
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The theory and classification of inflammations of the skin / by A. B. Buchanan, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    tlieoretical and practical grounds ought to be considered together. The first, third, fourth, and eighth gi-oups may thus be especially commended. The propriety of the remaining six is, however, more doubtful; and the two worst of all seem to me to be the sixth and tenth. The class of Exotic Diseases comprises simply those which do not occm* in France, and with which, therefore, M. Hardy has had no opportunity of making himself personally acquainted. The sixth class, that of dartres or tetters, comprehends four diseases : eczema, psoriasis, lichen, and pityriasis. These, Hardy, Bazin, and other French dermatologists conceive, although, so far as I can see without any reasonable gi'ound, to be expressions of a hypothetical constitutional tendency, invented for the special purpose of gi'ouping a number of obstinate affections together, under the title of the dartrous diathesis {Herpetismus). A classification has recently been enunciated, or rather adopted from Rokitansky, by perhaps the greatest dermatologist of the pre- sent day. Professor Hebra of Vienna. Willan classified skin dis- eases according to their symptomatic lesions; Hebra attempts to classify them according to the preceding pathological processes. Thus, he enumerates hypercemias, ancemia.s, hypertrophies, atropines, exudations, hcemorrhages, and so on; in all, twelve classes. These need not be mentioned in detail; because, though an admirable catalogue of the pathological processes occurring in the skin, they cannot be regarded as a successful classification of the diseases of the skin. It would lead me too far to state at length the last classification of Mr Erasmus Wilson, at which the student will do well to look, as it is a step in the right direction; but it does not seem to me to be a successful step, Mr Wilson is, in the first place, too much of a Willanist to make a good classification ; he seems afi-aid to interfere too much with these holy orders of exanthemata, vesiculte, etc, to which we have so long been accustomed. He sacrifices, also, a great deal to the fatal error of attempting to introduce uniformity of principle in classification. Etiology is surely misapplied as a principle when nothing more can be made of it than such mere verbiage as general causes, special exteraal causes, and special internal causes. I cannot tell what these phrases mean, any more, probably, than Mr Wilson himself; but I see that they result in putting scabies side by side with bums and chilblains, while psoriasis is encountered in the same group as lupus and elephantiasis, I can scarcely believe that Mr Wilson would now refuse to recognise a group of vegetable parasites ; but the want of it is certainly a gi-ave objection to his system as it stands, more especially as it is the very gi-oup to which the retiolo- gical principle of division applies with the gi-eatest pertinency. Any classification, resting on one p)'>'incip>le of division only, runs the risk of being, to a greater or less extent, aitificial and untrue, in nosology as well as in botany. To secure a natural system, several