The British Journal of Dermatology, April 1905

Transcriber’s Note:
Footnotes have been collected at the end of the text, and are linked for ease of reference.
THE BRITISH JOURNAL OF DERMATOLOGY.
APRIL, 1905.
The above provisional clinical title was suggested to me by my coadjutor at University College Hospital, Mr. George Pernet, for a well-defined affection of the skin, of which I have met with ten instances during the last three years, all but one of them in private practice. I am not aware that the disease in question has been described before, unless it can be brought under Brocq’s “erythrodermies pityriasiques en plaques disseminées,” with which it will be closely compared when the cases themselves have been considered.
A case which I showed at the Dermatological Society of London in October, 1904, when Drs. Hallopeau, Gastou, Jacquet and Pautrier were present, was not regarded by them as a case of Brocq’s disease, with which they were presumably familiar, but as an entirely new affection in their experience.
The following description is drawn up from nine of the cases, all males, which, in the main features, closely resemble each other. The remaining case, a lady, had some important differences which will be discussed later.
So far, all the cases have been adults, though some of them were young. The lesions are evolved in patches of a pale pink or yellowish hue on the limbs and trunk, the uncovered parts, such as the face and hands, being free or very slightly affected. Generally, the patches come out very gradually and in small numbers and, in the main, symmetrically, but as the older patches never go away spontaneously, while fresh ones are continually evoluting at short or long intervals, large areas are involved, and in the course of years (in one case, months) the whole trunk and limbs are crowded with lesions, though there are always spaces of normal skin intervening, or sometimes completely enclosed by the diseased process, where the original patches have coalesced. For the most part the original patches are discrete and enlarge but little after their formation, unless they merge into adjoining patches, when hand-sized or larger areas may be formed.