Maladies from external irritants (chafing, caustics, traumas, vegetable, or animal irritants), do not tend to chronicity and are often promptly curable.
Maladies due to ingested irritants (urticaria, distillery waste eruptions), also tend to recovery when the source of irritation is cut off.
Maladies due to toxic products of the system will be obstinate or incurable, in ratio with the incurability of the causative factor. Those due to the absorbed products of a simple indigestion, will tend to terminate with the removal of the cause, while those dependent on chronic and perhaps irremediable disease of the digestive organs, liver, or kidneys will be correspondingly inveterate or incurable.
Maladies due to a constitutional vice, in sanguification, nutrition, innervation, etc., are likely to be irremovable or only temporarily curable.
Burns and some other skin diseases are liable to become complicated by renal embolisms, albuminuria, indigestions, etc., which may render the skin affection inveterate or incurable.
Dermatitis on the folds of articulations or on the seats of harness, are sustained by the local irritation, and may necessitate long rest, or abstention from work requiring the use of such harness.
All dermatites are liable to show special features of inveteracy, or amenability to treatment according to surrounding conditions—hygienic or otherwise.
GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF TREATMENT OF SKIN DISEASES.
General and local. Diet: wholesome diet following laxative: restricted, generous, vegetable. Rest, avoiding congestion, perspiration, friction, stretching, pressure. Cleanliness. Diuretics. Purgatives. Tonics. Alteratives. Sulphur. Antimony. Phosphorus. Calcium sulphide. Pilocarpin. Baths, tepid, warm, soapy, alterative. Emollients, simple, medicated. Drying powders. Protective films. Stimulating and antiseptic applications. Parasiticides. Caustics. Counter-irritants. Bandages.
These must be general and local, and the first hygienic, dietetic and medicinal.