These generally originate in the use of unwholesome food, want of cleanliness, and want of exercise; and sometimes from an hereditary predisposition. They are also frequently dependent on a disordered or deranged state of the stomach, liver, and bowels, and are often attended with great debility and depression of spirits. They generally appear most evident in cold and moist seasons; and, I may add, that since the introduction of vaccination, I think cutaneous cases have increased in number. The scurvy, by neglect or improper treatment, may advance to such an alarming degree, in some constitutions, as to endanger the patient's life; and I have seen and treated other cutaneous diseases which were very closely allied to leprosy—the legs, arms, thighs, and, in fact, the whole body, being covered with scales, and the necessary movements of the patient would cause the diseased parts to crack, and discharge blood, or a thin, acrid, and burning ichor; yet, under all these circumstances, I have been particularly successful in the treatment of these cases; a great variety of them having yielded to the mode which I have suggested to the sufferers, after many other means had been tried in vain.
CASES.
"Facts are stubborn things."
1.
Mr. WILLIAM WELHAM, of Culford, Suffolk, about 47 years of age, was afflicted for several years with a violent scorbutic eruption, which covered the whole face, accompanied with redness and chronic inflammation; white scales or thin scabs frequently formed, and after they had dropped off others formed successively. He had had the advice of several respectable practitioners, and had used the preparations of two chemists, without producing any good effect. In this state he applied to J. Kent, Stanton, under whose treatment Mr. Welham perfectly recovered. It is now eleven years since, and he has had no return of the disease.