Wash-Leather Skin Dr. Ferrier, in 1879, first recorded a peculiar condition of the skin in which certain metals marked it with black lines; this condition he termed "Wash-leather Skin", From an analysis of fifty cases, Mr. Emerson concludes that: - As a rule, wash-leather skin does not occur in the healthy.
- It does not occur in many diseases.
- It occurs in patients suffering as a rule, from diseases which directly or indirectly affect either the trophic or the secretory nerves of the skin, such as renal disease, phthisis, erysipelas, and hemiplegia.
- Silver is the best metal to use for bringing out the marks,
- It may precede, and in the cases cited did precede, bed-sores.
- It is of diagnostic value in testing vitality of the skin, and the site for the experiment is the lumbo-sacrogluteal region.
- So far as one may judge at present, it may be of value in foretelling bed-sores; and should this be established it would be of great use, for the proper precautions might be taken as soon as the black line is diagnosed; this, at present, seems to be its only probable use. The pathology of this phenomenon is as yet only conjectural.
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