Impetigo contagiosa is one of the common skin diseases and, probably because of its usual benign course, the possibility of its occasional virulence is often forgotten. This disease may be divided into four types: (1) the common variety, in which the lesions dry up into a yellowish crust and are readily cured with the proper medicament; (2) the pustular type, in close association with the hair follicle: Bockhart's impetigo; (3) the outbreak of dime-sized lesions, with yellowish brown or brownish crusts and an inflammatory areola: ecthyma, and (4) the bullous type. In the past, the bullous type of impetigo contagiosa has usually been classified as pemphigus neonatorum.
The usual type of impetigo is preeminently a disease of childhood. In a series of 400 cases of this affection seen by Startin (quoted by Crocker1), three quarters were in children less than 7 years of age, and only twenty-seven were in