Within the last decade, attention has been directed to a peculiar disease of the nervous system occurring in infants and young children, characterized by cutaneous manifestations of pathognomonic importance. This disease has been variously designated acrodynia, erythredema, the pink disease, dermatopolyneuritis and chiropodalgia, all terms descriptive of the symptomatology of a unique syndrome, the identity and pathogenesis of which has but recently been established, though the etiology is still obscure.
It is perhaps unfortunate that the name acrodynia has found current usage for this disease, acrodynia signifying pain in the extremities and having been introduced as a designation for an acute epidemic disease of one hundred years ago that in some respects resembles the condition at present under consideration. Acrodynia was first described by Chardon in 1830, after the disease had occurred in epidemic form in Paris in 1828, attacking about 40,000 people, a few years after the first influenza