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To the Editor:—
The superfluous piece of old shoe leather might come in handy to stop a leak, though chymotrypsin does not erode blood vessels, because the enzyme does not attack living tissue. It does, however, hasten the breakdown of necrotic material, clots, pus, and fibrin. The cleansing away of crusts and debris permits readier action of the other medicants in the preparation if they are needed. Levine et al. (Antibiotic Medicine and Clinical Therapy [Nov.] 1959) found chymotrypsin, when added to a steroid topical preparation, enhanced the value of the latter. I, too, feel this is true. That a steroid topical application without other ingredients would have helped many of the patients whose dermatoses were listed is undoubted. But it is equally true that the neomycin and chymotrypsin did them no harm. Some with crusts and debris-covering lesions and others with secondary infections received extra benefit from these added