I. Statement of the Problem
In certain parts of our country, and above all in our southern states, there are occasionally seen persons whose hands, feet and even other parts of the body show chronic, symmetrically placed,1 eczema-like rough patches or a formation of bullae and desquamation over larger or smaller areas. A condition of dermatitis may be due to a number of causes; to tuberculosis, to a filamentous fungus, to poisoning from without or within. Particularly the poison that can be expressed from certain mucors will, when injected into the veins of a rabbit, cause extensive desquamation of a similar sort. But in certain of these persons there is, in addition to the chronic desquamation, a persistent diarrhea or dysentery.2 In consequence of a disturbing factor, probably a tissue poison, of whose presence these are merely indications, the affected person is liable to die ; or