This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1896 edition. Excerpt: ... to become harder and firmer with age, but, if the varieties above referred to are recognised, the clinical history of leprosy becomes regular and certain. The fibroid degeneration of the nodules is a most interesting fact, and one which will, I believe, yet lead to the adoption of the only method by which leprosy can be cured--that is by the production of fibroid degeneration by appropriate treatment. (b) Ax-esthetic Leprosy. The symptoms of this form of leprosy are not as varied as those of the tubercular, for there are no varieties of anaesthetic leprosy, and each case is exactly like another, except in the severity of the disease, which may, indeed, become arrested in every stage of its existence. The usual prodromata are followed by the erythematous rash, as in tubercular leprosy; but the rash, unlike that of tubercular leprosy, tends towards permanency and enlargement. The spots are due to the poison entering the general circulation and acting upon the terminal branches of the cutaneous nerves, and not, I imagine, to the presence in the skin of the bacilli themselves; though, as might be supposed, these may, after the cutis has become weakened by their virus, actually invade this tissue. Of this, however, I am not prepared to speak with any authority, as I have been unable to satisfy myself on this point. The nerves are at first irritated by the poison, and the spots become sympathetic and painful, but the former are soon more or less disorganised when the latter become gradually anaesthetised. The whole thickness of the skin is affected by the loss of nerve-power, and each of its component parts becomes atrophied, but the most marked visible change in the skin is the absorption of its pigment (see Plates XXIII. and XXIV.). In some...