PYOGENIC RELAPSE AND SENSITIVENESS TO LIGHT IN CERTAIN DERMATOSES

Abstract
For some time we have suspected that intercurrent infections, especially in epidemic waves, exercise a marked sensitizing influence in dermatoses with an underlying allergic or infectious-allergic complex. In the past year in our practice this rôle has been played, apparently, by an "influenzal" type of nasorespiratory, gastro-intestinal and general infection, the epidemic character of which is attested by a number of official reports and such analyses as that of Gover,1which indicated an epidemic prevalence approaching twenty times the normal expectancy in one of eleven outbreaks. We are not referring, be it noted, to the well recognized cutaneous complications of influenza, the toxic erythemas and so forth, familiar since 1890 and recently reviewed by Derbandiker.2The group of eruptions to be discussed here consists of pustular flares of eczematized ids, or infection-sensitization eruptions, both pyogenic and mycotic, and of pustular relapses in the course of acne and the