COMPLICATIONS OF INFANTILE ECZEMA CAUSED BY THE VIRUS OF HERPES SIMPLEX

Abstract

The disturbed integument of infants and children ill with eczema is infected frequently by bacterial "opportunists"¹and less often by filtrable viruses. Of the latter, the virus of vaccinia, chiefly as a cause of eczema vaccinatum, has been recognized more frequently than any other.²There remains a group of cutaneous eruptions complicating infantile eczema that resemble the pocklike lesions of vaccinia, variola and varicella, although the clinical course is different. Among these is Kaposi's "eczema herpetiforme," the cause of which is obscure. In the present report evidence is presented to implicate the virus of herpes simplex in the causation of an eruption appearing in infants with eczema. The clinical features of the disease these infants had were like those Kaposi described.³ In the past year 3 infants were observed in the New Haven Hospital, each presenting in the course of his illness a similar and, in the