EFFECT ON THE SKIN OF EMOTIONAL AND NERVOUS STATES

Abstract

Our purpose in this paper is to review the widely scattered literature bearing on the psychogenous factor in urticaria and some of its possible physiologic mechanisms and to report a study from the clinical standpoint of one hundred cases in private practice in which the patients were subjected to a uniform technic of history taking and a factorial method of etiologic analysis. In such an analysis the psychogenous element is not sought as such but is merely one component to be weighed against others. There is a definite tendency in the literature to view the etiology of urticaria from the standpoint of a special interest or facility which one happens to possess, assigning to it the rôle of sole cause. We are writing with some emphasis on the psychogenous phase as a special aspect, but we do not speak of it as a sole cause, and we have compared it