Word: ringworm
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Tinea is the technical name for ringworm. It is caused by varieties of a fungus called Trichophyton which gets into the skin. Various trichophyta affect the scalp or beard (causing patchy baldness), the torso, arms and legs (where the infection usually takes the form of a ring), the fingers, toes and the interdigital folds, the nails. The feet and hands are the most common sites of infection. Small blisters form and the skin erodes. W. F. Young Inc. of Springfield, Mass., makers of the proprietary germicide Absorbine Jr., taking a lesson from Listerine's Halitosis and Life Buoy Soap...
...Ringworm has been increasing rapidly in the U. S. lately. Two years ago Dr. Goodman made a compilation of skin disease cases which doctors had treated. In a list of 14 skin ailments occurring in almost 1,000,000 people up to 1927, ringworm was the ninth most common.* During 1928 and 1929 ringworm at the New York Skin & Cancer Hospital became second most common after eczema. Of 56,705 patients examined, 5,078 had ringworm. Of the 5,078, 4,328 had it on their hands or feet. Surgeon General Hugh Smith Gumming of the U. S. Public Health...
...increase of ringworm has been attributed to the promiscuity of the War. A more definite and traceable cause is the increasing use of artificial bathing pools and club showers. An infected foot leaves shreds of the fungus on the floor, which a healthy foot picks...
Preventing infection depends on personal hygiene. Because ringworm most often comes on the feet, one should not go barefoot even in one's own home, never in a carpeted hotel room, ship cabin, or train compartment. At public bathing places, wear bathing slippers. Careful club managers provide paper treaders for guests. Custodians of showers and pools should scrub the floors several times daily. Soap and hot water suffice to flood out trichophyta...
...most successful professional treatments for ringworm include these: opening any blisters and applying cool wet dressings of diluted aluminum acetate liquor or of saturated boric acid; painting daily with a strong solution of permanganate of potash, tincture of iodine, or mercurochrome; anointing with a salve of salicylic and benzoic acids, of ammoniated mercury, or of chrysarobin; exposing to X-rays; soaking in gasoline (six or eight seconds). Combinations of the above may be dangerous...