Melanosis Lenticularis Progressiva.—
This rare and strange affection, to use the name which most commends itself to me, may fairly be regarded as an imported dermatosis. So far as I can ascertain, none of the cases which have been observed in this country—eleven in all—have occurred in native American stock, if such a type exist. Dr. Duhring's patient was of "Irish parentage."
Dr. Crocker, of London, kindly sends word that his three cases were all children of an English farmer and that some Irish and Scotch cases have been observed since his own were published.
The fact that in some of the instances recorded . . . the patients were born in this country furnishes no counter-evidence against the proposition that the disease is to be regarded as an importation, for it is pre-eminently a family disease, although apparently not directly at least hereditary. It has come too recently under our close observation to determine the interesting question of its occurrence in distant ancestry or in equally remote descendants.
The parents of the cases observed . . . were immigrants, mostly of recent date, and in some of them the disease had begun to manifest itself before leaving home. Immigration . . . has exercised within the last few years a material influence upon the relative occurrence of certain cutaneous affections, especially those of a parasitic nature in Boston, or at least in the districts which furnish the city contingent of my dispensary practice.
J Cutan Genito-Urin Dis.
October 1890;8:369-379.
