PREFACE. THE LECTURES which form the chief matter of the accompanying pages were published in the JOURNAL OF CUTANEOUS MEDICINE; while the Essays and cases constituting the last chapter were partly published in the same journal and partly in other journals. Both subjects are now brought together in one volume, for convenience of reference and to illustrate more fully the views and opinions of the Author. The importance of the disease, EKZEMA, both in a social and in a scientific sense, is now universally recognized in the former character it claims our most careful observation to master a knowledge of its nature and cure; and in the latter it deserves to be regarded as the keystone of Dermatology. In addressing a learned and scientific profession the Author feels that there is no necessity for excusing the orthography of the word Ekzema which he has adopted. The word is Greek; the spelling is also Greek and therefore he is doing no more than simply adopting the language of the fathers of medicine from whom the term has descended. |