URIC ACID AND DERMATOSES

In his address as chairman of the Section on Dermatology and Syphilology at the San Francisco session, Haase ¹ lamented the seeming lack of progress in the study of the etiology of dermatologic maladies. He alleged that the ability of the specialists in this field of medicine as nosologists has been gained at the expense of the more profound consideration of the causation of many obscure diseases of the skin; and he makes an earnest plea for more active cooperation between the dermatologist and the internist, biochemist and pathologist. Since these words were uttered, an illustration of what can be accomplished by enterprise of this sort has been published by Schamberg and Brown² of the Research Institute of Cutaneous Medicine, Philadelphia. It is not always easy, even for the most expert, to differentiate between a chronic dermatitis due to local irritants and an eczema of constitutional origin. For the