It is generally recognized today that cortisone used internally can be of great value in helping patients through severe and distressing phases of certain acute dermatoses. Patients with acute, incapacitating but ordinarily self-limited eruptions, such as severe, widespread, eczematous contact dermatitis, acute urticaria, angioneurotic edema, and certain drug reactions, can quite often be relieved of the majority of their troubles without interfering with their progress toward natural recovery.1 There is also a quite general agreement that for properly selected, otherwise healthy patients this form of short-term administration of cortisone, lasting from several days to a week or so, usually carries little risk of serious untoward effects.
Another common field of usefulness of cortisone in dermatology is its long-term, more or less continuous use internally in chronic or chronic recurrent dermatoses.2 The dermatoses in this group can be divided into two subgroups: first, those not ordinarily fatal but in