HYPERACIDITY A CAUSE OF SKIN DISEASES.

A year ago I wrote: "I have demonstrated to my own satisfaction that some skin affections are due to a nutritive disturbance, a defective degenerative metabolism, owing to which there ensues deficient utilization of nutritive substances conveyed to the tissues; producing a lethargic condition of the skin, an inefficient stimulation of the nerve twigs supplying the sudoriferous glands; that bacterial agencies cause septic and putrefactive changes in the alimentary canal and that inanimate toxins maintain selective affinities for the tissues, exerting their action upon the primordial protoplastic groups of cells. I am inclined more and more to think that the bond which connects the diatheses of the dermatoses with gout, rheumatism, arthritis, diabetes, and asthma, is generated by indiscretion of diet—and hic est mucro thesis meæ": that thechyme passing in a hyperacid condition from the stomach, through the pylorus, into the second stomach, entails such increased labor upon the duodenum