Section VI. SKIN DISEASES
CHAPTER XLVI
1. NON-SPECIFIC SKIN DISEASES
PRICKLY HEAT
Prickly heat, or, as it is sometimes called, lichen tropicus, is probably a form of miliaria (not of lichen) connected with the excessive sweating incident to the heat of tropical climates. According to Pollitzer, the mechanism of its production depends on the non-cornification of the cells of the stratum corneum, the individual cells of which, in consequence of their being sodden by constant perspiration, swell and so obstruct the orifices of the sweat-glands, thereby leading to accumulation of sweat in the ducts. Pearse regards the disease as an acute distension of the sebaceous glands by their own secretion; the glands, he holds, are over-stimulated in order to supply an adequate amount of sebum to the skin, so as to make up for the loss of that material washed away by inordinate sweating. Durham regards prickly heat as an infective disease produced by a minute and very active amœba, readily found in the fluid of the vesicles provided search is made before the contents become turbid.
Nearly every European in the tropics suffers from prickly heat, particularly during the earlier years of residence. Some never seem to become acclimatized in this respect, but continue year after year to exhibit their crop of prickly heat lesions when the hot season comes round.
Though sufficiently annoying in the robust and healthy, in them prickly heat is not a grave affair. It is otherwise in the case of the invalid, of delicate sickly
