NETTLE-RASH, or (Lat. lirtica, a nettle), is the term applied to a com mon form of eruption on the skin. The eruption cousists of wheals, or little solid eminences of irregular outline, and either white or red, or most commonly both red and white, there being a white center with a red margin. The rash is accompanied with great heat, itching, and irritation; the appearance ou the skin and the sensation being very much like tie appearance and feeling produced by the stinging of nettles; and hence the origin of its names.
The disease may be either acute or chronic. In the acute form, feverishness usually precedes the rash by a few hours, although they commence together. The disorder is always connected with some derangement of the digestive organs, and it may often be traced to the imperfect digestion of special articles of 'food, such as oatmeal, the kernels of fruit, strawberries, cucumbers, mushroom, and especially oysters mussels, and crabs, which are eaten with perfect impunity by most persons. An hour or two after the offending substance has been swallowed, there is a feeling of nausea, with oppression about the pit of the stomach; the patient often complains of giddiness, and the face frequently swells; the skin then begins to tingle, and the eruption breaks forth; vomiting and diarrhea often supervene, and act as a natural cure; but even when they do not occur, the violence of the rash usually subsides in a few hours, and the disorder altogether disappears in a day or two.
The chronic form is often very troublesome; and frequently comes on periodically in the evening. Cases are reported in which persons have been afflicted for ten years con
tinuously by this form of the disease. Patients have left off all their customary articles of diet, one by one, without in all cases meeting with relief; and hence it may be inferred, that although the disease depends in all cases on a disordered condition of the digestive organs, it is not always the consequence of some special offending article having been swallowed.
The main treatment of the acute form consists in expelling the offending matter by an emetic inid by purgatives, and the cure is thus usually completed. In the chronic form, the patient 'should, in the first place, determine whether the rash is caused by any particular article of diet, and if this seems not to be the case, an attempt must be made to improve the state of the digestive organs. A few grains of rhubarb taken daily, just befog; breakfast and before dinner, will sometimes effect a cure. If this simple remedy fails, Dr. Watson recommends the trial of a draught composed of the infusion of serpen taria (about an ounce and a half), with a scruple each of the carbonates of magnesia and soda. He adds, that although external applications are usually of little avail, he has found that dusting the itching surface with flour sometimes affords temporary relief; and that a still more useful application is a lotion composed of a dram of the carbon ate of ammonia, a dram of the acetate of lead, ]calf an ounce of laudanum, and eight ounces of rose-water.