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The plica semilunaris as a vestige of the nictitating membrane of certain birds. The pointed ear, or the turned-down tip of the ears of many men. The atrophied muscles, such as those that move the ear, that are well developed in certain people, or that shift the scalp, resembling the action of a horse in ridding itself of flies. The supracondyloid foremen of the humerus. The vermiform appendix.
The custom formerly prevailing in Poland of shaving the heads of children, neglect of cleanliness, the heat of the head-dress, and the exposure of the skin to cold seem to favor the production of this disease. Plica began after an attack of acute fever, with pains like those of acute rheumatism in the head and extremities, and possibly vertigo, tinnitus aurium, ophthalmia, or coryza.
Plica polonica, or, as it was known in Cracow weicselzopf, is a disease peculiar to Poland, or to those of Polish antecedents, characterized by the agglutination, tangling, and anomalous development of the hair, or by an alteration of the nails, which become spongy and blackish. In older days the disease was well known and occupied a prominent place in books on skin-diseases.
And if some should ask why certain of these springs have recently undergone a marked diminution in volume we can but answer, simply and truthfully, that their virtues are no longer in as great demand as formerly. For is it not a fact that distempers like leprosy and PLICA POLONICA are now almost unknown on Nepenthe?
The Ephemerides contains the account of a woman who had hair from the mons veneris which hung to the knees; it was affected with plica polonica, as was also the other hair of the body. Rayer saw a Piedmontese of twenty-eight, with an athletic build, who had but little beard or hair on the trunk, but whose scalp was covered with a most extraordinary crop.
It was held none the less to be efficacious for the distemper known as PLICA POLONICA, and the peasant folk, mixing its spray with the acorns on which their pigs were fattened, had observed that these quadrupeds prospered vastly in health and appearance.
Then if by the laws of imitation, as explained in Section XII. 3. 3. and XXXIX. 6. the extremities of the nerves of touch in the rete mucosum be induced into similar action, the skin or feathers, or hair, may in like manner so dispose their extreme fibres, as to reflect white; for it is evident, that all these parts were originally obedient to irritative motions during their growth, and probably continue to be so; that those irritative motions are not liable in a healthy state to be succeeded by sensation; which however is no uncommon thing in their diseased state, or in their infant state, as in plica polonica, and in very young pen-feathers, which are still full of blood.
Lafontaine, Schlegel, and Hartman all assure us that the section of the affected masses before this time has been known to be followed by amaurosis, convulsions, apoplexy, epilepsy, and even death. Alarmed or taught by such occurrences, the common people often went about all their lives with the plica gradually dropping off.
The plica semilunaris, haw or nictitating membrane, though not as largely developed in the dog as in some other animals, is, nevertheless, of sufficient size to afford considerable protection to the ball of the eye, and assists materially in preventing the accumulation of seeds and other minute particles within the conjunctiva.
Yesterday your daughter took a medicine intended to bring out her disease, the plica polonica; until that horrible disease shows itself on the surface you cannot see her. I will not allow excitement or any mistake of management to carry off my patient and your daughter.
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