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Updated: June 21, 2025


According to Rayer, some writers insist that the affection then existed under the name of the Phoenician disease. Before the time of Celsus, the poet Lucretius first speaks of elephantiasis graecorum, and assigns Egypt as the country where it occurs. Celsus gives the principal characteristics, and adds that the disease is scarcely known in Italy, but is very common in certain other countries.

Rayer remarks that he has seen a young man of sixteen who exhibited himself to the public under the name of a new species of wild man whose breast and back were covered with light brown hair of considerable length. The surface upon which it grew was of a brownish hue, different from the color of the surrounding integument. Almost the whole of the right arm was covered in the same manner.

A viscid matter of a very offensive smell, like that of spoiled vinegar, or according to Rayer like that of mice or garlic, exuded from the whole surface of each affected hair. This matter glued the hairs together, at first from their exit at the skin, and then along the entire length; it appeared to be secreted from the whole surface of the scalp and afterward dried into an incrustation.

In similar cases tumefaction assumes enormous proportions, and Schenck speaks of a man whose head exceeded that of an ox in size, the lower part of the face being entirely covered with the nose, which had to be raised to enable its unhappy owner to breathe. Rayer cites two instances in which elephantiasis of the breast enlarged these organs to such a degree that they hung to the knees.

Wilson says that cases of green, yellow, and blue perspiration have been seen, and Hebra, Rayer, and Fuchs mention instances. Conradi records a case of blue perspiration on one-half the scrotum. Chojnowski records a case in which the perspiration resembled milk. Hyperidrosis occurs as a symptom in many nervous diseases, organic and functional, and its presence is often difficult of explanation.

Ibbetson saw a child with five incisors in the inferior maxillary bone, and Fanton-Touvet describes a young lady who possessed five large incisors of the first dentition in the superior maxilla. Rayer notes a case of dentition of four canines, which first made their appearance after pain for eight days in the jaws and associated with convulsions.

She was edentulous and had never sensibly perspired. She improved under tonic treatment. Rayer quotes the case of Beauvais, who was a patient in the Hopital de la Charite in 1827.

Rayer was once consulted by a valet-de-chambre who could never keep a place in consequence of the odor he left behind him in the rooms in which he worked. Hammond is quoted with saying that when the blessed Venturni of Bergamons officiated at the altar people struggled to come near him in order to enjoy the odor he exhaled. It was said that St.

Jamieson reports a case in which there were 250, and in Maclaren's case there were 132. According to Crocker, Hebra and Rayer also each had a case.

With no similar work for a guide or model, it was necessary to derive from the volumes of general and comparative physiology such facts and deductions as related to the theme; and that such have been drawn from recognized authorities, the frequent references to the writings of Carpenter, Wilson, Plumbe, Neligan, Rayer, and others of like eminence, will show.

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