He’s got the dreaded lurgey..
Growing up in the UK (a place not re-known for it’s political correctness), any kind of skin problem was known as the ‘dreaded lurgey’, which may be a reference to our age old association with the great plague, the black death and other historical medical disasters. When one of my students complained of ‘blisters’ on his legs it got the alarm bells ringing. What you can (hopefully) see in the picture is a nice example of impetigo, the name derives from the Latin impetere(”assail”). Impetigo is usually caused by the same streptococcus strain that causes strep throat, what we see here is bullous impetigo, this starts as small itchy blisters and develops into large ‘bullies’ as my expedition doctor described them, these are huge blisters up to one and a half inches in diameter and filled with fluid. Being incredibly itchy and very contagious it’s a serious problem that requires strong antibiotics, and strict isolation of the patient. We had our reluctant victim washing away from the group with his own personal bucket of water, and a strict ‘do not touch the patient’ regime in place. Pretty nasty, but curable. What was funny is when we had our initial outbreak our Doctor had us construct a tent out of tarps, we would then strip down to our undies and then be inspected! Embarrassing, but good practice. Watch out for the bullies!!
Tags: impetigo, skin disease, tropical disease
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