of the infection and his temperature dropped to normal within three days. The lesions on his skin healed slowly, however.Because the patient was going into a combat zone, it was thought important to establish his sensitivity to sulfathiazole. Accordingly, six weeks later 5 per cent sulfathiazole ointment was applied to the back of one hand and a similar amount of 5 per cent boric acid ointment to the back of the other as a control. A few small vesicles appeared tinder the sulfathiazole ointment within twenty-four hours. The next day the patient was given sulfathiazole by mouth, 0.5 Gm. for three doses. During the night his face became flushed, and by morning the cutaneous areas of his face, ears and neck were red, weeping and crusted, exactly as they had been on admission. These tests left little doubt that the condition of the patient's skin was the result of sensitivity to sulfathiazole.Ten weeks after admission he was sent back to his unit. The first morning after his return, his face, ears and neck were again covered by a red vesicular eruption, with oozing and crusting. His hands were not involved this time. The explanation for this flare-up was obscure, though it seemed probable that some sulfathiazole ointment had got onto his blankets at the time it was first applied to his face for impetigo and that contact with the ointment on these blankets had caused this latest flare-up. On final discharge he was issued new blankets.When seen one month later he had suffered no recurrences.Because he reacted so violently to sulfathiazole, a notice was attached to his identification tags stating that he was extremely sensitive to this drug. C0MMENT The distribution of the cutaneous lesions in this case was so definitely limited to the areas exposed to the sun that it was thought there must have been a relationship between the reaction of these portions of the skin to sulfathiazole and the effect of sunlight on the same areas. Photosensitivity of the skin and eyes after the taking of sulfathiazole has been mentioned in the literature.2 In this case the dermatitis was not precipitated by exposure to sunlight but by the sulfathiazole itself. The first s'ulfathiazole given to the patient was in an ointment applied to the skin. The patient was ambulatory at this time and thus exposed to strong sunlight most of every day. The dermatitis appeared ten days later, shortly after the administration of the drug by mouth. Therefore it seems probable that sunlight conditioned the skin to a sensitivity to sulfathiazole but did not itself cause the reaction. Sensitivity in this case was undoubtedly induced by the application of sulfathiazole ointment when the patient was first treated for impetigo contagiosa. He had never taken the drug before. Livingood and Pillsbury,3 Cohen, Thomas and Kalisch,4 and Weiner5 have recently reported similar cases in which sensitivity to sulfathiazole was produced by topical application of that drug. These illustrate the danger of using sulfathiazole ointments without due regard for the onset of reac...