Pink Disease, With a Clinical Approach to Possible Ætiology

Acrodynia—Postmortem of a Disease

“…For some reason, Australia was one of these endemic areas, and there, toward the end of the 19th century, such terms as "raw beef hands and feet" or "pink disease" had become popular because of the redness of fingers, toes, nose, and ears so characteris¬ tic of the disorder.3·4 In 1920 at a medical congress in Brisbane, Wood 5 could discuss the symptoms, prognosis, and treatment of 91 cases, and by 1935 he had personally studied 150 of these patients.4 In 1949 Southby ß reviewed 502 cases of pink dis¬ ease from the city of Melbourne. So preva¬ lent was the malady there that "case-to-case infection" and a viral etiology was assumed.…”