This article is only available in the PDF format. Download the PDF to view the article, as well as its associated figures and tables.
Laymen who are unfamiliar with Africa are likely to think of the African native as a remarkably eligible candidate for skin disease from ainhum to yaws, from leprosy to the crazy pavement epithelium of kwashiorkor. Medical people no doubt labor under very much the same sort of impression adding perhaps syphilis and tuberculosis, as well as various diseases of parasites and fungi, the eczemas, pyodermas, and so on. In an extraordinarily thorough going but relatively short survey of the whole problem James Marshall has called on wide experience in Britain, France, and Africa to alter some of our illussions and correct our errors about skin diseases amongst the natives, those dwelling in cities and non-Africans who have come to live in Africa. It is evident from his studies that race as such has far less to do with dermatoses than one might have guessed; that environment, occupation, the state of