states that the forceps were applied through the os and the child was with considerable difficulty extracted, there seeming to be a total lack of lubrication and consequently great friction between the fœtal and maternal parts. As the head was born a thick plate of skin two inches square was detached and escaped with the head. At first the child had the appearance of a dead fœtus with macerated epidermis, but shortly it began to breathe and to cry feebly. Its appearance was horrible in the extreme. It was covered from head to foot with a skin like leather, deeply fissured and broken up into plates like an alligator or an armadillo. Many of the plates were separated from the true skin, which was of a bright strawberry color. After birth the dried
.jpg)
Fig. 19.—Ichthyosis with fine scales.
skin became of a bright chrome yellow, and the plates were more and more detached by the motions of the child, which lived only six hours. Another case has been reported of a woman who had three healthy children by her first husband and three ichthyotic fœtuses by her second. Cases have also been reported of this severe form of the disease developing after birth.
Occasionally one of these cases of severe congenital ichthyosis may survive. A youth known to fame as the "Alligator Boy," and exhibited in a dime museum some years ago, was described by the writer in the Journal of Cutaneous and Venereal Diseases, April, 1884. The eruption, contrary to the rule, was most marked upon the trunk, the epidermis being
