Title: War Surgery and Medicine

Author: Stout, T. Duncan M.

Publication details: Historical Publications Branch, 1954, Wellington

Part of: The Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War 1939–1945

This text is the subject of: ‘Something of Them Is Here Recorded’: Official History in New Zealand

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Etiological Factors

Most chronic skin diseases in the army were due to a lowering of resistance to infection, so that the common saprophytes of the skin became pathogenic. This was especially true in hot climates, and in an investigation of 200 patients admitted to 1 NZ General Hospital Lieutenant-Colonel R. G. Park, in 1944, pointed out the commonest causes to be—other infective processes, psychoneurosis, a large number of sources of external irritation, and inborn susceptibility.