rning, throbbing
character, and the carbuncle continues to enlarge for a week or ten
days, when it softens and breaks open at various points discharging
shreds of dead tissue and pus. The skin over the whole top of the
carbuncle dies and sloughs away, leaving an angry-looking excavation
or crater-like ulcer. This slowly heals from the edges and bottom, so
that the whole period of healing occupies from a week to two, or even
six months. The danger depends largely upon blood poisoning, and also
upon pain, continuous fever, and exhaustion which follow it. Sweating
and fever, higher at night, are the more prominent signs of blood
poisoning.

Carbuncles differ from boils in being much larger, in having rounded
or flat tops instead of the conical shape of boils, in having
numerous, sievelike openings, in the occurrence of death of the skin
over the top of the carbuncle, and in being accompanied by intense
pain and high fever.

=Treatment.=--Carbuncle demands the earliest incision by a skilled
surgeon, as it is only by cutting it freely open, or even removing the
whole carbuncle as if it were a tumor, that the best results are
accomplished. However, when a surgeon cannot be obtained, the
patient's strength should be sustained by feeding every two hours with
beef tea, milk and raw eggs, and with wine or alcoholic liquors. Three
two-grain quinine pills and ten drops of the tincture of the chloride
of iron in water should be given three times daily.

The local treatment consists in applying large, hot, fresh flaxseed
poultices frequently, with the removal of all dead tissue with
scissors, which have been boiled in water for ten minutes. When the
pain is not unbearable, dressings made by soaking thick sheets of
absorbent cotton in hot solution of corrosive sublimate (1 to 1,000 as
directed under Boils, p. 161) should be applied and covered by oil
silk or rubber cloth and bandage. They are preferable to poultices as
being better germ destroyers, but are not so comfortable. When the
dead tissue comes away and the carbuncle presents a red, raw surface,
it should be washed twice a day in the 1 to 1,000 corrosive-sublimate
solution, dusted with pure boric acid, and covered with clean, dry
absorbent cotton and bandage.

=ECZEMA; SALT RHEUM; TETTER.=--Eczema is really a catarrhal
inflammation of the skin, with the exudate (fluid that escapes)
concealed beneath the surface, or appearing on the surface after
irritation has occurred