Emotional Skins

The skin responds to emotion as much as the stomach or heart. On a skittish skin some emotional effects (such as blushing) are transient, others may become chronic.

Last week a nervous, finger-twiddling German dermatologist, Dr. Eugene Traugott Bernstein, 45 (now exiled in Manhattan), published in International Clinics a synopsis of his little-known medical subspecialty: curing skin troubles which are of psychic origin.

Emotions affect the skin by first disturbing the sympathetic nervous system, then the blood vessels, muscles and nutrition of the skin itself. The reaction is a kind of bad habit, according to Dr. Bernstein, and hard to break. One of his patients, whom he cites as example, broke out in hives every time she recalled the time a burglar robbed her bedroom. Bleeding of the hands, feet, chest and forehead of religious ecstatics, corresponding to the Crucifixion wounds, are the result of hysteria, writes Dr. Bernstein, and "represent an identification with Christ on the part of the patient." Another of Dr. Bernstein's cases was a remorseful young wife who itched on those parts of her body which her former lover once decorated with flowers.

Among other skin phenomena which Dr. Bernstein asserts are sometimes attributable to psychic factors:

P: Warts. He claims he cures four out of five cases of warts by telling the patient that he administers some rare drug (actually he uses only sterile salt water).

P: White hair. Depigmentation due to prolonged worry. (He discredits the legend that hair turns white overnight due to sudden fright.)

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.