Ringworm is one of the most common and widespread childhood maladies. Deceptive in its naming, ringworm is no parasite but rather a fairly mild, though atrociously itchy, fungal skin infection that affects 300 million people worldwide. An infection with the contagious Tinea capitis fungus is usually summarily dismissed by means of antifungal medications, but for decades prior to the discovery of such cures in the 1950s, infections with ringworm and other species of fungus were as intractable and as challenging as their bacterial counterparts. The mid-twentieth century, as modern an era as it seems, marked the early days of effective antimicrobial treatments, and though practical pharmaceuticals for bacterial, viral, and fungal afflictions were on the horizon, they were still far from universally available.
Without successful and accessible treatments, ringworm could be a temporarily disfiguring infection. The fungus would infect the skin, the scalp, or the nails, causing characteristic halos of intensely itchy and inflamed scaling of the skin, hair loss, and, occasionally, superimposed infections with bacteria. Eventually the infection would run its course without drastic systemic damage, but not before inflicting scarring and permanent hair loss.
Of the treatments that were available in the early-to-mid twentieth century, most tended to operate under a “scorched earth” policy of treatment rather than a curative one. Caustic and toxic chemicals such as carbolic acid, sulfur, wood tar, and mercuric chloride would be slathered on the skin and scalp, eliciting painful burns that eradicated the indwelling fungus along with much of the “good” skin surrounding it (1).
