(from to change,) M. A.
Severinus calls it Baras.
This disorder is a species of that sort of white leprosy called vitiligo, and which is divided into the alphus, melas, and leuce, called also albara; in the alphus the skin is white and roughish in spots; sometimes the patches are broad, bearing the same analogy to the leuce as the scabies to the lepra; the first is superficial, chiefly affecting the skin; the second sinks deeper into the flesh: but these disorders only differ in their degrees of inveteracy. See Lepra.
Oribasius commends lime water as a lotion in all the species; and says, that the alphus requires a thin lime water, the scabies a thicker or stronger, and the lepra the strongest. Aetius commends, as equally proper for the white or the black alphus, the following liniment:
Rx. Fol. ficus, sulphuris vivi et alumin rup. āā. aeq. p. acet. acerrim. q. s. f. linim. cum qua inung. partes affects.
In all kinds of cutaneous complaints, the itch excepted, internal medicines are necessary, and generally mercurial alteratives. Their operation may be assisted by the warm bath, and decoctions of elm bark or me-zereon. This subject will, however, be treated at length, under the article of Cutaneous complaints; q. v.
See Celsus. Actuarius Method. Medend. Oribasius de Morb. Cutan. Curat. Aetius's Tetrab. iv. Germ. cap. i. 132. Willan on Diseases of the Skin.