Non-existent disease?

摘要

I RECENTLY mentioned erythema infectiosum, which in the early 20th century was known as fifth disease because it was the fifth cause of childhood rash and fever to be characterised — after measles, scarlet fever, rubella and Dukes disease and before roseola (Pf, 2 February 2013, p123). The odd one out in this list is Dukes disease or fourth disease. It was first described in 1885 by an aristocratic Russian physician, Nil Filatov. Then an English doctor, Clement Dukes, who was medical officer at Rugby School, studied the condition in schoolchildren, and in 1900 The Lancet published his article "On the confusion of two different diseases under the name of rubella (rose-rash)".