There is no basis for the popular belief that warts are contracted from the handling of toads.
Of the numerous varieties of warts, there are but a few types that need be mentioned here. Everyone is familiar with the common type of wart that is seen particularly on the hands of school children. It must be added, however, that this lesion is not uncommon in adults. It is characterized by from one to a dozen or more well-elevated, horny thickenings the size of a match head or larger which occur on any and all surfaces of the fingers and hands. Although these lesions are usually responsible for no discomfort, they often become inflamed when they are so located that they are frequently injured. When they appear around the under the nails, they are particularly rebellious to treatment. Such cases are probably often the result of improper manicuring.
This, like most of the other types of warts, is an infection by an organism so small that it cannot be detected by the most powerful microscope. It is perhaps the same organism that is responsible for the painful wart which appears of the soles of the feet, the so-called "plantar" wart. In the latter case the organism usually gains entrance into the skin through such an abrasion as might be produced by a nail in the shoe or from an injury resulting from going barefooted. There is good evidence that some gymnasiums are infested with this organism since not uncommonly many children in a single school are seen with this painful type of wart. It can be treated satisfactorily only by a competent physician, X-ray treatments often being necessary, a procedure to be entrusted only to one skilled in this work.
Warts on the hand are usually most satisfactorily cared for by freezing them with carbon-dioxide snow after they have been well softened. One should not pick at warts. Picking them will not cure them, and it will spread them. The old practice of applying nitric acid and other strong caustics to these growths should be discouraged. Such treatment often leaves disfiguring scars, and the infection so severe as to cause blood poisoning may result.
Another type of wart not infrequently seen in school children appears on the back of the hands, and more rarely on the cheeks and forehead, as numerous flat, smooth, shiny, flesh-colored to light brown thickenings which vary in size from that of a pinhead to that of a match head. These thickenings are devoid of all subjective symptoms. Although this type of wart is infectious, there is little danger of its being transmitted from one individual to another. It sometimes occurs along with the common type of wart and, like it, tends to resist treatment.
The teacher's duty towards the child in such cases is to insist on proper treatment in order to prevent spread of the condition. If many children are suffering from warts on the feet, the floors, especially the floor of the gymnasium, should be scrubbed well with soap and water and disinfectants employed.
by Clark W. Finnerud
Common Skin Diseases of Children
