OCCUPATIONAL STIGMATA. REPORT OF A CASE OF PRONOUNCED FORMATION OF CALLUS ON FINGER TIPS, AMONG OTHER CHARACTERISTIC EFFECTS, IN A VIOLA PLAYER.

Abstract

In modern times many occupations have disappeared that formerly were arduous and inevitably productive of sharp, tell-tale cutaneous and other effects. Labor-saving machinery and changing technology in general have largely eliminated the sort of work and resultant occupational marks that made the real Dr. Joseph Bell and the fictitious Sherlock Holmes so entertainingly perspicacious. Probably more subtle stigmata of new occupations have come into being of late, but a few of the oldest professions are still practiced in the same old way and thus still produce characteristic signs. Music-making is such a profession, and it is well to remind oneself every now and then of banal artifacts from such persisting occupations while we are discovering novel ones from new kinds of work. Therefore we report a viola player who exhibits the entire spectrum of effects from playing a string instrument, a patient in whom those effects are so exaggerated that