DEFINING THE DISEASE

Listen to your patient, he will tell you the diagnosis. Sir William Osler, MD. (1849-1919)

Dr. Osler, the distinguished Canadian clinical physician often considered the father of modern medicine, understood that the healing process begins when the physician listens carefully to the patient. Osler was brought to Johns Hopkins University in the 1890’s to establish and invigorate the Medicine Department. His many essays, aphorisms, and timeless insights into patient care are still valid today, 125 years later.

When a man has reached a Condition in which he believes that a thing must happen because he does not wish it, and that what he wishes to happen can never be, this is the really the state called desperation.

Schopenhauer

The purpose of this new website is to re-evaluate the misdiagnosis, mistreatment, and mismanagement of an entire group of eczema patients diagnosed with Atopic Dermatitis using the timeless Osler tradition. This website will listen to the patient.

Atopic Dermatitis, or eczema, is an inherited skin disorder characterized by itchy skin, red rashes, and sometimes accompanied by hay fever and asthma.

Eczema ‘burns out’ naturally and stops manifesting itchy rashes for the vast majority of patients as early as age 3-4 and as late as teen years.

This natural clearing process and healing pattern has been repeatedly observed and reported generation after generation yet it is totally ignored by an array of physicians including dermatologists, allergists, pediatricians, and a mélange of ‘peripheral’ therapists. Instead, repeated therapeutic attempts with creams, medications, food avoidance, environmental avoidances, phychotherapy, home remedies, immunosuppressive agents, antibiotics and an increasing variety of corticosteroid creams, pills and injections are administered to stop the worsening rashes, infections, symptoms of itch and burning when what is needed is to listen to the patient who is saying, “I am getting worse” with each successive treatment.

Ask the patient. Listen to the patient. The patient is getting worse. It is time to rethink ‘chronic’ eczema. It is time to question the therapy.

For some reason well-intentioned physicians are refusing to question their therapies and simply end up recommending more of the same failed protcols in an effort to give their patients short-term relief.

The website will offer an alternative therapy that ends the myth of ‘chronic’ eczema and offers a long-term cure.

By Dr Marvin Rapaport, MD|2021-10-19T03:16:57-07:00June 15th, 2015|RSS The Disease|Comments Off

About the Author: Dr Marvin Rapaport, MD

In 1978 I initiated and set up the contact and photo dermatitis clinic at UCLA. There was a need to evaluate a large group of patients who exhibited severe eczematoid rashes, especially on the face. Patients were referred from all over Southern California. All patients underwent a lengthy history and examination. Further evaluations included blood studies, allergy patch testing, special sunlight (photo) testing and skin biopsies. From the start it was apparent that most patients experienced a mild dermatitis on various parts of the body that progressively worsened. Their histories always included numerous doctor visits, multiple physicians, and therapy consisting of an increasing amount of corticosteroids. My testing failed to reveal any specific culprit chemicals, cosmetics, perfumes, workplace or recreational exposures. It became increasingly clear that the physician’s therapy, the corticosteroids, was invariably causing the problem. I wrote 7 scientific articles that were published in the most august peer-reviewed dermatologic journals and I gave many lectures at various dermatology meetings. To this day an unfortunate reluctance exists on the part of most physicians to accept this simple concept.