Mr. Jonathan Hutchinson records several cases in which neuralgic herpes zoster of the face was attended with iritis, with serious or even irremediable damage to the organ.
It is only of recent years that any essential connection between zoster and neuralgia has been suspected.
In some instances, however, the neuralgic pains may be persistent, and in zoster of the supra-orbital region the eye may suffer permanent damage.
Herpes zoster is an acute, self-limited, inflammatory disease, characterized by groups of vesicles upon inflammatory bases, situated over or along a nerve tract.
That the Persians took the rocks of Zoster for ships and fled all the more is the kind of mocking saying which was likely to be said at the time, whether true or false.
But Greek had not, in the days at least when the Zoster legend was invented, been so utterly broken up as that men were likely to go off to an altogether wrong root.
The derivation of Zoster from Leto's zone is a guess essentially of the same kind as these; yet there is a difference between them which is not uninstructive in comparing the history of the Greek and the English language.
But Zoster has its place in history as well as in legend.
Herpes zoster is sometimes followed by a catching of the breath, probably due to a little spasm in the muscles supplied by the nerve thus affected.
Even herpes zoster is prone to come on after a period of worry and anxiety.
