Female patient with "epidemic eczema," as described by Dr. Thomas Dixon Savill, medical superintendant, Paddington Infirmary. This skin condition was a form of contagious dermatitis which Savill had observed in the Paddington Infirmary and other medical institutions in 1891. By the beginning of 1892 it was estimated that he alone had treated 163 cases from Paddington Infirmary and the adjacent workhouse. The infection would normally last seven or eight weeks (here shown at four weeks) and take the form of a dermatitis sometimes accompanied by the formation of vesicles and always resulting in desquamation of cuticles.