(1) Common skin infections include cellulitis, erysipelas , impetigo, folliculitis, and furuncles and carbuncles.

(2) Billroth, a German surgeon, is credited with first identifying, in 1874, streptococci isolated from a patient with erysipelas , which was a very common disease in that time, but rare today.

(3) He had developed erysipelas at the site of a mosquito bite, which resulted in septicaemia and pneumonia.

(4) The incidence of erysipelas is rising, especially in young children, the elderly, persons with diabetes, alcoholic persons, and patients with compromised immune systems or lymphedema.

(5) It was this analogy that drove him on to study cholera, anthrax, erysipelas and finally rabies, culminating in the development of the rabies vaccine.