An eighteen-year-old college wrestler was admitted directly to the hospital. For five days he had suffered widespread blisters of his forearm, neck, forehead and scalp, which were now oozing and crusted. We counted over fifty such plaques. On the day of admission his right knee had become markedly tender, hot, and swollen.

He gave a past history of having had shingles when he was four years old, a severely wrenched right knee at age eleven, and an allergy to sulfa drugs. He had never had fever blisters or cold sores.

We knew what his skin problem was. It was the result of the fever blister virus (Herpes simplex) being rubbed into each of those fifty areas. One of his fellow wrestlers must have had an active cold sore which contaminated the wrestling mat. Since this was his first contact with the virus, every site touched by the virus developed a cold sore. He essentially had fifty fever blisters simultaneously. He would not have developed a single one if only he had had a prior fever blister on his lip, due to immunity to the virus. Only his own virally-infected nerves would then set off periodic flares of a cold sore, always in the same location.

Yes, we knew his skin story well. He had herpes gladiatorum, an occupational disease of wrestlers. We later learned that two of the men he wrestled with also came down with the same problem.