His mother brought him in for light therapy. He was eight years old and for the past year had been going to a distant skin clinic for ultraviolet light treatments for his psoriasis. The trip demanded three hours of driving three times a week. His mother finally asked, “Isn't there somewhere nearer to my home I could go to for these light treatments?” And so, he had been brought to us requesting a series of late after school appointments on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

We examined her son. He had extensive psoriasis on his trunk, arms, and legs, which was responding well to the ultraviolet light treatments. But, as parents, we thought of the drain of three visits each week to the doctor, even if close by. We knew there could be another way. Our research had shed a new light on psoriasis.

We explained to the mother that psoriasis has a hereditary background, which we could not alter. We explained that the silvery white scales her son shed everyday were dead flakes of his outermost skin, the epidermis. Normally, our skin sheds this dead stratum corneum invisibly because the particles are so small. They rub off in the bath or on the clothing without notice. But, in psoriasis, the epidermis is growing 10 times faster than normal, resulting in big thick white scales. The secret of treatment is to slow down the rapid division of the cells.