Review of the Psychotherapy of Warts

AS A BASIS for judging the value of any therapy for warts, one must first consider what is known about warts and their behavior. It is generally agreed that warts are caused by a virus. Their infectious nature is suggested by their occasional occurrence in epidemic form.1The appearance of warts in linear arrangement along a scratch mark and on opposing surfaces of digits (kissing warts) suggests their inoculability. A number of workers, beginning with Jadassohn2and including Wile and Kingery3in this country, have shown that warts can be transmitted by intracutaneous inoculation of wart material and that the infectious agent is filtrable. Hilleman4states that the wart virus is small in that it will pass Berkefeld filters of all porosities. The final proof of the virus origin of warts seems now at hand in the work of Strauss, Bunting, and Melnick.5They demonstrate with the electron microscope the presence of spherical virus-like particles in crystalline