To the Editor.—
I would like to think few, experienced dermatologists would argue that there are some obvious differences between the reactivity of heavily pigmented skin, ie, black, and mildly pigmented skin, ie, white, to identical or similar stimuli. The prevalence of keloids or follicular eruptions in blacks and the overwhelming predominance of rosacea or actinic keratoses in whites are wellknown examples of the phenomenon to which I refer.In this regard, a review of my records, which covered a continuous 18-month period that ended March 1977, reveals that of 37 patients who had scabies (confirmed by microscopic identification of the mite and/or eggs or by a salutary response to antiscabietic therapy), 31 were white, one was black, and the remainder represented other racial groups. This data are made more noteworthy by the fact that the patient population was 48% black, 36% white, and the rest comprised other races; moreover,