Cradle Cap

An infant, only a few weeks old, and on its scalp yellowish-brown crusts are forming. Flaky, rough, sometimes with a greasy sheen. The child reaches for its head, rubs, scratches, becomes restless. What medicine describes as seborrheic dermatitis or as an early stage of atopic dermatitis appears at first as a skin problem — an excessive production of sebum, an immature skin barrier, a reaction to still unknown stimuli.

But the skin is the largest organ in the human body. It is the boundary between inside and outside, between one's own being and the world. And it begins to speak even before the child can form a single word. When the scalp of an infant becomes crusted — precisely where the mind has its seat, where the fontanelle is still open, where the new presses into the world — it is worth listening more closely.