Rashes

I write this for any sufferer in the hope that my experience of rashes, derived from a specific source, might apply to them and be cured.
There are clearly many and varied causes for rash. Thought, and advice from a lay source, cured my particular kind.
For no apparent reason I started to itch and scratch – outside of thighs, at the bend and outside of arms, upper chest, neck and back of scalp.
I applied several over-the-counter creams, which sometimes soothed the skin but did nothing to cure the condition.
I grow a rather fine Aloe Vera plant on my kitchen windowsill. The juice from cutting off a small piece from its fleshy frond/leaves is supposed to cure many an ailment. It certainly had a soothing effect on my rashes but failed to cure the condition. So I took professional medical advice.
A creamy solution and sticky ointment helped – but failed. Another variety of cream did no better.
Was the trouble a dietary one – an allergy, perhaps?
I gave up eating certain foods and drinking certain liquids. There was no change. The itching, rash and rawness continued.
I spoke of the ailment with my sister, June, who had also suffered in much the same way. She recommended a change of soap (a solution for the rashes suffered by a friend’s children), an oily addition to the bath water, and a change of clothes-washing powder or liquid.
About this time I had come to the conclusion that the rashes were occurring where either my clothes rubbed on flesh or where bedclothes and bed linen rubbed on or were pressed against skin.
I asked my wife, Margreet, if by any chance she had changed clothes-washing liquid around the time my rashes had started.
She had. About that time she had added lumps of some substance that advertisers had recommended for making clothes cleaner or whiter (an admission on their part of failure to produce a satisfactory product in the first place).
So I asked her to stop it and, for good measure, change the liquid used from biological to one considered to be more natural. This she did.
The change was almost immediate. The itching became progressively less. The rashes diminished. The raw bits disappeared.
It took a week or two for the afflicted parts to return to normal.
Now I occasionally have a nice scratch, to no ill effect. Don’t we all?