The History of Dermatology

by Scott Jackson, MD and Althea Ashe, PhD

Ever wonder about what an 18th-century physician or surgeon needed to know about skin diseases? For the very first time, the 18th-century handbook, Doctrina de Morbis Cutaneis (1783 edition), has been translated into English. In an effort to distill  confusing information about skin diseases into a simple system for his students, Joseph Jacob Plenck (1738-1807)--unknowingly and without any recognition--set the study of skin disease on a path towards formal specialization. Doctrina was the text that inspired Robert Willan (1757-1812) to make his own system, and thus, it is the foundational text of dermatology.  For the 250th anniversary  of the first edition of this work (1776), it is our intent both to honor Plenck with a translation of his masterful work and to reveal its secrets to modern readers and scholars.  The publisher's website can be accessed here. 

"The great number of diseases which afflict the human skin, as well as their variety, the obscurity of the causes from which they come forth, and the difficulty and diversity of healing what is produced by them, have rendered this branch of medicine and of surgery the most difficult and scarcely incomprehensible for those initiating in medicine. The authors whom we are able to consult up until this point are few, some of whom describe the kind of diseases common to every age, unless they were touched by very swift divine intervention; others use vague and inconsistent diagnostic names, and they formulate an uncertain reason for the cure. These are the things which have spurred me to labor to reduce this vast and disparate pile of diseases into a system."  --Preface of Doctrina de Morbis Cutaneis by Joseph Jacob Plenck, 1776