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 unique opportunity of dermatology lies in the fact that normal and pathological processes...may be studied in the skin in natural living conditions; and it is altogether probable that experience will show in the future, as it has in the past, that the living skin is the best field for the study of many of the important problems of medicine."   William Allen Pusey, 1933.