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. 

"It is the physician's fate to soon be lost to memory. Some of his work, and with it his name, may remain, but the memory of the man himself is soon lost. It will be a misfortune if the memories of the personalities of some of our pioneers disappear with the generation that knew them: the precise scholarly, dignified White; the careful, urbane gentle Duhring; the robust and forceful Taylor; the suave, genial energetic Hyde; the ingenious and original Piffard. Who that knew these men but must wish that a knowledge of their personalities might be transmitted to succeeding generations of workers in the specialty which they founded in this country?  - William A. Pusey, on the founding fathers of American dermatology, in Archives of Dermatology and Syphilology, 1920.