Great Quotes From the History of Dermatology
"Never abandon a case as hopeless, but continue to study it based on knowledge of its pathology and etiology until you find some way to help." - Ferdinand von Hebra (1816-1880)
"It was not until the intelligence began to spread, slowly borne by word of mouth from country to country, that in the Imperial city of Austria there was a man teaching skin diseases as they had never been taught before, with unlimited means of clinical illustration, with the keenest eye for observation, with an unbounded amount of information drawn from many years of experience, with a self-restraint which no desire for premature fame could tempt into hasty publication, and with a sound and logical mind, that the German school of dermatology some fifteen years ago began to be known and to advance to that pre-eminent position it now holds." -The American James Clarke White, on Ferdinand von Hebra and the Vienna School of Dermatology
"Every judgment made by a morphologist, whether a clinician or a histopathologist, is subjective—i.e., 100 percent subjective." - A. Bernard Ackerman (1936-2008).
“...some of the difficulties and errors which envelop the study of cutaneous aetiology: in part, prejudices born of ignorance, but of strange vitality, and transmitted with the authority of both popular and professional belief; in part, the direct result of hasty, short-sighted theorizing by those who occupy the positions of teachers in our art. We shall make no progress in this branch of dermatology until we sweep away all of this rubbish of superstition, all these crude theories of schools and writers, and professing entire ignorance, if need be, build up a true aetiology by legitimate methods of truthful observation and sound reasoning." James Clarke White, Harvard Professor of Dermatology, 1879 .
"What a wonderful thing the skin is! It is the largest and most important integument of the whole human organism! What millions of pores it contains! The minutest aperture might absorb the deadliest poison. Once in contact with the surface of the body, whether the particle be held in a miasma, or dissolved in the water of ablution, the pore, like a fatal canal, conveys it into the system, whence its eradication may be impossible, and where it may generate untold mischief." From an 1859 pamphlet by Pears Soap entitled Skin, Bath, Bathing, and Soap.
“Our conception of the scope of dermatology must be so widened as to include every pathologic manifestation which occurs in the integument, irrespective of the cause or the nature, from a practical standpoint. The great value and importance of dermatology is that it should teach us to know the nature of various processes, as they affect not only the skin but the whole economy. Dermatology should be for the physician as a key with which the skin is made to reveal, in many instances at least, the nature of the process at work in the general system or in special organs, which without this aid might remain obscure."
- Louis A. Duhring, 1845-1913
"Tact, sympathy and understanding are expected of the physician, for the patient is no mere collection of symptoms, signs, disordered functions, damaged organs, and disturbed emotions. The patient is human, fearful, and hopeful, seeking relief, help and reassurance. To the physician, as to the anthropologist, nothing human is strange or repulsive. The misanthrope may become a smart diagnostician of organic disease, but can scarcely hope to succeed as a physician. The true physician has a Shakespearean breadth of interest in the wise and the foolish, the proud and the humble, the stoic hero and the whining rogue. The physician cares for people.” Tinsley Harrison (1900-1978), American physician and editor of the first five editions of Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine.
"Men commonly see nothing in the skin of the human race beyond the means of defence which it affords, against the contact of external substances, capable of injuring more vital parts; but the physiologist and clinical physician look at it as the double instrument of exhalation and absorption- as the deposit or
reservior of an exquisite sensibility- as a means of conveyance of salutary remedies- as the agent of most favourable crises in disease, and as the seat of a multitude of diseases, the very nomenclature of which excites terror." Jean-Louis Alibert (1768-1837)
"Purity from cutaneous disease is considered so essential to our kind reception in the world, that many dread the deformity of a blotch more than the occurrence of a moral ill." John Wilson, London surgeon, 1814.
"At a time when medicine is becoming more and more controlled by exact methods of counting, measuring, weighing, and chemical analysis, let us rejoice that in dermatology there is a large field in which the clinical eye--and artistic intuition--cannot be disregarded." Holger Haxthausen (1892-1959), Professor of Dermatology, Copenhagen.
"What is this strange skin condition with red rings which expand from the centre in widening circles? That, says the dermatologist, is erythema annulare centrifugum. He has spoken the words of power, and the dignity of the profession has been upheld." -- Richard Asher, FRCP (1912-1969), the British endocrinologist and hematologist, and the describer of Münchausen syndrome
"There are but three classes of skin diseases: one of which is cured by mercury and the iodides, a second by sulphur, and a third class which the devil himself can't cure." - John Hunter, 1728-1793
"The progress of knowledge that has come through the study of the skin diseases has been made by unnumbered men in all fields. It has not been confined to any one group. Fortunately, a specialty does not have a proprietary interest in its subject, and could not, if it would, exclude other workers from it. But, in increasing proportion, the contributions to knowledge from the study of the skin have in modern times come from men whose chief interest was the skin and its diseases. The history of dermatology may be properly a source of pride to us....but my point is the great role that skin diseases have played in the advancement of medical knowledge, and even more impressive than that, in the very making of the mind itself. This momentous fact is the challenge of dermatology itself--to be worthy of its heritage and of its great opportunity." William Pusey, in "Disease, Gadfly of the Mind," The Prosser White Oration, Before the St. John's Hospital Dermatological Society, Royal Society of Medicine, June 27, 1934
"There is, even in the present improved state of medical science, no class of diseases so little understood, or so much in want of a rational pathology, to lead us to a more successful, and ready practice, as that which should include the various chronic affections of the human skin." Seguin Henry Jackson (1752–1816), in Dermato-pathologia (1792)
"The time is not far distant when diseases of the skin, instead of being esteemed as an unimportant if not repulsive specialty, will be regarded as offering unequalled opportunities for the study of morbid processes." Jonathan Hutchinson (1828-1913)
"Astruc, almost one hundred years before Willan, should be regarded as the founder of modern dermatology, for he not only pointed the way by studying the histology of the skin, but first indicated the pathology of certain affections in light of the knowledge." - William Pusey (1865-1940), on the French venereologist, Jean Astruc (1684-1766)
"There is no single disease which causes more psychic trauma, more maladjustment between parent and children, more general insecurity and feelings of inferiority and greater sums of psychic suffering than does acne vulgaris." - Marion Sulzberger (1895-1983)
"Skin...next to the human brain, probably the most complex as well as the most uniquely human of all organs." -- Marion Sulzberger (1895-1983)
"Ointments are more agreeable and efficacious than poultices; for an ointment does not run down and stain the clothes, a thing very disagreeable to the patient, thus it adheres, and being by the heat of the body, is absorbed. Thus its effects are persistent, whereas liquid preparations run off." -Aretaeus of Cappadocia (2nd century CE)
"In recent times I have seen scourges, horrible sicknesses and many infirmities afflict mankind from all corners of the earth. Amongst them has crept in, from the western shores of Gaul, a disease which is so cruel, so distressing, so appalling that until now nothing so horrifying, nothing more terrible or disgusting, has ever been known on this earth." --Joseph Grunpeck (1473–1532), on the arrival of syphilis in Europe
"Diseases of the skin ... are generally regarded as lesser maladies, that is to say, conditions which as a rule neither threaten life nor seriously impair health. For the individual this is true, but in the case of an army the collective results of such minor affections may become of high importance because, for military purposes, a man incapacitated for duty is a loss to the fighting force whatever the extent or cause of his personal disability."—British Major-General Sir W. G. Macpherson (1858-1927), on how skin disease can decimate an army
"The beginning of dermatology can hardly be less ancient, for skin diseases obtrude themselves upon the attention in a way that few others do, and none of man's medical efforts can have been much earlier than those to relieve his itching and to get rid of his sores and scabs and parasites that afflicted his skin." William Pusey (1865-1940), on the ancient nature of skin disease and its study
"Another reason dermatology attracted me was that it seemed to me to be a specialty in which there was little room to bluff the patients. Treating a skin lesion, one was immediately faced with the moment of truth. The bump on the end of the patient's nose either grew, remained unchanged, became smaller, or was cured. It was not possible to tell a patient that the bump he himself could see and feel was better or was gone when it wasn't." - Marion Sulzberger (1895-1983)
"How important is it to know that dartre and impetigo are not the same things, especially when we treat both of them with the same ointments? Does it annoy you that certain infections of the skin and subcutaneous tissues are alike or different, since you usually treat all of them with the same corrosive ointments and a few other things?" - The French surgeon, Henri de Mondeville (1260-1320), writing in La Chirurgie (1306)
"Diseases of the skin were scorned or at least neglected by the majority of physicians, the less severe ones as of little moment, and the more serious ones regarded with the greatest horror, with the fear of contagion often present because of the appearance of nauseating filth and foul odor with which they invest the body, it is no wonder that they were poorly and confusedly observed and consequently as poorly described."
- Vincenzo Chiarugi (1759-1820), Prof. of Cutaneous Disease & Mental Disturbances, Florence
"The aim of every true-hearted specialist should be to break down the walls of their specialism."
- Jonathan Hutchinson (1828-1913)
"I have never regretted my choice. There is only one more beautiful thing in the world than a fine healthy skin, and that is a rare skin disease." - William James Erasmus Wilson (1809-1884)
William James Erasmus Wilson (1809-1884)