Medical Specialties
Dermatology
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Origin Robert Willan's systematic classification of skin diseases from 1798; the American Academy of Dermatology (originally the American Academy of Dermatology and Syphilology) was founded 14 to 15 January 1938 in Detroit.
The specialty concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the skin, hair and nails. It emerged as a scientific discipline distinct from general medicine in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as physicians sought to classify skin diseases by their visible morphology rather than unverified theories of internal cause. Several national schools developed roughly in parallel in England, France and Austria. In the United States the specialty organized nationally in 1938.
Facts
Origin PeriodRobert Willan's systematic classification of skin diseases from 1798; the American Academy of Dermatology (originally the American Academy of Dermatology and Syphilology) was founded 14 to 15 January 1938 in Detroit. 1 Sources
Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Description
While English-language medical history generally credits Robert Willan (London) as the founder of modern dermatology for his 1798 morphologic classification of skin diseases, historians of the Austrian and German traditions instead credit Ferdinand Ritter von Hebra and the New Vienna School for founding the discipline, arguing von Hebra introduced a genuinely pathological rather than purely descriptive approach. French medical history similarly credits Jean-Louis-Marc Alibert of Paris. No single national tradition's claim is universally accepted; each is the origin point within its own historiography.
A dissenting reading, from Cosmoderma (open-access dermatology journal)Ferdinand Ritter von Hebra: Founder of modern dermatology, Cosmoderma
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