Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/68

 lvlii INTRODUCTION

monograph which has been consulted at every step in the preparation of the preceding summary.

Dermatology.

Dermatology is a specialty of comparatively recent growth; in early times, when all medicine was more of less a matter of conjecture and experiment and the physician blindly groping after a few rays of scien- tific light, cutaneous diseases, more than others, were generally attributed to a supernatural cause.

When medicine became more firmly founded in science, skin diseases still received but little attention, although ever and anon, some writer would report a case of some rare cutaneous disorder, more as a curiosity than as a scientific contribution; hence, dermatology did not receive much notice until late in the eighteenth and early in the nineteenth century.

Then the teaching of Willan, the pioneer, Biett and Cazenave began to direct the attention of the advanced physician to the fact that cutane- ous diseases were not of Divine origin nor was the understanding of them beyond the comprehension of mortal man.

The first medical publication in this country of dermatologcial interest; was a brochure entitled "A Brief Guide in the Small-pox and Measles," by the Rev. Thomas Thacher, a skillful physician as well as a preacher.

This work was published in Boston in 1677.

It is evident that syphilis was recognized and studied in this country as early as 1646, for it is recorded that there were so many cases of lues venerea in Boston that Elder Winthrope declared it "raised a scandal upon the town and country."

The medical writings of the eighteenth century often contained articles on diseases more or less related to dermatology ; it was not, how- ever, until the beginning of the nineteenth century that this specialty began to take any definite shape in America; perhaps the first step towards this beginning was the publication of Willan's treatise on cuta- neous diseases, an English work which appeared in 1799. In 1824 Bateman's synopsis of Willan's work was published, and in 1829, one year after the issue of the original French edition, Dr. R. E. Griffiths, of Philadelphia, translated Cazenave and Schedel's "Abr6ge Pratique des Maladies de la Peau." An American edition of Green's "Practical Com- pendium" was brought out in 1838.

In 1842 Henry D. Bulkley, of New York, edited, with copious addi- tional notes, Thomas H. Burgess' Translations of Cazenave and Schedel's "Manual of Diseases of the Skin."