Dermatology in America : being the president's address before the first meeting of the American Dermatological Association, at Niagara Falls, New York, September 4, 1877 / by James C. White.

  • White, James C. (James Clarke), 1833-1916.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dermatology in America : being the president's address before the first meeting of the American Dermatological Association, at Niagara Falls, New York, September 4, 1877 / by James C. White. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    a fairly assumed to represent the whole extent of our country. What progress have we made since then ? At that time a few students after graduating at home began to find their way to the great Vienna school of medicine, then at the very height, not of its fame, but of its excellence ; when its eminent teachers were still active, indefatigable even, in teaching. There they found 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,’ the chief of the German school of dermatology—Prof. PIebra. Under his personal tuition they were taught to study diseases of the skin by the simple methods of observation which the naturalist em- ploys upon objects of nature, and independently of artificial keys and systems of classifications. That they had so little to unlearn fitted them the better for the instruction they received. What they learned was : that skin diseases are like other diseases ; that the cutaneous tissues are under the same laws of pathology as those of all other structures of the economy ; that they are as free and independent in the exercise of these laws as the other organs of the body; that is, that their affections are as much local dis- turbances and unconnected with circulating fluids, organic func- tions, or intangible, theoretical vices as those of the latter ; that the structural changes by which they are manifested, often tem- porary stages of progressive development, are no proper basis for the establishment of individual diseases ; and that there successful management is based on the comparative results of all methods of treatment, empirical even it may be, conducted in a careful and impartial manner in extensive series of cases. In the French capital of medicine they found abundant mate- rial for study, and teachers of ability, but a poor, because artifi- cial, school of dermatology ; elsewhere in Europe only a few isolated observers of merit in limited fields of research. When they returned from these studies abroad they first fully comprehended that deplorable condition of dermatology at home which it became their duty to correct. But the means to accom- plish this they had to create : a more general interest in the sub- ject on the part of the profession, and opportunities through the established schools and clinics to instruct students ; and progress in these labors was naturally very. slow. By their writings and otherwise, they endeavored to establish the simple and scientific teachings of their master in place of the artificial and false the- ories so generally entertained here, and succeeded in gradually convincing a few of those most interested in the advancement of medical education of the importance of giving the student some instruction in skin diseases. The teaching was at first hardly recognized by the school, smuggled in, as it were, in some in-