The early history of American dermatology / Paul E. Bechet.

  • Bechet, Paul E. (Paul Esnard), 1881-
Date:
[1942]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The early history of American dermatology / Paul E. Bechet. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Reprinted from the Archives of Dermatology and Syphilology March 1942, Vol. 45, pp. 482-505 Copyright, 1942, by American Medical Association THE EARLY HISTORY OF AMERICAN DERMATOLOGY PAUL E. BECHET, M.D. NEW YORK Scientific dermatology began on Nov. 27, 1801, when the old Hopital Saint-Louis, in Paris, was officially dedicated to the treatment of cutaneous diseases, with Jean Louis Alibert at its head. It was Alibert and later teachers, such as Beitt, Cazenave, Devergie and Bazin, who were responsible for directing the first faltering steps of American physicians toward the light of dermatologic learning. Barely one hundred years later dermatology in America has attained a commanding position in the entire medical world; it has been given professorships in practically all of the medical colleges, has an independent department—often the largest from the point of view of floor space and attendance—in the leading hospitals, with a number of hospitals completely self contained in all allied branches devoted entirely to dermatology, and has two dermatologic journals, one covering the entire dermatologic field and the other limited to dermatologic research. Up to October 1940 in dermatology alone there were four national bodies with an enthusiastic and active membership, six sectional societies, eleven state and twenty local societies. The city of New York alone supports six of these. Is all this superlative progress dependent entirely on the activity of recent years? In my opinion, decidedly no. The real reason for the present success is largely the enormous amount of groundwork done by a small band of devoted, tireless pioneers in their chosen field of medicine. It was they who plodded through the tangled skeins of dermatologic symptomatology and classification, depending entirely on exhaustive clinical notes, unusually trained analytic and photographic minds and the development of what might be called sight diagnosis but what I sometimes call the sixth dermatologic sense. All of this developed a diagnostic acumen which greatly compensated them for their lack of present day laboratory facilities, which are unfortunately depended on to such an extent by fledgling dermatologists of today as to atrophy the very qualities of acuity of vision which made early dermatologists so eminent. Presented as a part of an exhibit of memorabilia of early American derma¬ tologists at the scientific exhibit of the Section on Dermatology and Syphilology at the Ninety-Second Annual Session of the American Medical Association, Cleveland, June 2-6, 1941.
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