History & Terminology
Blaschko lines: who was Dr Blaschko ?
Friday, October 24th, 2014Blaschko lines are a distribution of skin lines which can be found in certain dermatosis, often genetic. Examples include incontinentia pigmenti, epidermal nevus, lichen striatus… These lines carry the name of Dr Alfred Blaschko (1858-1922), a German dermatologist who described the lines on a statue and published the pictoral diagram in 1901. The cause of […]
Auspitz Sign in Psoriasis – who named it ?
Friday, October 24th, 2014What is it ? It is the presence of pinpoint bleeding when the scales are removed from the surface of psoriasis lesions. In French, it is called “signe de la rosée sanglante” which translates to: dew which looks like blood There are full of histopathological details, but this is nothing surprizing from a master in […]
Kaposi’s sarcoma: remembering the condition existed before HIV
Friday, October 24th, 2014Moriz Kaposi (1837-1902) was a Hungarian dermatologist practicing in Vienna, at the time the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He described Idiopathic Multiple Pigment Sarcoma of the skin in 1878 – now widely called Kaposi’s sarcoma. Since then it is not fully idiopathic anymore and is due to reactivation of the Human Herpesvirus type 8: […]
Pityriasis Rosea: Who named it ?
Friday, October 24th, 2014Also known as Pityriasis Rosea of Gibert, it was named by a French dermatologist in 1860. Dr Camille Gibert (1797-1866) was a student of Laurent Biett, a Swiss dermatologist (who described the collarette of Biett, a sign of secondary syphilis). Gibert also made many inoculation experiments being able to demonstrate the contagiosity of secondary syphilis. […]
Syphilis – How was the cause found ?
Friday, October 24th, 2014In 1905 , the cause of syphilis was found by two German dermatologists: a spirochaete bacteria called Treponema Pallidum When presented at a meeting of the Berlin medical society, the president, Prof Ernst Von Bergmann, cut him short with words he no doubt later regretted. “This terminates the discussion – until the next cause of […]
