The Dermatologist and Color

The idea for an issue on color and the skin was initiated by the 2017 exhibit “Breathing Color” that had been created by the new Design Museum in London, England. While variations in color may play a significant role in diagnosing a skin disease, little attention has been directed towards the influence that color may be used to identify a dermatologic disease and even monitor a therapeutic agent. The reader need only to recall how early dermatology atlases were hand colored to provide a more realistic picture of a disease

Bibliography of secondary sources on the history of dermatology III. Books, monographs, and chapters in English supplemented through 2005.

Providing supplements to the history of dermatology bibliographic record has been a continuous project for the past four decades. When the endeavor was initiated, the original authors decided that only contributions in English and those directly related to dermatology, excluding sexually transmitted diseases as such, would be indexed. There is the perennial question of whether such a manually created bibiliographic project has a need. The obvious answer remains yes. While Index Medicus has expanded the number of journals that are indexed, the number of dermatology publications currently included by Index Medicus is just over fifty. Granted, most of the papers of dermatologic interest are included in these journals, some contributions are to be found in non-indexed publications. In addition, many documents of an historical interest or of a biographical nature are not necessarily selected for indexing in Index Medicus. These installments are the first since 1980 for which the late John Thorne Crissey (1924-2009) has not contributed. His knowledge of the history of dermatology and his intellectual support are greatly missed

Why Medical (and Dermatologic) Practice Has Become So Convoluted: The Complexity/Convolutional/Obfuscatory Kleptocracies.

Consider dermatology (or medical) practice from the aspect of those who manage, and seek to glean a profit from, medical management corporations, including but not limited to third party payers. Although much of the complexity burden thrust upon doctors’ offices is borne by the offices and doctors, there is also much that is borne by the companies, and the entire process appears to make no sense whatsoever. How can the business professionals who run these outfits make such blunders? Let us approach this question by examining another industry: fast food franchising

Updating the dermatologic nomenclature: names that are good or bad.

Dermatology probably has the largest vocabulary of any of the medical specialties,1 a statement to which we can attest when we reviewed aspects of the Dermatology Lexicon project. Some terms are derived from the Latin or Greek and present spelling problems to all but a select few. Examples include acrokeratosis verruciformis and pterigium. Other diseases carry names that are such a mouthful that few can call them out without the interruption of breathing. These might include erosio interdigitalis blastomycetica and dermatitis exudative discoid and lichenoid of Sulzberger and Garbe. No wonder the former is now referred to simply as candidosis, or is it, candidiasis, and the latter as oid-oid disease or Sulzberger-Garbe disease

Barnacles, old age marks, or just plain seborrheic keratoses.

Growing older may mean more wrinkles and creaking joints, but why does it also entail an accumulation of barnacles. These brown, somewhat friable, often warty lesions are more common on senior citizens but are not necessarily limited to the chronologically challenged. Seborrheic keratoses (SKs) can be easily recognized (fig 1), but the itching and the occasional scratch-induced dermatitis make them more than a cosmetic nuisance. (fig 2) SKs can go by a variety of names, ranging from basal cell papillomas, senile warts, and senile keratoses to seborrheic verrucae and verrucous senilis. The various terms provide no more information on their natural history or the etiology of these benign lesions, other than that age is somehow associated. (1

COVID-19, Serendipity, and Strange Interlude: Gloria in Absurdicum with an Apology to Ovid

The absurd edicts initially issued by several governors, including those of Michigan and New York, prohibiting physicians from ordering hydroxychloroquine for patients suspected of or diagnosed with COV-19 are reprehensible. Their reasoning is beyond the pale. Hydroxychloroquine was first approved by the FDA in 1955 and has a remarkable safety record in its use as a preventative for malaria and in the treatment of several immunologic and/or light induced diseases. Its use came about serendipitously, and its mechanism of action is unclear, but the fact remains that it seems to work