History

Hippocrates in Greece, Celsus in Italy, and others in the Middle East made early contributions to dermatology by compounding materials to combat alopecia, pediculosis, scabies, pruritis and leprosy.

Saint Hildegard von Binger (1098-1179) is the first woman known to have studied and written about skin diseases and their therapies including the medicinal values of plants. Her book, Causae et curae or Holistic Healing17, mentions leprosy, scabies, lice, insect bites, burns. She also described entities that probably are erysipela, paronychia, contact allergies, rosacea, and rhinophyma. The discovery of Sarcoptes scabiei was announced in 1687 by Giovan Cosimo Bonomo (1663-1696)

In 1836, the New York Infirmary for Diseases of the Skin was established by Schmidt, Post, and Potter. In 1853, the dispensary for skin diseases opened at Howard Hospital in Philadelphia. In 1860, the dispensary for skin diseases in Boston was founded by James Clarke White. In 1863, the First Lecturer on skin diseases, James Clarke White, worked at Harvard Medical School. The first World Congress of Dermatology was held in Paris, France in 1889.

Between 1890 and 1950, many skin conditions and diseases were carefully described and categorized as dermatitis, infections, infestations and benign or malignant neoplasms of the skin. From 1950 through the present, rapid advances in basic skin biology research, pathology, pharmacology, surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, immunobiology and other disciplines have advance skin pharmacology into the realm of genomics, proteomics, systems biology and precisely targeted therapies.