lx INTRODUCTION
The first society for the study of skin diseases was established in New York City, the New York Dermatological Society. It was organized in 1869 and was the first strictly dermatological society in the world. The New York Dermatological Society has always been a clinical society, and its members are especially fortunate in being able to see and study many rare and peculiar specimens of cutaneous disorders.
In 1876 the American Dermatological Association was founded; its organizers were: Drs. L. Duncan Bulkley and George H. Fox, of New York, Louis A. Duhring, of Philadelphia, Edward Wigglesworth, of Boston, Isaac E. Atkinson, of Baltimore, and Lundsford P. Yandell, of Louisville; these six gentlemen issued an invitation to about fifty physicians in different parts of the United States who were more or less interested in dermatology, to join them in organizing a national association for the study of dermatology.
Twenty-nine accepted the invitation, and the association was success- fully launched at Niagara Falls, September, 1877. The papers read before the American Dermatological Association are of high order, and the association stands with the best of the scientific bodies of the medical world.
In recent years dermatological societies have been organized in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago; all, with the exception of Brooklyn, are still in existence and are helping maintain the high standard that this specialty has attained in America.
There is no record of any special instruction by lecture upon this sub- ject before 1836; then, Dr. Henry D. Bulkley, who had studied at the St. Louis Hospital, Paris, gave a course of seven lectures at the Broome Street Infirmary for diseases of the skin.
In 1841 he delivered a course of lectures on diseases of the skin during the spring term of the College of Physicians and Surgeons.
In 1861 Harvard University established a lectureship on diseases of the skin. Instruction on this subject was also given at the Rush Medical College, Chicago, 1865.
The same year (1865) regular lectures were given at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York.
In 1866 Bellevue Hospital Medical College, New York, and Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, created a lectureship on dermatology and venereal diseases.
In 1867 New York University established a professorship; the uni- versity had had lectures on dermatology two years previous to this.
In the seventies the Long Island College Hospital and the University of Maryland created lectures or professorships in skin diseases, and now all the representative medical schools have this branch of medicine prop- erly taught.
