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Organizing American dermatology and the founding of the American Academy of Dermatology
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Organizing American dermatology and the founding of the American Academy of Dermatology Winthrope R. Hubler, Jr., M.D. Corpus Christi, TX
Born in the miasmatic mists of antiquity, growing up through centuries of complexity, and maturing in Europe, dermatology was brought to America in the early nineteenth century, and by the 1900s it became a vital part of the world's medical community. Fifty years ago American dermatologists formed an organization to bind the profession together through education and communication, the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD). Tyronic American dermatology began with Henry Bulkley in 1836/ who became the first American physician to study dermatology at the H6pital Saint-Louis in Paris before his return to New York to direct the Broome Street Infirmary for Diseases of the Skin. 2 He was the first to teach and practice dermatology in America? In 1869 with three colleagues, Bulkley founded and became President of the New York Dermatology Society, the first society dedicated to the study of skin diseases in the world? Dermatology was burgeoning in the United States, each year seemed to spawn new American dermatologic centers and masters and to see the publication of American treatises and textbooks about skin diseases, 5 but still most American dermatologists studied in Vienna, London, or Paris. In 1871 James White 6 was the first American professor of dermatology, an honor awarded by the prestigious Harvard Medical School. Henry Piffard7 was the first to give postgraduate lectures in dermatology in 1875 at the New York University Medical College, and the opening of the New York Skin and Cancer Hospital in 1882, 3 and the development of formal dermatologic departments at medical centers in New York, Chicago, Philadel-
phia, and Boston gave Americans the chance for dermatologic study at home. However, most training included European tutorials. Dermatology was a stepchild to organized medicine in the United States. Opportunities and funding for research were meager. Despite these impediments, dermatology forged ahead in the United States during the early twentieth century. The late 1920s brought changes to American medicine) Fleeing the Nazis and the instability of prewar Europe, thousands of scientists emigrated to the United States. Old World training, didacticism, skills, and energy, mixed with American ideals, tenacity, pragmatism, and occasional pugnation, began a renaissance in dermatology. Residency programs and American-trained dermatologists vaulted in quantity and quality. By early 1937 two national organizations represented dermatologists, the American Dermatological Association (ADA) and the American Medical Association (AMA). In 1876 six dermatologists sent letters proposing a national dermatologic society, and 16 men attended the organizational meeting at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia of the ADA. Twenty-nine of the approximately 50 dermatologists in America at that time joined the ADA. 9 The AMA was founded in 1847, and its Section on Dermatology and Syphilology was established in 1887 in Chicago. For decades after its beginning, the Section on Dermatology was a political arena, whose meetings were not attended by many of the extant dermatologic leaders and whose minutes were not even recorded. '~ In 1932 the ADA and the Section of Dermatology and Syphilology of the AMA cosponsored the formation of the American Board of Dermatology. 783
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Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology
Fig. 1. Original photograph of the banquet at the organizational meeting of the AAD in 1938 is displayed in the History Room at the AAD headquarters in Evanston, Illinois. Dermatologists still sought cohesiveness, and by the mid-1930s, a plethora of regional, state, and local dermatologic organizations with individual or joint meetings and publications provided educational functions for hundreds of practicing dermatologists. In 1937 eight dermatologists met in John H. Stokes' office in Philadelphia to found the Society for Investigative Dermatology (SID). SID's objectives were to encourage dermatologic research, provide a forum for discussion of research, and publish experiments, tt The United States still needed a truly representative national dermatologic organization. The ADA was limited to 100 members and could not include the more than 500 dermatologists in 1937 America, the AMA had to represent 105,460 members of all specialities t2 and could not adequately respond to the specific needs of dermatology, and the SID had specific investigatory goals; 1938 was the year of the AAD. Often historicaI events are not contemporaneously recorded, and the magic of the moment is lost. Such was almost the fate of the history of the founding of the AAD, but dennatologic historians, Lawrence Parish and John Crissey, t3 prepared a chronology for a special Bulletin of the Academy of Dermatology, which commemorated
the fortieth anniversary of the AAD, reviewed interviews with the founders collected by the first historian of the AAD, Samuel Zakon, recorded reminiscences from life members of the AAD, solicited articles from past presidents of the AAD, and sifted through the paltry, mostly unpublished accounts of the founding of the academy. Few dermatologists began the AAD, and fewer recorded the events. As early as 1932 Howard Fox of New York and others expressed interest in the formation of a national association of dermatology, perhaps patterned after the American Academy of Ophthalmology or Radiology, but the idea did not gel. On June 10, 1937, at the first SID meeting, Earl Osborne of Buffalo and Harold Cole of Cleveland informally discussed the formation of a national dermatologic organization and proposed the idea to Paul O'Leary, Chairman of the Dermatology Section of the AMA, which was also in session in Atlantic City. The next day O'Leary appointed a seven-member committee to study the feasibility of forming an American Academy of Dermatology and Syphilology. On Sept. 10, 1937, the committee, which had grown to 17, decided unanimously to found the AAD at a private session held at the University Club of Chicago as the guests of
Volume 18 Number 4, Part 2 April 1988 Oliver Ormsby. The founding fathers of the AAD were the followingS.13.~4: Harold N. Cole, M.D., Cleveland Harry R. Foerster, M.D., Milwaukee Howard Fox, M.D., New York C. Guy Lane, M.D., Boston George M. MacKee, M.D., New York Howard Morrow, M.D., San Francisco Paul O'Leary, M.D., Rochester Oliver S. Ormsby, M.D., Chicago Earl D. Osborne, M.D., Buffalo William Allen Pusey, M.D., Chicago Elmore B. Tauber, M.D., Cincinnati H. J. Templeton, M.D., Oakland Martin T. Van Studdiford, M.D., New Orleans Fred S. Weidman, M.D., Philadelphia Richard S. Weiss, M.D., St. Louis Udo J. Wile, M.D., Ann Arbor Fred Wise, M.D., New York The organizational meeting of the AAD was held at the Statler Hotel in Detroit on Jan. 14 and 15, 1938, and met cooperatively and concurrently with several regional groups--the Central States, the Mississippi Valley, the Chicago, and the Detroit dermatologic associations. The meeting was chaired by Howard Fox and attended by more than 300 persons, about 40% of American dermatologists. A constitution was adopted; Fox was elected president, O'Leary, vice president, Osborne, secretary, and Clyde Cummer, treasurer. The AAD espoused democratic principles~; constitutional provisions required all nominating committees to proposed two names for every office, as well as allowing nominations from the floor, and terms of office for the directors were limited. All "reputable" dermatologists with at least 3 years of dermatologic practice, training, or teaching were invited to join, but after Jan. 1, 1940, certification by the American Board of Dermatology and Syphilology was required for new fellows. Affil-
Organizing American dermatology
785
late, noncertified and junior, and in-training membership categories were established. Annual dues were $10. The inaugural meeting had so many scientific presentations that the common complaint was that it was impossible to be in three rooms at the same time.~5 A live clinical session at Harper Hospital was the only meeting held outside of the Statler Hotel. A banquet was attended by more than 200 members (Fig. 1). The first Annual Meeting was planned for St. Louis in November 1938. The AAD began. REFERENCES 1. CrisseyJ, Parish L. The dermatologyand syphilologyof the nineteenthcentury. New York: Prager, 1981:282-309. 2. BecbetPE. The early history of American dermatology. Arch Dermatol Syphilology 1942;45:482-505. 3. BechetPE. Rise and growthof dermatologyin New York. Arch Dermatol Syphilology 1951;54:273-81. 4. BechetPE. An outline of the achievements of American dermatology ,arranged in chronologicalorder. Bull Hist Med 1946;19:29I-318. 5. OrmsbyOS. Historyof dermatology, 1847 to 1947. Arch Dermatol Syphilology 1949;59:374-95. 6. Bechet PE. James Clark White. Ann Med Hist 1935; 7:503-8. 7. BechetPE. Henry Granger Piffard: a great factor in the progress of American dermatology. Arch Dermatol Syphilology 1938;37:781-6. 8. SulzbergerMS. From here to there: my many lives. Institute for Dermatologic Communicationand Education by Skin and Allergy News, 1986:129-55. 9. BcchetPE. Founding and first meeting of the American DermatologicalAssociation. Arch Dermatol Syphilology 1949;60:24-43. 10. Corlett WT, Beehet PE. Section on Dermatology and Syphilo/ogyof the American Medical Association. Arch Dermatol Syphilology I937;36:45-6. 1t. Sulzberger MB. Togetherness: the Society For Investigative Dermatology. Bull Acad Dermatol 1978;35-7. 12. Davis NS, ed. Society proceedings. JAMA 1937; 108:1507. 13. Parish LC. The founding of the Academy. Bull Acad Dermatol 1978;1-3. 14. Fox H, ed. American Academy of Dermatology and Syphilology, news and comments. Arch Dermatol Syphilology 1937;36:853. 15. Fox H, ed. American Academy of Dermatology and Syphilology. news and comments. Arch Dermatol Syphilology 1938;37:371-2.
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Organizing American dermatology and the founding of the American Academy of Dermatology Winthrope R. Hubler, Jr., M.D. Corpus Christi, TX
Born in the miasmatic mists of antiquity, growing up through centuries of complexity, and maturing in Europe, dermatology was brought to America in the early nineteenth century, and by the 1900s it became a vital part of the world's medical community. Fifty years ago American dermatologists formed an organization to bind the profession together through education and communication, the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD). Tyronic American dermatology began with Henry Bulkley in 1836/ who became the first American physician to study dermatology at the H6pital Saint-Louis in Paris before his return to New York to direct the Broome Street Infirmary for Diseases of the Skin. 2 He was the first to teach and practice dermatology in America? In 1869 with three colleagues, Bulkley founded and became President of the New York Dermatology Society, the first society dedicated to the study of skin diseases in the world? Dermatology was burgeoning in the United States, each year seemed to spawn new American dermatologic centers and masters and to see the publication of American treatises and textbooks about skin diseases, 5 but still most American dermatologists studied in Vienna, London, or Paris. In 1871 James White 6 was the first American professor of dermatology, an honor awarded by the prestigious Harvard Medical School. Henry Piffard7 was the first to give postgraduate lectures in dermatology in 1875 at the New York University Medical College, and the opening of the New York Skin and Cancer Hospital in 1882, 3 and the development of formal dermatologic departments at medical centers in New York, Chicago, Philadel-
phia, and Boston gave Americans the chance for dermatologic study at home. However, most training included European tutorials. Dermatology was a stepchild to organized medicine in the United States. Opportunities and funding for research were meager. Despite these impediments, dermatology forged ahead in the United States during the early twentieth century. The late 1920s brought changes to American medicine) Fleeing the Nazis and the instability of prewar Europe, thousands of scientists emigrated to the United States. Old World training, didacticism, skills, and energy, mixed with American ideals, tenacity, pragmatism, and occasional pugnation, began a renaissance in dermatology. Residency programs and American-trained dermatologists vaulted in quantity and quality. By early 1937 two national organizations represented dermatologists, the American Dermatological Association (ADA) and the American Medical Association (AMA). In 1876 six dermatologists sent letters proposing a national dermatologic society, and 16 men attended the organizational meeting at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia of the ADA. Twenty-nine of the approximately 50 dermatologists in America at that time joined the ADA. 9 The AMA was founded in 1847, and its Section on Dermatology and Syphilology was established in 1887 in Chicago. For decades after its beginning, the Section on Dermatology was a political arena, whose meetings were not attended by many of the extant dermatologic leaders and whose minutes were not even recorded. '~ In 1932 the ADA and the Section of Dermatology and Syphilology of the AMA cosponsored the formation of the American Board of Dermatology. 783
784
Hubler
Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology
Fig. 1. Original photograph of the banquet at the organizational meeting of the AAD in 1938 is displayed in the History Room at the AAD headquarters in Evanston, Illinois. Dermatologists still sought cohesiveness, and by the mid-1930s, a plethora of regional, state, and local dermatologic organizations with individual or joint meetings and publications provided educational functions for hundreds of practicing dermatologists. In 1937 eight dermatologists met in John H. Stokes' office in Philadelphia to found the Society for Investigative Dermatology (SID). SID's objectives were to encourage dermatologic research, provide a forum for discussion of research, and publish experiments, tt The United States still needed a truly representative national dermatologic organization. The ADA was limited to 100 members and could not include the more than 500 dermatologists in 1937 America, the AMA had to represent 105,460 members of all specialities t2 and could not adequately respond to the specific needs of dermatology, and the SID had specific investigatory goals; 1938 was the year of the AAD. Often historicaI events are not contemporaneously recorded, and the magic of the moment is lost. Such was almost the fate of the history of the founding of the AAD, but dennatologic historians, Lawrence Parish and John Crissey, t3 prepared a chronology for a special Bulletin of the Academy of Dermatology, which commemorated
the fortieth anniversary of the AAD, reviewed interviews with the founders collected by the first historian of the AAD, Samuel Zakon, recorded reminiscences from life members of the AAD, solicited articles from past presidents of the AAD, and sifted through the paltry, mostly unpublished accounts of the founding of the academy. Few dermatologists began the AAD, and fewer recorded the events. As early as 1932 Howard Fox of New York and others expressed interest in the formation of a national association of dermatology, perhaps patterned after the American Academy of Ophthalmology or Radiology, but the idea did not gel. On June 10, 1937, at the first SID meeting, Earl Osborne of Buffalo and Harold Cole of Cleveland informally discussed the formation of a national dermatologic organization and proposed the idea to Paul O'Leary, Chairman of the Dermatology Section of the AMA, which was also in session in Atlantic City. The next day O'Leary appointed a seven-member committee to study the feasibility of forming an American Academy of Dermatology and Syphilology. On Sept. 10, 1937, the committee, which had grown to 17, decided unanimously to found the AAD at a private session held at the University Club of Chicago as the guests of
Volume 18 Number 4, Part 2 April 1988 Oliver Ormsby. The founding fathers of the AAD were the followingS.13.~4: Harold N. Cole, M.D., Cleveland Harry R. Foerster, M.D., Milwaukee Howard Fox, M.D., New York C. Guy Lane, M.D., Boston George M. MacKee, M.D., New York Howard Morrow, M.D., San Francisco Paul O'Leary, M.D., Rochester Oliver S. Ormsby, M.D., Chicago Earl D. Osborne, M.D., Buffalo William Allen Pusey, M.D., Chicago Elmore B. Tauber, M.D., Cincinnati H. J. Templeton, M.D., Oakland Martin T. Van Studdiford, M.D., New Orleans Fred S. Weidman, M.D., Philadelphia Richard S. Weiss, M.D., St. Louis Udo J. Wile, M.D., Ann Arbor Fred Wise, M.D., New York The organizational meeting of the AAD was held at the Statler Hotel in Detroit on Jan. 14 and 15, 1938, and met cooperatively and concurrently with several regional groups--the Central States, the Mississippi Valley, the Chicago, and the Detroit dermatologic associations. The meeting was chaired by Howard Fox and attended by more than 300 persons, about 40% of American dermatologists. A constitution was adopted; Fox was elected president, O'Leary, vice president, Osborne, secretary, and Clyde Cummer, treasurer. The AAD espoused democratic principles~; constitutional provisions required all nominating committees to proposed two names for every office, as well as allowing nominations from the floor, and terms of office for the directors were limited. All "reputable" dermatologists with at least 3 years of dermatologic practice, training, or teaching were invited to join, but after Jan. 1, 1940, certification by the American Board of Dermatology and Syphilology was required for new fellows. Affil-
Organizing American dermatology
785
late, noncertified and junior, and in-training membership categories were established. Annual dues were $10. The inaugural meeting had so many scientific presentations that the common complaint was that it was impossible to be in three rooms at the same time.~5 A live clinical session at Harper Hospital was the only meeting held outside of the Statler Hotel. A banquet was attended by more than 200 members (Fig. 1). The first Annual Meeting was planned for St. Louis in November 1938. The AAD began. REFERENCES 1. CrisseyJ, Parish L. The dermatologyand syphilologyof the nineteenthcentury. New York: Prager, 1981:282-309. 2. BecbetPE. The early history of American dermatology. Arch Dermatol Syphilology 1942;45:482-505. 3. BechetPE. Rise and growthof dermatologyin New York. Arch Dermatol Syphilology 1951;54:273-81. 4. BechetPE. An outline of the achievements of American dermatology ,arranged in chronologicalorder. Bull Hist Med 1946;19:29I-318. 5. OrmsbyOS. Historyof dermatology, 1847 to 1947. Arch Dermatol Syphilology 1949;59:374-95. 6. Bechet PE. James Clark White. Ann Med Hist 1935; 7:503-8. 7. BechetPE. Henry Granger Piffard: a great factor in the progress of American dermatology. Arch Dermatol Syphilology 1938;37:781-6. 8. SulzbergerMS. From here to there: my many lives. Institute for Dermatologic Communicationand Education by Skin and Allergy News, 1986:129-55. 9. BcchetPE. Founding and first meeting of the American DermatologicalAssociation. Arch Dermatol Syphilology 1949;60:24-43. 10. Corlett WT, Beehet PE. Section on Dermatology and Syphilo/ogyof the American Medical Association. Arch Dermatol Syphilology I937;36:45-6. 1t. Sulzberger MB. Togetherness: the Society For Investigative Dermatology. Bull Acad Dermatol 1978;35-7. 12. Davis NS, ed. Society proceedings. JAMA 1937; 108:1507. 13. Parish LC. The founding of the Academy. Bull Acad Dermatol 1978;1-3. 14. Fox H, ed. American Academy of Dermatology and Syphilology, news and comments. Arch Dermatol Syphilology 1937;36:853. 15. Fox H, ed. American Academy of Dermatology and Syphilology. news and comments. Arch Dermatol Syphilology 1938;37:371-2.