Pioneers in Dermatology and Venereology: an interview with Prof. Lawrence C. Parish

American Medical Association Fellowship 1960–1962 Sofia Academy of Medicine M.D. (Hon.) 2008 What brought you to Dermatology? As a fourth-year medical student, I took a month’s rotation at the University of Pennsylvania. Dermatology came alive under the leadership of Donald M. Pillsbury, Walter B. Shelley and Albert M. Kligman. Their multi-authored textbook, Dermatology, had brought dermatology into the modern era. When Dermatology, by Pillsbury, Shelley and Kligman, made its debut in 1956, it was widely heralded as the first new dermatology text to appear in many years. A handsome one-volume work of 1282 pages, it was unique because it emphasized diagnosis through the study of primary and secondary lesions, distribution patterns, associated systemic findings, ‘applied’ physiology and psychologic aspects. It carefully avoided using terms that the authors considered complex and outmoded as designations for dermatologic disease. I attended Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, where dermatology was not held with the esteem that it was or is in Philadelphia. I was hooked, and save for two years in the Army, I have been in Philadelphia ever since.