History of Latin American Dermatology

Historical sketch of Chilean Dermatologycourse was launched in 1998 and Enrique Wageman has been in charge since then.Other new medical schools are not mentioned because they are very recent, becausetheir Dermatology courses are still incipient or because of the difficulty in obtaining data.Textbooks for undergraduate educationUntil 1960 there were no undergraduate Dermatology textbooks published by Chileandermatologists, so that only the publications of French Dermatology and those of Spanishor Argentine dermatologists were employed. The textbook by Jean Darier, later publishedby his disciples (Jean Civatte among them), was the main reference source forspecialists. Students used to employ informal classroom notes taken in previous years orhanded over by the professors themselves as outlines, until in 1960 Florencio Prats publisheda multi-author book written by him and the collaborators of his chair at theAguirre Hospital. Nevertheless, that book never managed to became established as atextbook in common undergraduate use because its contents were more ambitious.Later, for many years an unpublished compendium of class notes was used, written byHernán Hevia and some of his collaborators. This compendium served as the basis forthe publication, toward 1990, and appropriately updated, of a multi-author collaborativetextbook by the professors of the same chair; Juan Honeyman and Raquel Nahuel actedas editors. Two other multi-author textbooks have also appeared: one in 2001, edited byMaría Isabel Herane and Francisco Urbina, and another in 2003 edited by María LuisaPérez-Cotapos and Ariel Hasson of PUC; both books constitute a worthy contribution, althoughthey surpass the scope of an undergraduate course.Graduate educationUntil the 1960s, the graduate teaching of Dermatology to physicians for the expresspurpose of training specialists was carried out in an informal and irregular manner atthe major hospital centers. In general, knowledge of the specialized field was acquiredby a kind of practical training ensuing from young doctors, paid or unpaid, joining treatmentservices at services and chairs, learning Dermatology from strict observation of diagnosticand therapeutic conducts of the professors or dermatologists with greaterexperience. Dermatologists already trained and linked to teaching hospitals or to thosesolely providing treatment always willingly took on the responsibility of training theseyoung physicians who joined voluntarily.In 1966 UCH launched the offer of quotas in scholarships/residencies in Dermatology,lasting 2 years, leading to the degree of specialist. This represented the first step taken bya university in Chile to offer graduate studies in this specialized field; the first to take thecourse and graduate from it was Alan Rojas Canala (1966-1968). The UCH quotas in scholarships/residenciesin Dermatology were not filled for several years because of the abovementionedscarce interest in this specialized branch; the cases of Carlos Vera andFernando Oyarzún were exceptions. The lack of interest was demonstrated by the lownumber of physicians (only 12) who undertook this program between 1966 and 1980. TheUCH centers that offered training for dermatologists were at that time the Aguirre, St. Johnof God and St. Louis/Savior hospitals. Over those 14 years, education was haphazard, withouta definite internship program nor theoretical courses, and included the treatment bothof outpatients (general and STDs) and of hospitalized cases, with partial tutorship by teachingdermatologists; regarding this period the residents in training especially rememberHernán Hevia, Roger Lamas, Ignacio González Díaz, Marco Antonio de la Parra, Raúl Alarcón,Isidoro Pasmanik, Daniel Villalobos and René Wolf as notable tutors.In 1980 the full professor Juan Honeyman named Rubén Guarda as coordinator ofgraduate education to redesign the UCH program for the training of specialists. Dr.173