History of Latin American Dermatology

ADAME, ARIAS, ARENAS, CAMPOS, NEUMANN, ORTIZ, RUIZ MALDONADO, SAÚLFigure 10. Dr. RafaelLucio (1819-1886)Figure 11. Dr. RicardoE. Cicero (1869-1935)Figure 12. Dr. JesúsGonzález Urueña(1868-1957)Figure 13. The clinicalform of leprosydescribed by LucioDermatologyAt the outset of independent Mexico, after1821, the first signs were traced of an incipientDermatology and the first specialized publicationsissued. The names of Ladislao de la Pascua,Rafael Lucio, Ricardo Cicero, EugenioLatapí and later, already in the twentieth century,those of Jesús González Urueña and SalvadorGonzález Herrejón appear linked to theteaching of some Dermatology matters (Figures10, 11 y 12).Lucio, for example, gave his classes at theHospital of St. Andrew, including subjects likelupus erythematosus, leprosy, syphilis, scabies, and tungiasis (Figure 13).During the meetings of the Academy of Medicine of December 1851 andJanuary 1852 he presented his Brief Treatise on the Disease of St. Lazarusor Elephantiasis of the Greeks, in which he summarized all his observations,over his nineteen years as head of the second Hospital of St. Lazarus, of thevariety that nowadays carries his name. Nevertheless, in this first period ofindependent Mexico, Dermatology did not attract much interest; Sorianopoints out that in 1888 only two of the 232 physicians who had graduatedin the previous 6 years treated patients with skin diseases (17,18).With the above-mentioned physicians who were born in the nineteenthcentury and some others who worked until the early twentieth, Dermatologywas born in Mexico, becoming consolidated as a specialized field on February 5,1905, when the General Hospital of Mexico was inaugurated and a pavilion opened forskin patients.■ Contemporary period periodThe foundations for what was called the Mexican School of Dermatology were set byGonzález Herrejón and Fernando Latapí. The teaching of Dermatology began in the earlytwentieth century at the General Hospital of Mexico and at the Pascua DermatologicalCenter; later, graduate education was launched at those institutions and at the Institutefor Sanitation and Tropical Diseases; still later, at the Mexican Social Security Institute,at the Dr. Manuel Gea González General Hospital, and — in the interior of the country —at the Institute of Dermatology in Jalisco, University Hospital of Monterrey, University ofSan Luis Potosí and finally at other public institutions. Nowadays two dermatologicalgroupings exist: the Mexican Society of Dermatology, founded in 1936, and the MexicanAcademy of Dermatology (1952); both belong to the International League of DermatologicalSocieties and were in charge of organizing the Eleventh International Congress ofDermatology held in Mexico in 1977.Dermatología. Revista Mexicana was born in 1956, and in 1987 launched a new stageas the official organ of the two institutions. Since 1975, there exists a Mexican Council ofDermatology and reaccreditation is currently indispensable.The specialized field is already almost a century old in Mexico. Some of the first dermatologistsin Latin America were trained in our country, although the influence was initiallyEuropean; the new generations, on the other hand, come under the stronginfluence of United States Dermatology.Currently there are around 2,000 dermatologists in our country. Mexico is considered264