Abecedarium: who am I? N'.

I was born under the Austrian monarchy, on October 23, 1837, in the town of Kaposvar in the province of Hungary, youngest but one of a very poor Jewish family. I grew up with the loving support of my parents, who encouraged me throughout my schooling and studies. In 1856, I passed my doctorate in medicine at the University of Vienna, which was then among the greatest institutions of learning in the world — and changed my surname, Kohn, to that, inspired by my home town, under which you know me. To make a living, I moved to Löw in 1863, to run the sanatorium there. It was here that I met my mentor, Pr Ferdinand Ritter von Hebra, the leading light of Viennese dermatology. As it happened, we became good friends, and he appointed me as his departmental assistant in the Vienna General Hospital. Having published a monograph entitled ‘‘Syphilis of the Mouth, Throat, Nose and Larynx’’ and developed it into a thesis; I was named Specialist Professor of Syphilis in 1866, and later Professor in Dermatology. Hebra and I together produced almost all of the reference works in our specialty, and it is generally agreed that between us we founded modern dermatology. The twin peaks of my fulfilment came in 1869, when I married Hebra’s daughter, Martha, and when, on her father’s death, I succeeded by Imperial decree to the Chair of Dermatology on February 8th, 1881. This joy and achievement, unfortunately, did not always win me, friends. William Dubreuilh, for example, who was the first to hold the Chair of Dermatology at Bordeaux, went so far as to say of me that ‘‘He took Hebra’s daughter, house, chair and clientele, and left the rest to his brother-in-law Hans’’. Others insinuated that I had changed my surname only so as to convert to Catholicism and marry my mentor’s daughter — whereas in point of fact, it was simply to avoid being confused with the many other physicians whose names were similar to mine. But I shall not dignify any of that with further mention; I prefer to return to the subject of medicine. . . You should know that I was the first to describe, among other things, the butterfly-wing facial rash typical of lupus erythematosus, and also rhinophyma and rhinoscleroma, and notably a bizarre pathologic entity to which, in 1912, 10 years after my death, the scientific community gave the name under which you know me. I published the first five case reports in the Archiv für Dermatologie und Syphilis in