Forty years on - the ever changing pattern and progress of venereology.

InTrOduCTIOn This is a tribute to an enormously important Viennese professor of dermatology who has influenced so many of those who have learnt from him and follow him improving the science and practice of dermatovenereology and especially sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in recent times. It is also recognition of Alpine-Danube-Adria (ADA) for its important role in education in STIs and skin diseases over the remarkable years of the 1990s to 2010. Forty years covers my time from being a junior doctor until the present. It covers a time of remarkable achievements in STIs, especially since the advent in diagnostics of the development of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique of DNA amplification in the 1980s. It covers the time of HIV/AIDS and its interaction with other STIs. It covers the time of enormous advances in our understanding and treatment in one form or another of herpes genitalis, human papilloma virus genital wart infection and hepatitis B. It has also been a time where there have been enormous changes to our understanding of human sexuality.