Louis A. Duhring, M. D., Pathfinder for Dermatology

Louis A. Duhring, M.D., Pathfinder for Dermatology, by LAWRENCE CHARLES PARISH, Springfield, Illinois, C. C. Thomas, 1967, pp. xviii, 137, illus., $4.40. Duhring was one of the few American physicians of his time to become well known in Europe. His textbook on diseases of the skin (1877) appeared in an Italian edition (1882) and in a French also (1883); a little later there were Russian and Chinese editions. A collection of his papers on dermatitis herpetiformis were included in Selected Monographs on Dermatology published by the New Sydenham Society of London in 1893 on the invitation of Sir Jonathan Hutchinson. He also contributed to the International Atlas of Rare Skin Diseases prepared by Unna in Hamburg. Louis Adolphus Duhring was born in Philadelphia in December 1845, a son of a prosperous German business man who had emigrated from Mecklenburg in 1818 and a Swiss mother. Although his father had written a book on education advocating public schools in a democratic country he was sent to a private school and then, at the age of fifteen, to the University of Pennsylvania. He was brought up to be bilingual in a family which used both English and German and to have a love for music in a home where almost every member played some instrument or sang. At the university he studied at first the arts, algebra, geometry and chemistry, but in June 1863, when seventeen, joined the infantry to fight for the Federalists in the civil war. He saw little action and in the autumn of 1864 entered the university medical school and later had clinical training at the Philadelphia Hospital. He became Doctor of Medicine in March 1867, the title of his thesis being An Essay on Nervous Gout. In order to become an intern or resident physician at the same hospital a written and oral examination was required, which Duhring passed. He started his internship in April 1867 and soon acquired an interest in dermatology. As a student he had received no training in this subject except to be told that 'all skin diseases can be divided into two types: those that are helped by sulfur and those that are not'. Early in 1868 his fiancee died. He never married, but later lived with his sister to whom he was greatly attached. In August 1868 Duhring arrived in Europe in order to study dermatology and went first to Vienna where Ferdinand von Hebra (1816-80) and his son-in-law Moritz Kaposi (1837-1902) were so greatly advancing the subject. From Vienna he went on to l'Hopital St. Louis in Paris where Bazin (1807-78) and Vidal (1825-93) were working and which, fifty years before, the great Alibert (17681837) had made the world's centre of dermatology. Thence Duhring went to London where he came under the influence of Jonathan Hutchinson (1828-1913), Charles Fagge (1838-83), Tilbury Fox (1836-79) and Erasmus Wilson (1809-84). Before returning to Philadelphia in the spring of 1870 he visited dermatological clinics in Norway, Germany and Turkey. He then 'opened an office' limiting his practice to dermatology. Specialization such as this was rare in the United States at the time, though there were a few skin clinics in Philadelphia. Duhring opened one of his own in 1871 and this proved most successful. In 1875 (not 1876 as in the text) he was appointed Clinical Professor of Skin Diseases at the University of Pennsylvania.