[Dermatosurgery and other interventional techniques in dermatology: a more than 2000 year-history]

Surgical dermatology has probably existed since the first steps of antique medicine, especially for cutaneous cancer excision and wound reparation. Wonderful descriptions of surgical flaps can be found in the Encyclopedy of Celse, a Roman doctor living in the first century AC. Major progresses in local anesthesy were achieved at the end of the XIXth century, allowing the first dermatologists of the XXth century to perform biopsies and cutaneous surgery with a good control of patient's pain. Electricity was introduced in medicine at the end of the XIXth century, and our ancestors dermatologists used it for electrocoagulation, cauterization and electric hair removal. In the « Pratique dermatologique », the first encyclopedy of dermatology published in 1900, many chapters show how important instrumental and surgical dermatology was. Pigmentary changes induced by surgery and other procedures were probably well known then but were less important than troubles due to scarring, which are mentioned in the early literature. Spontaneous or post-interventional cheloids are well discussed in the early works of Alibert, in the years 1810. This article shows that surgical dermatology is far more ancient than the creation of societies dedicated to it in the XXth century.