Girolamo Mercuriale, the First Author of a Treatise on Skin Diseases

Skin diseases are easily diagnosable by observation. Authors in ancient times already wrote on these diseases, if only succinctly. In the sixteenth century, Mercuriale, a famous Italian physician who taught in Padua, Bologna, and Pisa, wrote "The morbis cutaneis", the first book on the subject. In it, he presented a classification of skin diseases based on change of color, texture, and elevation. He described the opinion of the classic medical authors about the skin, its diseases, and how to treat those diseases. It was only two centuries later that Plenck, Willan, and his disciple Bateman introduced a better classification and terminology for these diseases.