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Dermatology Is A Specialty; Dermatology Is Not A Subspecialty., Lawrence Parish, Larry E Millikan

Department of Dermatology and Cutaneous Biology Faculty Papers

Specialization began in American medicine about the time of the War Between the States. Several factors spurred the direction of practitioners away from being the so-called “complete physicians. Most important were the advances in instrumentation made by the 1860’s, which allowed ophthalmology and otolaryngology to develop into distinct divisions of allopathic medicine; sometimes, they even joined together, viz eye, ear, nose, and throat specialist. Dermatology, too, became one of the early specialties for a myriad of reasons ranging from the obvious – visual inspection - to the mundane, viz. default – syphilis was too ugly and complicated for every physician …