Scientific Programme 28.08.2026

• Stadtspital Zurich:
• HOCH St. Gallen: Dennis Arnold
• USB Basel:
• LUKS Lucerne: Corsin Brand / Vera Gasser
• KSA Aarau:
• Insel Bern:

Chairs: to be defined

• Incyte
• Pierre Fabre
• Sanofi-Regeneron
• ———————
• Poster Price: Bruno Bloch
• Poster Price: UW Schnyder
• Poster Prices SSDV

Chair: Olivier Gaide

• USZ, Zurich:
• CHUV Lausanne:
• HUG Geneva:
• EOC Bellinzona:
• KiSpi Zurich:

Chairs: to be defined

TBD

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Pierre Fabre

SSDV-Committee for Political Strategy and Communication

Kristian Schneider (Stv. Direktor BAG, Bundesamt für Gesundheit)

Bettina Mutter (Bern)

Chair: Michael Geiges

Ahmad Jalili (Buochs, Switzerland)

Michael Mühlstädt (Genève, HUG)

Chairs: to be defined

Chair: to be defined

Introduction

Dermatology is an art. Just as with a painter, the visual aspect is paramount for the dermatologist. Canvas, oils (Viofom zinc oil) and dyes (brilliant green, methylene blue, pyoctanin, Castellani’s solution) and tar were – at least in classical dermatology – indispensable topical treatments. ‘Colourful patients’ were iconographically representative of dermatology, and the classic maxim applied: ‘The younger the assistants, the more colourful the patients’.

Method

Using our own records and documents**, as well as those provided by third parties, and sources accessible on the internet, we filtered out from several thousand paintings those that reveal or suggest pathological skin changes. All images used are in the public domain, so no copyright has been infringed. Clinical images and moulages were consulted for comparison.

Results

Perfect, idealised and flawless skin exists only in paintings of mythological and allegorical figures. The incidence of dermatoses depicted in paintings in no way corresponds to the frequency observed in clinical practice. Nevi are depicted most frequently. In addition, there are paintings depicting eczema, vascular and neurological disorders, tumours, autoimmune and connective tissue diseases, infections and others.

It is not only the artistic careers of the individual artists—with their era-defining and, in some cases, highly distinctive personal stylistic elements and painting techniques—that are of interest, but also the (medical) histories of the people portrayed.

Discussion

It was only the description of various efflorescences by Robert Willan and Thomas Bateman over 200 years ago that replaced the ancient understanding of the skin as a monomorphic excretory organ and paved the way for the development of modern dermatology, which is elaborately presented in the diversity of diagnoses in Hebra’s classic atlas.

Since modern dermatology, with its more than two thousand diagnoses, did not yet exist during the lifetime of the ‘Old Masters’, the artists – insofar as their patrons permitted – captured on canvas in oil and paint what they saw; These could also include disfiguring and compromising changes, such as the bulbous nose of the banker Sassetti, the rosacea of Pope Clement XIII, late-stage syphilitic changes in Gerard Lairesse, and various age-related changes.

It must be acknowledged that only a few of the suspected conditions are not supported by medical history and may be speculative. Most remain a matter of interpretation from today’s perspective – captured on canvas in oil and paint. With all due respect for the magnificent works of the ‘Old Masters’, a critical, albeit not art-historical, analysis by a detail-obsessed dermatologist from a new perspective may be  permitted.

*G. Burg, M. Geiges, C. Hug: DermARTologie. Das Inkarnat. Die Haut in der bildenden Kunst. Springer|Nature, Berlin 2022 (engl. & deutsch)

** Courtesy of  M. Geiges (Zürich), B. Wüthrich (Zürich), E. Bröcker (Würzburg), U. Wollina (Jena)

Chair: to be defined

Chair: to be defined