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In 1879, during his specialization in dermatology, Albert Ludwig Sigesmund Neisser (1855-1916) discovered the bacterial cause of gonorrhoea. The gonococcus - Neisseria gonorrhoea - would, however, not bear his name until 1933. Neisser's early research focused primarily on venereal diseases, syphilis in particular, and on leprosy. Later, as a hygienist, he became a passionate advocate of public clinics for venereal diseases, regulated prostitution, and health education. In 1916, Neisser died of sepsis after lithotripsy for nephrolithiasis. His scientific inheritance includes many publications on a variety of venereal and skin diseases and public health-related topics, and textbooks such as Ikonographia dermatologica and Stereoskopischer Medizinischer Atlas.

Jovan Nenadović was a famous physician and meritorious citizen of Novi Sad. The occasion to restore the memory of him has arisen sixty years after his death. PROFESSIONAL CARRIER: Jovan Nenadović graduated from Medical Faculty in Graz in 1900. In 1919 he established Dermatovenerology Department at the City Hospital in Novi Sad and Venerology Out-patient Department. He was lifelong honorable president of Dermatovenerology Section of Serbian Medical Society. Nenadović was the first president of the Medical Chamber of Danube Banovina and president of the Society of Physicians of Vojvodina. SOCIAL ACTIVITIES: Nenadović was a vice president of Red Cross Society of Banat, Backa and Baranja. He was well known as patron of the arts, he was a president of the Association of Cultural Societies of Novi Sad and a member of board of Matica Srpska.

Dr Anto Marić (1897-1982) was born in Vukšić in Bosnia. He completed medical studies in Vienna and Prague. He published his results from the Department for dermatovenerology at Sarajevo State Hospital, Bosnia. He engaged himself in the movement against alcoholism, too. Later he moved to the Neuropsychiatry ward in Belgrade and was appointed manager in a new psychiatry hospital in Kovin, Serbia. For years he had been a community physician in Stanišić in Vojvodina. During the Second World War, he worked in the psychiatric hospital Vrapče at the outskirts of Zagreb, Croatia and after the war he became the head of a thermal spa in Srebrenica, Bosnia. After specialisation in balneology, he came to Rijeka to overlook the reconstruction of a thermal spa near Buzet in Istria. He made use of his long experience in dermatovenerology, neuropsychiatry and balneology to promote the importance of the unity between physical and psychological for maintaining human health.

The journal's centenary this year provides a good chance to analyze the changes that have taken place in Spanish dermatovenereology. At such an important milestone, the tendency is to highlight major scientific achievements while neglecting the many more mundane years. This historical critique aims to explain the merit of our mentors--given the adverse and unstable scientific, economic, and social situation--in merely aiming to copy the best of other more stable countries to create dermatology structures and programs from which we have all since benefited. Likewise, a more recent period and one about which less has been written--the 1980s--is evoked.

The Deutsche Gesellschaft zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten (German Society for Control of Sexually Transmitted Diseases) was founded in 1902. After World War II, many regional groups existed. The drafting of the Gesetz zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten (Laws regarding Control of Sexually Transmitted Diseases), public education regarding the increasing rates of STDs, continuing medical education especially regarding the use of penicillin in syphilis and gonorrhea, and the major scientific advances in this field stimulated the re-formation of a national organization. Members of the new organization were important in the development of more sophisticated tests for syphilis in the 1960s, for the decrease in incidence of gonorrhea in the 1970s, and for advances in the diagnosis and treatment of mycoplasma, Chlamydia trachomatis, herpes genitalis and human papilloma viruses. This new information was also disseminated via a variety of continuing medical education activities. The hopes of the general public and physicians that such therapeutic advances would make scientific research in the area of STDs unattractive or even unnecessary proved to be overly optimistic. The worldwide epidemic of HIV/AIDS confronted the society with a new major challenge in the early 1980s.

The dermatological clinic in Zwickau celebrated 50 years of existence in 1996. We review the clinics history, starting with its founding in 1946 because of the upsurge in venerological diseases during the post-world war II years. The most important clinic directory and their scientific activities are described.

In 1861 a professorship in syphilology was founded at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. However, unlike the conditions in Denmark, Finland and Norway, a combined chair in dermatology and syphilology was not established until in 1927. The main reason for this delay was that, according to the laws applicable to the hospitals of Sweden, patients with venereal diseases could be treated solely in special hospitals ("kurhus"). Only in 1901, when these laws were changed, it was possible to establish departments for both skin and venereal diseases. The article is a survey of the development of dermato-venereology as a subject in medical education in Sweden until our time.

Medical periodicals specialized in dermatology and sexually transmitted diseases were first published during the second half of the nineteenth century. Their goal was to promote the diffusion of medical knowledge, among specialists (clinical research), as well as towards general practitioners (medical education). Until now, medical journals are the major tool for the diffusion of news and progress in medicine. We briefly describe the first of these dermatological journals: Syphilidologie, founded in 1838 in Leipzig by Friedrich Jacob Behrend; Annales des maladies de la peau et de la syphilis, the first truly dermatological journal, published in Paris from August 1843 to 1852 by Alphée Cazenave; Giornale italiano delle malattie veneree e delle malattie della pelle, founded in 1866 in Milan by Giovanni Battista Soresina; Journal of cutaneous medicine and diseases of the skin, created in London in 1867 by Erasmus Wilson, and which lasted only four years; Annales de dermatologie et de syphiligraphie, founded in Paris in 1868 by Adrien Doyon, which are still published now; Archiv für Dermatologie und Syphilis, published in Prague in 1869 by Heindrich Auspitz and Filipp Josef Pick; The American Journal of Syphilography and Dermatology, the first non-European dermatological periodical, created in 1870 in New York by Morris H. Henry.