PubMed1990
In one of his books, written at the beginning of this century, Raymond Sabouraud devotes some 280 pages to the history of dandruff. Their reading illustrates how, from the Greeks to Sabouraud's era, this desquamative disease has been subjected to endless doctrinal and scientific conflicts, long before the so-called "present" controversies. One of the early conflicts, between Celsus and Galen, lies in the nature of the squames, i. e. dry or exudating, leading to the inclusion (or non inclusion) or pityriasis in the group of desquamative diseases, such as psoriasis or ichytosis. Translated into Latin (furfur, porrigo) and into Arabic, the word pityriasis was replaced in the Middle Age by tinea which then referred to any disease of the human scalp. With Plenk, Lorry, Willan and others, the 18th century brought a new attitude of mind where observation took precedence over doctrine, but owing to the lack of experimental approach there was no adequate description of the squames and their anatomical origin. This was the case with Hebra who, in the 19th century, claimed that dandruff was nothing but a sebaceous disease. This major turn resulted for decades in a confusion between dandruff and seborrhoea. In the late 19th century, bacteriological studies were decisive steps taken by Rivolta, Malassez and Sabouraud. The presence on scalps affected with dandruff of a bottle-shaped "fungus" (Pityrosporum ovale was initially not regarded as a yeast) was taken as being the definite cause of the disease. The Sabouraud dogma was born, but as early as 1877 it was denied by Vidal who observed these "spores" on healthy scalps.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)