Robert Willan

Robert Willan (12 November 1757 near Sedbergh, Yorkshire, England – 7 April 1812 in Madeira, Portugal) was an English physician, and the founder of dermatology as a medical specialty.

Life
Willan was born on 12 November 1757 in Sedbergh, Yorkshire. He was educated at Sedbergh School, and received his medical degree at the University of Edinburgh in 1780. After completing his medical studies, William worked in Darlington until 1783, when he moved to London to serve as physician at the Carey Street Public Dispensary until 1803. While working alongside Thomas Bateman, Willan was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1809. He died on 7 April 1812, in Madeira, Portugal.

Works
Following the example of Carl Linnaeus, Willan attempted a taxonomic classification of skin diseases, describing impetigo, lupus, psoriasis, scleroderma, ichthyosis, sycosis, and pemphigus. Willan's portrait was reproduced on the cover of the British Journal of Dermatology for many years. Willan and Bateman working together provided the world's first attempt to classify skin diseases from an anatomical standpoint.

In 1790, Willan received the Fothergill Gold Medal from the Medical Society of London for his classification of skin diseases. In the same year, he published an account entitled "A Remarkable Case of Abstinence", which detailed the case of a young Englishman with an eating disorder who died in 1786 after fasting for 78 days.

A copy of one of his works was translated into German and published in Breslau in 1799. The English version has been lost.

In 1798, Willan described the occupational disease psoriasis diffusa, which affects the hands and arms of bakers, and in 1799, he first described the exanthematous rash of childhood known as erythema infectiosum.

Willan's 1808 book, On Cutaneous Diseases is a landmark in the history of dermatology and in medical illustration and contains the first use of the word "lupus" to describe cutaneous tuberculosis.