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lecturer in Leiden from 1911 to 1928 prior to Siemens’ appointment in 1929, had trained with Unna in Hamburg, and Carol (Professor of Dermatology in Amsterdam from 1930 to 1945) was educated in Hamburg and Berlin. Knowledge exchange reaches beyond the developed world to include countries in Africa, Asia and South America. The centuries-old interest of Dutch physicians and adventurer-researchers in tropical diseases can partly be ascribed to its colonial history, which developed from its seafaring traditions. Further, the interest in “exotic diseases” may also be related to the immigration of various groups to the Netherlands. The interest in tropical skin diseases is evident from the “tropical dermatology” chair, recently changed to “infections of the skin with special attention to leprosy” at the University of Amsterdam, that was established in 1995. Changes in dermatological research To get a picture of dermatological research in the Netherlands, we have carried out a brief survey of the topics covered in dissertations over the period 1800-2014. This analysis includes all universities. The dissertations have been categorised into 13 scientific domains: the 11 domains used by the NVDV, with the addition of “biology of the skin” and “other”. A total of 655 dissertations were published during the study period (Table 1, see page 25). Of these, 202 were categorized under two domains (Table 2, see page 25). The first dermatological dissertations appeared before dermatology was esta- blished as a separate academic discipline in the Netherlands. In this pre-academic phase, 63 academic theses were published. Table 1 shows that numbers increased gradually until 1980, and then exponentially between 1980 and 2014. The five largest areas were: inflammatory dermatoses, therapy, oncology, infectious disease and allergy/eczema. If we divide the study period into 11 periods of 20 years each, it becomes clear how the interest in these domains has shifted over the past two centuries (Figure 1, see page 24). Much attention has been paid over the entire period to inflammatory diseases. From the titles of the theses it is evident that the focus in the last 35 years has moved from clinical/histological research to fundamental scientific research, aimed at unravelling causes. The number of therapy studies has increased significantly since 1980, a figure which correlates with the advent of systemic therapies including biologics. The decline in attention given to infectious diseases is spectacular. Even greater is the decrease in attention to STIs, such as syphilis and gonorrhoea, the group of diseases which effectively defined dermatology when the discipline was first established in 1867: 14 to 21% of the total number of dissertations between 1821 and 1969 dealt with STIs; after 1960, this dropped to just 1% from 2001. Finally, something that is not reflected in the diagrams, is the recent increase in attention to phlebology. The specific areas of research by universities are discussed in chapters 3 to 10 and research from non academic centers is presented in chapter 11. Closing comment The idea to write this book was conceived by the History working group of the NVDV, whilst discussing how to deliver a lasting contribution to the EADV meeting in October 2014 in Amsterdam. In order to get to know each other better, the message we would like to extend to fellow dermatologists 23 BWEADVSMGFINCORR:Opmaak 1 21-07-2014 17:39 Pagina 23