RECKLINGHAUSEN'S DISEASE WITHOUT TUMOR FORMATION

Abstract

In 1882, Recklinghausen published a description of the disease now called neurofibromatosis cutis or fibroma molluscum multiplex. This clinical entity is so well known and so well described in textbooks and monographs that a description of the usual forms of the affection is superfluous. Recklinghausen's work was based on well developed examples of the disease, in patients who presented the usual characteristic tumors, nevi, lentigines, large pigmented areas, and small bluish macules. His monograph made no mention of anomalous and incomplete forms of the disease, such as those in which the characteristic pigment lesions exist, but which differed from the "classic" forms in that there is a complete absence of tumors or other elevated lesions, in the skin or beneath the skin. Attention was first directed to this incomplete or abortive form by Parkes Weber¹in 1905, in which year he presented such a patient before the Dermatological Society