MAL DE MELEDA

Abstract

Mal de Meleda receives its name from the Dalmatian island where it was originally observed.¹In 1826 Stulli²first described this condition, in a letter to the director of anthology in Florence, Italy. Seventy years later, Hovorka reported the disease under the title "Concerning an Heretofore Unknown Endemic `Lepraherd' in Dalmatia." Later he realized it was not leprosy and with Ehlers³used the term mal de Meleda. In 1898 Neumann⁴undertook a study of this disease and emphasized its close relationship to the keratosis of Unna⁵and Thost⁶and to the still earlier reports of Haskel, Behrend, Sommering and Boegehold. Since Neumann made his report, mal de Meleda has not been studied on the island of Meleda. There have been numerous articles on this subject in the French and German literature, but none have appeared in the American literature within the last five years.