Diseases affecting the skin have tended to provoke a response of particular horror in society. With obvious and sometimes repellant outward signs of malady, they were often perceived to be highly contagious, as well as synonymous with immorality. Such connotations may have stemmed from the tell-tale buboes of syphilis, but the social stigma of disfigurement is something that still exists today. This collection of essays uses case studies to chart the medical history of skin from the eighteenth to the twentieth century.