An Analysis of 30,000 Cases of Skin Disease in Northern Ireland.

The Skin Clinic: Dermatology outside London

“…This represents an annual referral rate of 7.0 per 1,000 of the population. Hall and Burrows (1957) found the same referral rate for Northern Ireland. The ear, nose and throat department had the largest proportion of new patients (15.6 per cent), while skin diseases were seventh in the list.…”

“…For this reason all the new patients seen during the year 1962 were recorded in a diagnostic register and the results are given in Table I. Comparative figures are given for Northern Ireland (Hall and Burrows 1957), Leeds (M. Cramb, personal communication 1963) and Edinburgh (G. A. Grant Peterkin, personal communication 1963).…”

“…In all the centres the number of patients with warts is rising. Hall and Burrows (1957) noted a progressive increase and found that 95 per cent of the patients with warts lived in the towns. In Edinburgh over a period of thirty‐five years the proportion had risen from 9 per cent to more than 40 per cent and most of these live in the urban areas.…”

Skin disease case mix in the early 1920s: diagnoses prevalent at the time of the founding of the British Association of Dermatologists

“…5,6 The 11% frequency of seborrhoeic dermatitis in 1921-22 Edinburgh figures is about double that seen by Hall and Burrows from 1950s Northern Ireland, and higher than clinical experience suggests for the present day. 7 The reasons are unclear but it might be explained by the greater frequency of washing and bathing as a consequence of more baths being installed in housing after the 1920s.…”

“…The biggest surprise for the present-day dermatologist must be the very low rate of skin cancers of any description in the 1920s, something that was still apparent in 1950s Northern Ireland. 7 Accepting the evidence that skin cancer incidence increased in the last quarter of the twentieth century, an additional explanation for the low prevalence of skin cancers may be that in the 1920s presentations were delayed and, because life expectancies, as mentioned, were lower, those affected may have died from other causes before their cutaneous malignancies precipitated referral. An additional possibility, impossible to quantify, is that some or indeed most skin cancers, such as basal cell carcinoma, were referred directly to surgeons.…”