Pitfalls in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Melanoma

IN A REVIEW of the early history of Eiselt 1 reported a few records of black tumors described in the late 18th century, shortly after which Laennec 2 identified the disorder, to which he gave the name la melanose , as a rare form of cancer. Dupuytren 3 maintained that he had identified and described the condition in his lectures on pathology before it was reported by Laennec. The designations assigned to the disease by various workers are given in Table 1. The term melanoma, used almost universally today, was introduced by Carswell in 1838. 4 Driver and MacVicar 5 ; Webster, Stevenson, and Stout, 6 and many others have emphasized the difficulties in the clinical diagnosis of melanoma. Allen 7 reported that 218 specimens of melanoma had been received in the Army Pathological Department during World War II. He emphasized the fact that clinical diagnosis had not been accurate,