H14 Francois Henri Hallopeau: pulling out the hair and picking out the spots

Abstract Francois Henri Hallopeau was born in Paris in 1842. He entered the Paris medical school aged 24, studying under Alfred Vulpian and Sigismond Jaccoud, eventually ranking second among a large cohort of candidates for medical internships. He received his doctorate aged 29, after submission of his thesis on convulsive symptoms in disorders of the spinal cord. Francois was affiliated with the hospitals of Tenon and St Antoine, before becoming a physician at the Hôpital Saint Louis in 1884, where he remained until he retired in 1907. At the Hôpital Saint Louis, he initially practised as a neurologist, before exclusively focusing his efforts on dermatology. The variety of the patients who he cared for enabled him to report a number of important descriptions on cutaneous diseases, which formed the basis of the first edition of his Practical Treatise on Dermatology. Hallopeau was the first to describe acrodermatitis continua of Hallopeau, a painful acral pustular disease characterized by sterile pustules on erythematous skin of the distal fingers and toes, in 1890. He is also credited as being the first to describe lichens planus atrophique, now known as lichen planus sclerosus et atrophicus sclerosis, in a clinical lecture in 1887. Since then, World Lichens Sclerosis Awareness Day is celebrated on his birthday – 17 January. Hair pulling has been widely described throughout history, first documented by Aristotle (4th century Bc), when he referenced plucking out hair in the context of self-control and vices in Nicomachean Ethics. In 1889, after encountering a young male patient who had torn out tufts of his hair, Hallopeau was the first to coin the term trichotillomania, derived from the Greek thrix (hair), tillein (pulling) and mania (madness). In 1890, he cofounded the French Society of Dermatology and Syphiligraphy, of which he eventually became secretary general in 1893. He also remained an established member of the Academy of Medicine from this point. In 1907, after his retirement from Saint Louis due to the age rule, he continued working as the consulting physician at the Maison Départmentale of Nanterre until 1918, when his sight among other comorbidities led him to fully retire. Francois Henri Hallopeau’s impact in the field of dermatology persists to this day, and he continues to be remembered for his descriptions featured in his collection of over 800 publications.