Women and the GMC.

Dr George Percival joined the consultant staff when the new building was opened in 1936. Trained in Paris, Lausanne, and Zurich, he knew as well as Dr Jamieson how to deal with leg eczema. Sir Robert Grant, the head of a family already lavishly generous to the University of Edinburgh, was aware of the damage that skin disease could do to his employees, and was unhappy when he developed eczema of his legs after several days of strenuous shooting in wet weather. Pleased with Percival's cure he gave £80 000 to found a chair of dermatology in Edinburgh, and in 1946 Dr Percival became its first holder. New staff brought new strength to the department. Dr G A Grant Peterkin, whose first description in 1937 of orf in man has become a modern classic,4 and Dr Patrick Hannay, became consultants. A whole floor was reclaimed from the venereologists. Professor P J Hare succeeded Professor Percival in 1966. All helped to build up a modern department and to man peripheral clinics covering Fife and the Borders. In 1982 we moved to our new outpatient department, its many light rooms in striking contrast to Dr Jamieson's small dark one. But enough of the past: dermatology is still a young subject. One half of all the consultant dermatologists ever appointed to the Royal Infirmary are here today in the seminar room. The professorial fireworks are spluttering to an end and soon we will be joining those who trained here, but who now work elsewhere, in a feast to celebrate their return to Edinburgh and to fill us with energy for the future. With things as they are now we need another slice of luck: even the fatted calf will be searched for traces of eczema.