Notes from the Editor Emeritus, 2017–2019

Abstract

This year we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the first mention of human hair transplantation in the medical literature. It was the German physician Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach who described several experiments on the transplantation of skin, feathers, and hair in his doctoral thesis in 1822. Inspired by his university teacher, Karl Unger, Dieffenbach successfully moved hairs into skin incisions that partly continued to grow. Prior to this, in 1804, the Italian scientist Guiseppe Baronio had described the successful transplantation of hair-bearing skin in sheep and other animals.