2013.1-28.Australia

Munro microabscesses [2,3]

Munro microabscesses are composed of degenerated polymorphonuclear leukocytes in the horny layer and are seen in psoriasis and seborrheic dermatitis. It is named after William John Munro (1863–1908), (Fig. 1), an Australian dermatologist.

It is different from Spongiform pustules of Kagoj which are multilocular pustules in the upper stratum malpighii within a sponge-like network made up of flattened keratinocytes. They are seen in psoriasis, Reiter’s disease, geographic tongue and rarely in candidiasis. Spongiform pustules of Kagoj is named after Franz (Franjo) Kogoj (1894-1983), a Slovenian–born physician.

Munro was born in Sidney, and graduated in Arts from Sidney University in 1880. He proceeded to Edinburgh, where he graduated in Medicine in 1884 and was admitted to the Royal College of Surgeons, London. He returned to Glebe, Sidney, where he engaged in general practice until 1896.

The distinguishing features of psoriatic Munro’s microabscess have been described

earlier by several authors before Munro (1898), first of all presumably by Ernst Kromayer in 1890. Those authors might make, also, a note of spongiform pustule of Kogoj (1927).

O’Brien’s actinic granuloma

[4,5]

O’Brien’s actinic granuloma is a rare skin disease. Controversy continues over whether it should be considered a specific condition or a form of granuloma annulare located in sun-exposed areas. It is named after John P. O’Brien (Fig. 2).

John P. O’Brien was born on May 27, 1914 in Mosman, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He was the foundation president of the Australasian Society of Dermatopathology, a founding member of the College of Pathologists (Australia) and its president from 1969–1971.

Searls ulcer [1]

This is another synonym for Buruli ulcer Named after Australian practitioner, John

Robert Searls (1905-1971).

Buruli ulcer is a chronic debilitating skin and soft tissue infection that can lead to

permanent disfigurement and disability. It is caused by the Mycobacterium ulcerans

bacterium. It is the third most common mycobacterial disease of the immunocompetent host, after tuberculosis and leprosy.

The disease was so named after Buruli County in Uganda (now called Nakasongola

District), because of the many cases that occurred there in the 1960s. Also known as

the Bairnsdale ulcer after Bairnsdale Country town in Victoria, Australia. Also known as Daintree ulcer, and Mossman ulcer.

Mycobacterium ulcerans has many synonyms. One of these is that used by the Mapi people in northern Uganda, but it is too much of a mouthful for general use, although it is aptly descriptive of its clinical pattern: “the ulcer that heals in vain”. Similarly, the people of the Sepik District of Papua New Guinea refer to it as the “sik bilong wara Sepik”. Shattock used the term “tropical ulcer type 2”.

Albert Cook, a missionary doctor in Uganda, may have noted ulcerans cases in 1896,

but they were first formally described in the late 1930s by Dr J.R. Searl, a general practitioner in rural Victoria, Australia, when he and his colleague, D.G. Alsop, noticed a group of patients around the town of Bairnsdale, with indolent ulcers that were resistant to the usual forms of therapy. The causative organism was isolated in 1948 by MacCallum in the Bairnsdale region of Victoria.

The disease was described widely throughout Australia, but for several decades it was known as the “Bairnsdale ulcer” and or “Searl’s ulcer”. “Buruli ulcer” or “Buruli disease”, after the Mengo District in Buganda, came into use only in the 1960s.

There are many other geofocal synonyms for Mycobacterium ulcerans infections, reflecting its focal association with bodies of water, such as “Kumusi ulcer” and “sik bilong wara Sepik” in Papua New Guinea, from where many of the early reports came.

Reports from the Congo (now DRC) go back as far as 1942. In the Congo it is known

as the “Tora ulcer”, the “Kasongo ulcer” and the “Kakerifu ulcer”. This later name, Janssens claimed, should be the African synonym as that was the area from which the first African case was described, also by a general practitioner, Dr Lubicz. In Mexico it was named the “Mexican ulcer”.