In recent years the field of contact dermatitis has increased greatly in importance in dermatology. The variety of exogenous, environmental ly caused dermatoses has undoubtedly expanded over the past few de cades with the increasing number of potentially toxic chemicals, the changes in lifestyle, and the greater life expectancy in industrialized societies. The value of international cooperation in this field has long been realized and acted upon by the International Contact Dermatitis Re search Group (ICDRG). By 1975 the international journal Contact Dermatitis had been founded under the editorship of C. D. Calnan. Thanks largely to the ICDRG and Contact Dermatitis, there were, by 1986, enough additional dermatologists and scientists with a special interest in this area to form the European Environmental and Contact Dermatitis Research Group (EECDRG). Within 2 years they had in stituted the European Society of Contact Dermatitis (ESCD) as an in ternational forum for researchers in the field. The EECDRG decided to hold a symposium in Heidelberg in May 1988, an initiative supported by the ICDRG, and on this occasion the new ESCD held its inaugural session. The Society already has over 200 members and most national contact dermatitis research groups in Europe are already represented; new members are of course welcome. Subgroups and working committees have been formed to address var ious topics including the standardization of patch testing, photoder matology, and bioengineering."

It is now thirty years since William Montagna and Richard Ellis edited 'The Biology of Hair Growth". In his introduction, Stephen Rothman, of the University of Chicago, USA and one of the driving forces behind research on skin at the time, wrote: 'The pilary system is a perfect micr9cosmic structure. In this microcos- mos we find birth, development, ageing and death, activity and rest, color for- mation and decolorification, greasiness and dryness, infection and sterilization, hypertrophy and atrophy, Qenign tumours and malignant ones. " He foresaw the human pilary system as a model for the study of a multitude of human diseases including ageing and cancer. It was not, how- ever, until the seventies that the development of micro-biochemical tech- niques indeed allowed the use of the human hair follicle as a convenient biopsy tissue for Biomedical Research in general. Measurement of enzyme activities, and important co-factors, and culturing of cells from single follicles all became possible. In the eighties dermal papilla cells were grown in cul- ture and this opened the way to study hair differentiation in vitro. Studying hair differentiation is, in fact, studying growth regulation and it is this aspect that by far transcends the importance of studying hair growth itself. Let us not forget that metastatic prostate cancer is treated with the same drug -cyproterone acetate -that is used for the treatment of alopecia and hirsutism in women.