Editor,It has been claimed that there was no record of dermatology in Belfast until 1865 when Henry Samuel Purdon established the Belfast Dispensary for Diseases of the Skin in Academy Street.1,2,3 Andrew George Malcolm, however, mentioned in a brief note, probably written shortly before his death in September 1856, that in July 1848 he had revived the Belfast Cutaneous Institution. Unfortunately no other reference to this establishment has been discovered.Dr H G Calwell, Malcolm’s biographer, gave a copy of the note (which he entitled A Record of A G Malcolm’s Life Written by Himself) to the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland.4 Malcolm called it Mems. of Public Matters and listed in it various events in his life including “Opened revived Extern Department for the Treatment of Injuries and Cutaneous Diseases and Affections of Children at the General Hospital” in December 1848; “Purchased large collection of Thibert’s Wax Models of Cutaneous Disease for about £15” in November 1849; and “Put up a steam bath for Scalp-Diseases which (December) works well at the General Hospital” in November 1851. He also recorded delivering six courses of instruction on Diseases of the Skin from 1849 to 1856, that in 1852 consisting of 16 lectures for which he charged 10/6 (just over 52p).In a lecture to the Belfast Medical Society on 2 February 1852 he discussed his reasons for modifying the classification of diseases of the skin. The minutes read: “After specifying his objections to previous systems as founded too exclusively either upon anatomical considerations or on the sensible qualities of cutaneous affections, the writer selected, in preference, pathological relations as the basis of his first general division, and arranged all skin diseases under the 2 primary heads or orders of Functional and Organic. The former class he subdivides according to the tissues or structures of which the functions are altered; and the organic order he arranges under 4 pathological genera according as they are the result of common irritation, of animal poisons, of constitutional specific disease, or consist of malformations and other vicious developments.”5Malcolm, like Purdon, was not a full-time dermatologist but clearly he had an early interest in skin disease, as did the unknown founder of the Belfast Cutaneous Institution.