WORLD-WIDE interest has recently been revived by two original reports which appeared in The British Journal of Dermatology and Syphilology two decades ago. The first by Ferguson Smith1 in 1934 described a case of multiple primary squamous cell carcinomata of the skin in a young man, with spontaneous healing. An etiology was not advanced. The second paper by MacCormac and Scarff,2 1936, in a concise article recorded a series of 10 cases of solitary benign nodular lesions localized on the face. These self-healing tumors were considered to arise from hypertrophic and inflammatory changes in sebaceous cysts. Later Rook and Whimster3 reported a series of 29 cases of molluscum sebaceum, clarifying the clinical and histological characteristics, and advanced the term, first suggested by Freudenthal, of keratoacanthoma as a more suitable term. Poth4 contributed to the literature his observations on the multiple keratoses commonly observed