In 1914 in the Journal of Cutaneous Diseases, MacKee and Wise1 published a paper on "white spot disease." The suggestion was made that certain peculiar forms of chronic eruptions did not seem to conform clinically with either lichen sclerosus of Hallopeau or with scleroderma guttata and white spot disease; they possibly represented transitional or intermediate dermatoses, presumably constituting a connecting link between these two disease groups. The majority of observers were in accord with this idea.
The types of eruption tentatively classed as intermediate or transitional were those which conformed more or less to the description of such cases as were published by Zumbusch, Csillag, Milian, Fischer, Vignolo-Lutati and others.2
Further experience, based on the study of personal cases and on those reported by other observers, has led us to believe that these aberrant dermatoses, instead of being transitional processes linking together two unrelated groups such as the