The pigment system, its anatomy, morphology, cellular biology, and physiology, is poorly understood by most physicians, including dermatologists. Disorders of pigmentation are even more poorly understood and their treatment commonly ignored because dermatologists consider them only cosmetic and untreatable. Although there are sections in all dermatology textbooks on pigmentation and its disorders, this is the first monograph devoted exclusively to pigmentary disorders. Ortonne and his co-authors deserve tremendous credit for compiling information about the numerous hypopigmentary disorders. They have introduced each disease with a historical review and cite numerous ancient texts. They review virtually the entire medical literature on each disease. The bibliographies are exhaustive.
The clinical features of each disease are carefully described. The medical literature is replete with reports of pigmentary disorders associated with peculiar diseases or abnormalities. The authors include comprehensive reviews of these associations, those articles that are important, and those that are incidental. The cause