Thomas Caspar Gilchrist

Thomas Caspar Gilchrist was professor of dermatology at the University of Maryland before taking up the same position at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore. He wrote on acne, erysipelas, X-ray dermatitis, porokeratosis, sarcoma of skin, and fatty atrophy. The fungal infection Gilchrist's disease, more commonly known as blastomycosis, is named for him after he first mistook it as a protozoan disease before correctly identifying it as a fungal in origin. The organism that causes it, Blastomyces dermatitidis, was subsequently described by him and William Royal Stokes in 1894.