Of not quite venerable status, Papillon-Lefèvre syndrome was first described in 1924. That was a year after I was born and one never likes to think of oneself as venerable. However, as a graduate fellow in pathology at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, New York, USA in the late 1940s, my initial exposure to the general concept of syndromes had only just occurred (acanthosis nigricans and gastric adenocarcinoma). Although I had high hopes that other oral syndromes existed for me to identify (the idea of discovering a new one did not enter my mind at the time), I remember talking about my new found interest to almost everyone I encountered at Columbia University Dental School, my hope being that they would show me a new one. In late 1949, Dr Sam Rosenthal, Chair of Pediatric Dentistry, knowing of my interests, asked me to see a child who was experiencing exfoliation of his entire dentition. The child clearly did not have mercury intoxication.

I noticed that …