ABSTRACT
HISTORY OF MOHS MICROGRAPHIC SURGERY The concept of Mohs Micrographic surgery as we know it today had its beginnings in the early 1930s when Fredrick Mohs was a medical student/research assistant in the Department of Zoology at the University of Wisconsin. Mohs surgery arose from an initial chance discovery during experiments to account for the inhibition of implanted cancer in rats. During these experiments, Dr. Mohs found that injected irritants caused a dense leukocytic reaction in tissues surrounding the cancer, more than in the cancer itself. During these experiments, many irritants were injected. It was found that a 20% solution of zinc chloride, which caused tissue necrosis, also preserved the histologic architecture of the tissue when excised several days later. These discoveries lead Dr. Mohs to believe that the in situ tissue fixation technique might be useful in the excision and microscopic examination of cancers. Zinc chloride provided good in situ fixation preserving the microscopic features of the tissue without damaging subjacent normal tissue. It was safe to handle, had no systemic toxicity, and did not increase the tendency of cancers to metastasize.
