In 1843, the Viennese dermatology professor Ferdinand von Hebra began a project collecting accurate sketches of all skin diseases known to medicine at the time, hiring the medical student Anton Elfinger as its illustrator.

The first edition was published in 1856, comprising 10 picture plates on the topic of cutaneous lupus in a brochured pad made of thin cardboard.

Elfinger died in 1864, though his name continued to be credited as illustrator alongside Heitzmann in every subsequent edition's title page.

[3] By its 10th edition in 1876, the atlas included research by other influential dermatologists of the time, such as microscopic studies and histopathological works by Gustav Simon.

[4][5] The Wilhelm Fabry Museum, which specialises in the history of medicine and retains several editions of the Atlas as part of its collection, describes the works as "to this day a pinnacle of medical documentation and illustration art" due to their "naturalistic precision of the depiction and the precise descriptions of the symptoms".