He invented the dermal curette, was the first to use x-ray to treat skin diseases and was a pioneer of flash photography in medicine.

[1] He was educated at the Churchill Military Academy at Ling and at the University of the City of New York, where he took his A.

He won distinction as a microscopist, pathologist and electro-therapeutist and had inventive capacity as well as mechanical ingenuity.

[1] As part of his autodidactic endeavor at a time when the English-language literature on dermatology was scarce, Piffard collected works on skin diseases in German and French.

He contributed to Hady's dartrous diathesis theory, i.e., the link between above-mentioned skin diseases and rheumatism.