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History of rheumatology

2014; Medknow; Volume: 7; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.4103/0975-2870.126307

2278-7119

Shrikant Deshpande,

Musculoskeletal Disorders and Rehabilitation

This article describes the history and various milestones of rheumatology from ancient to modern times. The origin of rheumatology can be traced to ancient times. Diseases such as gout and osteoarthritis were prevalent in ancient people. Many ancient skeletons show signs of gout and osteoarthritis. The ancient book on Indian Medicine, Charaka Samhita, gives a vivid description of many variants of arthritis. Charaka, an eminent Ayurvedic physician, described rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in Charaka Samhitha as Vishkantha, meaning painful joints. The word rheumatology has its origin in the word rheuma, which means flowing, and is mentioned in Hippocratic corpus. Hippocrates made several observations about gout, popularly known as aphorisms of gout. Many famous paintings in the medieval era depict joint diseases. Hand lesions resembling those of RA are found in paintings of the Flemish school. The virgin with canon van der paele, a painting by Jan Van Eyck (1436), shows thickened arteries in the temple, suggestive of temporal arthritis. The famous portrait of Federigo de Montefeltre, thought to have been painted by Joos (Justus) van Gent, shows arthritis of the proximal interphalangeal joint of the left index finger. Rheumatology developed as a well-recognized specialty of medicine in the 20th century. American Physicians Bernard Comroe and Joseph Lee Hollander coined the term rheumatologist in 1940. Rheumatology has rapidly advanced during the last 50 years due to improved diagnosis as a result of progress in immunology, molecular biology, genetics and imaging.