[The history of rheumatoid arthritis]

The paper is a brief survey of the manner by which rheumatoid arthritis appears in modern clinical practice. The symmetric joint involvement, the location of synvial inflammatory changes in the joints of the hands, and the erosive bone lesions are stressed. The past and present nomenclature of chronic arthritis as well as the differential diagnostic possibilities, especially gout, are discussed. Rheumatoid arthritis may be of recent origin in Europe. The first reliable description of the disease was published in the year 1800. The medical and nonmedical literature, the visual arts, and the paleopathological examinations of skeletal findings from ancient and mediaeval times have failed to disclose certain evidence of the existance of the disease in The Old World before 1800, but bone changes found in skeletal material excavated in a district in America may indicate the existance of the disease here two or three thousand years ago. Since rheumatoid arthritis seems to have a hereditary as well as an environmental etiology the disease may have been brought from The New World to the Old World after the time of Columbus.