["In the beginning the horse is sad"--a historical abstract of Borna disease]

Borna disease has a 230 year old history, having first been described in 1766. Scientific studies of borna disease began in 1895. Ernst Joest and Kurt Degen found inclusion bodies within ganglion cells of the hippocampus in 1909. Wilhelm Zwick successfully transmitted Borna disease to rabbits in 1924. This marked the beginning of systematic studies to determine the pathogenesis of Borna disease as it is now understood in the 1990s.