Raynaud’s syndrome

In Europe, the broad term Raynaud’s phenomenon is used to described any form of cold-related vasospasm. In the eighteenth and nineteenth century debate over the mechanism of gangrene there was a group of cases that could not be explained by ‘ossification by the arteries’ not by great obstacles in the ‘vascular cavities’.

In 1862, the young French physician Maurice Raynaud meticulously described in his medical school thesis 25 patients with spontaneous symmetric gangrene of the extremities.

He described an initial ‘pallor’ that was replaced in more severe cases by a cyanotic color and then a vermillion that finally gave way to the normal pink.

Sir Jonathan Hutchinson

In 1888, Raynaud’s thesis was translated into English and a year later Sir Jonathan Hutchinson gave Raynaud’s eponym to the digital vasospastic phenomenon previously described in 1862.

He realized that the symptoms described by Raynaud could be associated with a number of disorders and were not due to one disease. In 1896, he proposed the term ‘Raynaud’s phenomenon’ to described these vasospastic attacks.

In 1932, Allen and Brown, established minimal criteria for diagnosing Raynaud’s disease: bilaterality of symptoms; absence of gangrene; absence of other primary disease, especially collagen-vascular diseases: and symptoms of at least 2 years’ duration.
Raynaud’s syndrome

Measles: discovery by al-Rhazes

Measles virus is believed to have become established in human populations about 5000-10,000 years ago when human populations achieved sufficient size in Middle Eastern river valley civilizations’ to maintain virus transmission.

Doctors have known about measles for centuries. It was first describe by the 10th century Persian physician al-Rhazes, who called the illness by its Arabic name, hasba (meaning ‘eruption’). He produced over 200 books, half of them on medicine, including a 10-voume treatise in Greek medicine.

However, it was in his book Al-Judari wa al-Hasbah, which was the earliest medical text to distinguish between smallpox and measles.

He also proposes the theory of acquired immunity by recognizing that individual surviving small pox never get it again.

He dated the first description of measles of the 6th century. However, epidemics identified as measles were not recoded until the 11th and 12 the centuries. And measles was first mentioned as a childhood disease in 1224.

Its present name did not appear until the 14th century, where it was derived from the Arabic word miser, used to describe the unhappiness of lepers.

It spread quickly across North Africa into Europe, where it was introduced by explorers to the New World with tragic results.
Measles: discovery by al-Rhazes

Kwashiorkor – first described by Cicely Williams

Cicely Williams was a British physician. She was the first to describe kwashiorkor, a disease of young children that can result in death.

She was born in 1893 had grown up in Jamaica and received her medical training in Oxford and London. She worked for the Colonial Medical Service from 1929 to 1948, serving on the African Gold Coast.

During her research, she observed that mothers and families were reluctant to share their knowledge of the disease sought ‘traditional’ healers, and sometimes abandoned sick children for the sake of the family.

In 1935 she published a paper in the Lancet based on her experience with 60 further cases. Here she used for the first time the local name for the disease – kwashiorkor – which a nurse from  the local community told her meant ‘the sickness that the older child gets when the next child is born.

The infants she described in Ghana were weaned onto maize ‘pap’ that was deficient in the essential amino acids tryptophan and lysine.

Williams began to treat the children with condensed milk, and their condition improved. The influential work by Trowell, Davies and Dean in 1954 seconded her opinion labeling cow’s milk as the ‘ideal transition diet’. Other experts agreed and theory soon became practice during the 1950s and early 1960s.
Kwashiorkor – first described by Cicely Williams

Sir James Paget and Paget’s disease

Paget's disease was first reported in the year 1877 by Sir James Paget. James Paget was born in 1814 in Yarmouth, England he apprenticed out to a local surgeon in 1830.

In 1836, after studying medicine in London, Paget passed the examination of the Royal College of Surgeons. Paget joined the teaching and clinical staff at St, Bartholomew’s Hospital in London.

In 1854, James Paget described the first carpal tunnel syndrome as a median nerve compression following a fracture of the distal radius.

He is best remembered today for his description of the diseases which became known as Paget’s disease. 

In 1876, he read a necropsy report ‘On a form of chronic inflammation of the bones’ before the Royal Medio-Chirurgical Society and subsequently published what he believed to be the first thorough description of a disorder of bone remodeling and turnover.

It was an exhaustive and complete description of the disease; detailed postmortem findings with result of microscopical examinations of the diseased bones were given.
Sir James Paget and Paget’s disease

History of influenza

In March of 1918, American soldiers training in Camp Function, Kansas, suddenly came down with a particular strong strain of the flu.

Many of those who got sick, contracted pneumonia because their bodies were so weak from having been so ill.

The term influenza stems for the Latin word influere, which means ‘flowing into’ or ‘creeping into’. People in fifteenth-century Italy thought the sickness was caused by the ‘influence’ of the stars, so they named it ‘influenza’.

During 3000 BC to 2000 BC, influenza first time capable of infecting humans. It probably arises in central Asia.

The earliest descriptions of influenza are commonly attributed to Hippocrates. In the writings of Hippocrates in 412 BC there is a description of an epidemic in North Greece with symptoms similar to influenza.

Roman historian Livy who lived between 59 BC and 17 AD described a flu-like disease that attacked the Roman army and the enemy soldiers they were fighting.

Between 1781 and 1782, an influenza pandemic infected two-thirds of Rome’s population and three-fourths of Britain’s population. The disease continued to spread in North America, the West Indies and South America.

The spread of this pandemic culminated with an influenza epidemic in New England, New York and Nova Scotia in 1789.

While influenza has afflicted humans for centuries, it has been claimed that it was in the nineteenth century that influenza became an endemic, disease in the majority of the countries in the world, regularly producing large epidemic and pandemics. The first worldwide pandemic of influenza happened in 1833.

In 1940 the influenza B virus was isolated and the influenza C virus in 1949. Since 1945, an active influenza vaccination has been available.
History of influenza