History of arteriosclerosis terminology

The terms used to describe the lesions of arteriosclerosis are less than 300 years old. In 1755 Van Haller used the Greek term “atheroma” to describe a space filled with gruel-like material.

In 1833, German-born French surgeon and pathologist Jean Frederick Martin Lobstein first used the terms “arteriosclerosis” to describe calcified arterial lesions. He introduced the term “arteriosclerosis” in his unfinished Traité d’Anatomie Pathologique, a four-volume treatise on pathological anatomy, based upon his lifelong personal experience .

In 1852, Johnson described the lesions of “arteriosclerosis” a thickening of arterioles of the kidney in Bright’s disease. In 1903, Monckeberg described “medial calcific sclerosis”, a form of arteriosclerosis or vessel hardening, where calcium deposits are found in the muscular middle layer of the walls of arteries.

In 1904 Marchand coined the term atherosclerosis. As age advances, there is loss of this elastin causing thickening of the arterial walls.
History of arteriosclerosis terminology

Note: Arteriosclerosis, chronic inflammatory disorder of the arteries is a defect occurring in the artery (blood vessels carrying oxygenated blood) walls. It refers to hardening of the normally flexible walls due to loss of elasticity of the arterial musculature. As age advances, there is loss of this elastin causing thickening of the arterial walls. 

History of eczema

Eczema as defined previously is dermatitis caused by internal factors such as inherent diathesis, stasis, stress, dry skin etc. Eczemas are classified depending on morphology and aetiology.

Historical reflections in the description of atopic eczema start with Robert Willan who in 1808 used the term ‘eczema’ in a scientific morphological way. In his book, Description and Treatment of Cutaneous Diseases Willan expanded classification of skin disease and introduced new clinical entities such as erythema nodosum (inflammatory reaction deep in the skin).

The efforts clinical descriptions of skin conditions and their treatments date back to 1600 BC in ancient Egypt, where medical healers treated such conditions as psoriasis, ulcers, alopecia and scabies. The term ‘eczema’ was coined in the sixth century AD by the Greek physician Aetios from Amida who described the boiling and bubbling (eczeo = to bubble up) as it can be observed in a boiling soup.

Early description can be found in the book of the Italian physician Girolamoi Mercuriali (1601) with a description of ‘lactumen’ as crustose skin lesions on the scalp which look like burned milk in a pan and were later called ‘cradle cap’.

Bateman in 1813 defined eczema and has a rather precise meaning for the majority dermatologists. The word eczema is often used as a synonym for dermatitis and would probably be a well accepted denomination since the general public has always considered the disease atopic dermatitis to be an eczema, as it is identical to infantile eczema.

Rayer (1793-1867), the first edition of his influential Treatises, proposed to distinguish acute and chronic eczemas.

In 1933, Wise and Sulzberger later coined the term atopic dermatitis to further emphasize the relationship between atopic eczema, hay fever, and asthma. History of eczema

History of schizophrenia

Written description of schizophrenia had been tracked back to Egypt during the years 200 BC.

Ancient Greek and Roman literature indicated that the general population had an awareness of schizophrenia. Greek physician blamed delusion and paranoia on an imbalance of bodily humors.

Following the early lead of the British, after 1801 it was the French who dominated the medical study of the mentally ill until mid-century, when the Germans began their nomination of this field.

In April 1908 Eugen Bleuler (1857-1939) published a paper suggested that the disorder be renamed schizophrenia to remove the emphasis on prognosis suggested by the term dementia praecox. Schizophrenia formerly named as ‘dementia praecox’ by Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926) referring to the Latin meaning ‘out of one’s mind’.

Kraepelin first mentioned dementia praecox in 1893 and summed it up as a subcategory of mental degenerative processes.

Bleuler had been using the term schizophrenia in lectures to his medical staff at the Burgholzli Hospital in Zurich, Switzerland, prior this time.

The word schizophrenia is derived from the Greek word for ‘split brain’. The new term carried with it a different grammatical structure that implicitly alluded to a difference in theoretical conceptualization.
History of schizophrenia 

History of dementia

Although recognized in ancient times, the term dementia was first introduced in 1789 by Philippe Pinel, and indeed it was 19th century clinicians who first grappled with its defining features.

Philippe Pinel, a French doctor who lived in the second half of the eighteenth century and who is often considered as the father of modern psychiatry.

He described dementia as ‘a disintegration of reason, which was reminiscent of the childish inanity of old age’.

The word dementia comes from Latin demens which literally means ‘without mind’. The ancient Greeks and Romans described symptoms similar to those of Alzheimer’s disease.  The Greeks, including Plato, recognized it as an abnormal condition of old age.

Senile atrophy of the brain was noted in the first century BC and sclerotic plaques in the brains of demented elderly patients have been noted many years before the description of Alzheimer.

By the year 1800, two definitions of dementia were recognized, both having psychosocial incompetence as their central concept.

However, it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that dementia of early onset became recognized as a specific medical entity.

In 1907 Dr Alois Alzheimer published a paper identifying a cluster of symptoms of dementia. This included reduced comprehension and memory, disorientation, unpredictable behavior and difficulties with communication.
History of dementia

History of Parkinson's disease

Since before the time of Christ, physicians and other observers of the human condition have been described people with tremors, with stooped posture, and with the rapid, off-balanced walk called festination.

During the fourteenth century, an Italian physician named Franciscus de la Boe claimed that the tremor experienced when the body was moving or performing some activity.

Parkinson’s disease was first described by James Parkinson in his famous essay ‘An Essay in the Shaking Palsy’ published in 1817. In 1892, French physician, Jean Martin Charcot proposed to call this disease as Parkinson’s disease.

Based on the observations of six patients over time, whom Parkinson had never personally examined his descriptions consisting of tremor rigidity, postural abnormalities, and bradykinesia were remarkably accurate.

Sir Victor Horsley is credited with the first attempts to surgically treat a movement disorder in the late nineteenth century. He performed the first cortical ablation procedure for dyskinesia in 1890.

One of Charcot’s students, Edouard Brissaud, suggested that the material basis of Parkinson’s disease might be found in a certain small nerve center or nucleus in the brainstem, called the substantia nigra.

Finally, a student named Tretiakoff, working on his doctoral thesis in Paris, described a number of changes in the nerve cells of the substantia nigra.

Only in the 1960s, pathological and biochemical changes in the brain of patients identified, opening the way to the first effective medication for the disease.
History of Parkinson's disease