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Joseph B. Kirsner, MD, PhD, MACP

JAMA. 1984;251(1):80-81.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

Knowledge of the nature of disease, from earliest times, evolved from the careful observation of sickness among individuals. Sir Henry Cohen¹ points out that concepts of illnesses as disease entities first became apparent during the ninth century AD. Increased understanding of human illness has paralleled new developments in science and in medicine² and continues today as the observation and the evaluation of the patient's condition become more perceptive and more precise. These circumstances alone, however revealing, sui generis do not always create noteworthy progress. Advances also require men and women of inquiring, critical minds, motivated by Rudyard Kipling's "six honest serving men: who, what, why, how, when and where."

Burrill Crohn, Leon Ginzburg, and Gordon Oppenheimer³ probably were not the first to observe or describe Crohn's disease. Indeed, medical historians⁴ suggest that the initial description may date back to Morgagni (1682-1771), possibly to Carson's "The Iliac . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
From the University of Chicago Hospitals and Clinics.

Footnotes
Reprint requests to University of Chicago Hospitals and Clinics, Box 319, 950 E 59th St, Chicago, IL 60637 (Dr Kirsner).

A commentary on Crohn BB, Ginzburg L, Oppenheimer GD: Regional ileitis: A pathologic and clinical entity. JAMA 1932;99:1323-1329.

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