Development of rheumatology through two millennia - Ivo Jajić, Zrinka Jajić

The book’s authors Ivo Jajić and Zrinka Jajić, in cooperation with the national and university libraries of Europe and USA, and colleagues throughout the world devoted to this field who from the very beginning of this project participated in gathering material and information with particular ardour and will, with enormous gratitude for the wholehearted assistance received, conceived this publication, a unique work of this type in the world, as a sequence of thematic units dedicated to the development of rheumatology on a global scale.
In a part of the book titled Overview of historical events, the authors presented an overview of historical events in world rheumatology from early history and the meaning of the Greek word “rheuma” – flux, the introduction of the concept rheumatology and rheumatologist, the development of rheumatology specialisation, the founding of national rheumatology associations in Europe and the USA, to the first expert doctor’s conference held about rheumatic diseases in 1932 in New Orleans, followed by congresses of rheumatologists of individual countries and international gatherings. The overview on the founding of the International league against rheumatism which consists of four regional leagues: European (EULAR), American (PANLAR), Asia – Pacific (APLAR) and African (AFLAR) and also the events and activities related to individual regional leagues occupy an important place. The authors of this work presented the publications in the field of rheumatology through an overview of the most important world rheumatology magazines from their founding. In the historical overview an important place is also occupied by chronological overviews of classifications and nomenclature of rheumatic diseases, diagnostic criteria for rheumatic diseases, the first professors of rheumatology at world universities and presentation of Nobel Prizes for medicine important for rheumatology.
The second most extensive part of the book titled Authors who contributed to the development of rheumatology, on 372 richly illustrated pages with more than 1000 pictures, is an alphabetic overview of authors who contributed to the development of rheumatology in the world, a total of 2343 of them and this not only includes rheumatologists but also epidemiologists, pathologists, immunologists, biochemists, oculists, dermatologists, medical historians, paediatricians, specialists in nuclear medicine, gastroenterologists, radiologists and doctors specialising in other fields. They are presented with biographical details, their specialised area of work (specialisations), a short overview of publications with original details from the literature, and for the majority of authors a photograph has also been published.
The third part of the book titled From the history of development of Croatian rheumatology, a short overview of eight pages about the historical events in the development of rheumatology in Croatian has been given.
A detailed Index of names and Index of terminology are located at the end of the book.
The book was reviewed by full members of Croatian Academy of Science and Art: Zvonko Kusić and Dragan Dekaris.
This completely originally conceived work in world literature should be of course recommended to rheumatologists but also to other doctors in related fields and medical science historians, who will find a multitude of interesting discoveries and will represent an incentive for further development of this field in the world.