Historical perspective of scleroderma

Abstract

The history of scleroderma reflects the temporal context as well as a growth in knowledge and understanding about multisystem and autoimmune disease. There are key historic events that are relevant, but it was not until the twentieth century that scleroderma emerged as a concept for multisystem disease. This chapter reviews key aspects of early history that relates to scleroderma and then focuses on the modern era that really reflects advances in biomedical science, genetics, and clinical progress in treating connective tissue disease.