A Concise International History of Rheumatology and Rehabilitation: Friends and Foes - Softcover

Developments in the concept and practice of rheumatology have advanced in a spectacular fashion in the 60 years covered by this book. Indeed, rheumatology has probably advanced more rapidly than any comparable speciality in this period. This book gives a brief history of all the factors and societies, medical and lay, that have played a part in building up the specialties of rheumatology and rehabilitation as we know them today. It records briefly the history of both specialties, going back to their earliest roots, showing the effects of one on the other. Tracing developments both before and since the "cortisone era", the book also relates the complex - and frequently fractious - medico-political issues which arose between rheumatology, and its allied specialties of "physical medicine" and rehabilitation, and how the former eventually benefited by merger whereas the latter is "riding high" largely because of its new-found independence. Details of important landmarks in the developments of the related societies are interspersed with short biographical details of the personalities who have helped to construct the thriving speciality which rheumatology has now become. A foreword by the Rt Hon Lord Porritt stresses the medical and social significance of the problem of the rheumatic diseases and the symbiosis - but not the identity - of rheumatology and rehabilitation.