Inflammatory bowel disease up to 1932

Inflammatory bowel diseases have been a major interest of generations of Mo unt Sinai Hospital gastroenterologists. Although clinical descriptions of d iarrhea with or without blood go back thousands of years, clear distinction s between enteritis and ulcerative colitis were possible only in the 19th c entury. At that time, many case reports were published of, in retrospect, c lassical regional enteritis. The term "ulcerative colitis" dates from 1888; the introduction of the electric sigmoidoscope soon after made it possible to make proper diagnosis of ulcerative colitis and distinguish it from inf ective dysentery, membranous mucous or catarrhal colitis, and nervous diarr hea. Doctors at The Mount Sinai Hospital adopted this diagnostic approach i n the 1870s and 1880s, and were particularly interested in patients with tu berculosis-like ileocecal disease without tubercle bacilli. Articles were w ritten by Weiner in 1914, Moschcowitz and Wilensky in 1923 and 1927, and Go ldfarb and Suissman in 1931. Dr. A.A. Berg, in 1925, encouraged his assista nt Leon Ginzburg to conduct a study of the inflammatory granulomatous disea ses of the bowel, when Ginzburg and Gordon Oppenheimer were working in Dr. Paul Klemperer's laboratory. initial reports came in 1927 and 1928, but Gin zburg and Oppenheimer "in conjunction with Dr. Burrill B. Crohn" presented a definitive paper, "Non-specific Granulomata of the Intestine," on May 2, 1932, to the American Gastro-Enterological Association. On May 13, 1932, Dr . Crohn presented a paper on "Terminal Ileitis" to the American Medical Ass ociation; this was published later that year with the title "Regional Ileit is: A Pathologic and Chronic Entity," under the authorship of Crohn, Ginzbu rg and Oppenheimer.