Celiac Disease Awareness Month - May 15, 2014

Each day this month, I will be posting something about Celiac Disease.

Day 15:

For the next few days, we're going to go back to the beginning of how celiac disease was discovered.

The first mention of celiac disease was in the 2nd century. 18 centuries would pass before a cause was identified. Arataeus of Cappadocia first wrote of a condition he saw in his patients which he referred to as "koiliakos" (Greek) which means "suffering in the bowels" in 250 A.D. Over 1600 years later, his writings were translated from Greek to English, which was when the term "celiac" was first described.

Question of the day: Are you surprised to hear there were discoveries so early? When did you think celiac disease was first discovered?



*Information obtained from the University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center and the Celiac Sprue Association