Chorea gravidarum

| 01 maart 2022

‘In the whole range of medical terminology there is no such olla podrida* as Chorea, which for a century has served as a sort of nosological pot into which authors have cast indiscriminately affections characterized by irregular, purposeless movements.’ William Osler De meeste artikelen waarin de geschiedenis van de term ‘chorea’ – afgeleid van het Griekse χορεία dat dans betekent – aan de orde komt, vermelden bovengenoemd citaat van de beroemde Canadees Amerikaanse internist William Osler (1849-1919). Hij wijdde in 1894 een monografie aan dit onderwerp: On chorea and choreiform affections. De Leidse hoogleraar neurologie George W. Bruyn (1928-2002) beschreef in 1968 de lange geschiedenis van chorea. ‘Traditionally, nearly every recent writer on the subject has sought the historical sources of choreatic movements in the strange phenomenon of an epidemic dance psychosis which originated in the fourteenth century and which first became known as “St. Vitus dance”, a term which first came into use in the early seventeenth century.’