History of inflammatory bowel disease on eleven infographics

It is estimated that in 2030 around one in 100 people will have an inflammatory bowel disease in western countries, and soon afterwards worldwide. A hundred years ago, almost no one had heard of these diseases. Since then however, concepts have been developed that today help us with the challenge of diagnosing and treating ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease with relative success; not to say we can cure them, but helping the majority of patients to have good quality of life.

Over 100,000 scientific articles have been published about ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, but a few in particular have been essential in developing the understanding we have today about these diseases. We had the idea of summarising some of these articles and carrying out a conceptual synthesis in the form of infographics. We love books: we believe that they are humanity’s best invention, as they allow us to give permanence to scientific knowledge and art, to transmit the beauty of literature, the sublime nature of music, the precision of science, across an entire generation, while then remaining for future generations. But we don’t always have the time and concentration that a good text demands. Images, diagrams, drawings are other ways of spreading knowledge. So we thought about choosing some of the articles which are already classics in the literature on inflammatory diseases and summarising them in the form of infographics. In this selection we wanted to represent articles which are important for the knowledge they provide, for their methodological hallmark or for their conceptual elegance. It is, of course, an arbitrary selection, perhaps unfair and certainly limited. But we believe that it is rich in magnificent ideas which can stimulate us to seek out more in-depth knowledge and, hopefully, to point the way for new research. We hope it is at least entertaining.