Doctors have studied celiac disease for almost 2,000 years. However, only in the past 100 years has treatment been successfully understood. Even with this fuller understanding of the disease, about 95% of all celiacs are still undiagnosed (National Foundation for Celiac Awareness). Maybe by understanding the history of the disease, people can raise awareness of the disease and understand how it affects others.
Hunter/Gatherers Did Not Eat Wheat
Humans were hunter/gatherers for hundreds of thousands of years. During this time, they ate a diet that mainly consisted of fruits and nuts with an occasional feast of meat. Eventually, humans learned how to cultivate food and domesticate animals during the Neolithic Period. After hundreds of thousands of years of eating the same things, the diet that was accepted by humans and the human digestive system had changed in a matter of hundreds of years.
This new diet included foods like milk from various animals, bird eggs, and cereal grains. Most could adapt to the new diet, but some were not able and began showing signs of food intolerances.
The Coeliac Affliction
In the first century AD, a Greek physician named Aretaeus of Cappodocia wrote about “The Coeliac Affliction.” He named the disease “Koiliakos” after the Greek word for abdomen, "koelia." He learned much about the disease, but he did not understand the specific cause. He did understand, however, that food that celiacs eat passes through the body and is not absorbed.
How To Treat Celiacs?
Seventeen centuries passed and in the 1900s, Dr. Mathew Bailie described a “chronic diarrheal disorder of adults causing malnutrition and characterized by a gas-distended abdomen." He suggested a rice-only diet as treatment after observing that his patients seemed to recover with the incredibly limited diet.
His colleagues, however, did not notice Bailie’s suggestions and no progress in disease research happened until British pediatrician Samuel Gee gave us the first modern accepted description of the disease. He connected the disease with starches and recommended a gluten-free diet as a means of treatment.
The Wheat-Free Diet by Mistake
In the 1920s, Sidney Haas successfully treated celiac children with his “banana diet.” The diet forbids bread, crackers, potatoes, and all cereals. The diet successfully treated celiacs not by the presence of bananas, but by the absence of gluten.
The Dutch Bread Shortage
In 1953, Dr. Willem Karel Dicke wrote his doctoral thesis for the University of Utrecht on how he believed that wheat proteins, not carbohydrates in general, were the cause of the disease. His main example was the Dutch bread shortages during World War II. When the celiacs could not have bread, they improved dramatically. The health of that same population deteriorated when the Allies dropped bread from planes into the Netherlands.
Intestinal Biopsies and Gene Testing
In the 1960s, intestinal biopsy became the most accepted form of diagnosis. In the 1990s, celiac disease was proven to be an autoimmune disease and was identified with specific genes. With the understanding of the genes present in celiacs, the newest step in the history of the disease is testing for the disease through blood or saliva. Most doctors still require a biopsy for confirmation, however.
Celiac disease has come a long way since it was first observed in Greece. As more knowledge about the disease is known, the lives of countless celiacs can be improved.
Sources:
Guandalini, M.D., Stefano. A Brief History of Celiac Disease
National Foundation for Celiac Awareness, Celiac Disease Fact and Figures
Stone, Destiny. National Celiac Awareness Month and History of Celiac Disease
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