50 Years Ago in CORR: The Appearance of Osteoporosis in Ambulatory Institutionalized Males Paul J. Vincent MD and Marshall R. Urist MD CORR 1961;19:245–252

Excerpt

Osteoporosis has been found among the oldest existing skeletons from ancient Egypt, the Middle East, and Europe [1, 3, 6, 7]. However, a recognition and understanding of the condition likely began in the first half of the 19th Century, when, in 1833, the French pathologist, Jean Martin Lobstein described the condition as one with holes in the bone associated with fragility [4, 5] and used two terms in his paper: “osteoporose” and “osteopsathyrose” (the latter with obscure meaning). He commented on an autopsy of a “man of sixty years in which almost all the bones began to soften at the age of eighteen years and then they degenerated into tumors. Yet these same spongy bones resumed their original strength when all were united. A review of the corpse suggested the swelling was due to a bone expansion of the reticular substance therefore osteoporosis.”¹ Regardless of the nature of the condition, Lobstein recognized the expansion of the marrow spaces at the expense of the trabecular bone. The term “osteoporosis” likely spread reasonably rapidly, as it is described in a German dictionary of medical terms in 1839 [9]. …