Reactive arthritis (ReA) is a puzzling condition initiated by a genitourinary or gastrointestinal infection. Within 1–3 weeks after the triggering infection, the symptoms of ReA appear: joint inflammation, genitourinary symptoms (urethritis or cystitis), and eye inflammation, sometimes accompanied by enthesitis and sacroiliitis or dermatological changes1.
This unusual constellation of symptoms was described in the 19th century by Alexandre-Urbain Yvan, Benjamin Brodie, and Astley Cooper, and recognized as a separate disease in the 20th century by researchers Adolf Vossius, Noël Fiessinger, Edgar Leroy, and the infamous Nazi physician Hans Reiter1,2,3,4. This late identification of ReA might suggest that it is a recent disease, caused by changed properties of microbes or newly developed immune responses. But this is probably not true. Cases resembling ReA appear in many texts starting from the 16th century, as well as in individual writings from ancient Rome and Greece3. And ReA is probably even older: I draw attention to an ancient Egyptian text describing symptoms strikingly resembling ReA — likely the very earliest description of this disease.
A papyrus called Chester Beatty VI (named after Alfred Chester Beatty, who donated a papyri …
