Granulomatous (Ileo) Colitis

SAMUEL Wilks,1 in 1859, suggested that idiopathic colitis should be considered in a different category from specific epidemic dysentery. When Moxon,2 in 1875, joined him in common authorship of their book on pathological anatomy, he included a graphic description of what would still pass for nonspecific ulcerative colitis: "extensive ulceration commencing in the follicles and spreading from them to destroy the tissue around, thus producing a ragged ulcerated surface."Thus, for more than a century all inflammatory diseases without specific etiology were included in a common reservoir designated as idiopathic nonspecific ulcerative colitis. From this all-inclusive category, various diagnostic groupings . . .