New ideas are vital to any science, but the importance of new discoveries cannot be appreciated without a strong sense of a discipline's framework and the ideas that helped shape it. The editors of this book have therefore created a canon of texts that form the basis of rheumatology. Experts have chosen what they believe are the key papers in their respective domains. Every paper is evaluated by its strengths, weaknesses, and contribution to the field. These papers defined new diseases or treatments, changed conventional thinking, or simply stood the test of time. They will stimulate debate, encourage readers to seek out the original texts, and inspire the writers of new classics.

Paul Dieppe, Frank A. Wollheim, H. Ralph Schumacher

While an emphasis on the new is vital to any science, the relevance or importance of new discoveries cannot truly be appreciated without a strong sense of the framework of a discipline, and of the ideas that helped to shape it. With this in mind, the editors of this book have attempted to create a canon of texts that formed the basis of rheumatolog