The Charcot foot: historical perspective 1827-2003.

Charcot's joint disease of the foot and ankle is a poorly understood and frequently overlooked complication of diabetes. Recognition of this condition, especially in its earliest stage, remains problematic, with many cases going misdiagnosed even today. Medical management of the Charcot foot remains the standard of care for the majority of patients, with surgical intervention reserved for the most difficult cases. This historical perspective began in the early nineteenth century with the first attempts to experimentally examine the spinal origin of rheumatism of the foot and ankle. J.-M. Charcot was the first to describe the arthropathies associated with tabes dorsalis. His early investigations into the tabetic arthropathies (1868) and his brilliant presentation, Demonstration of Arthropathic Affections of Locomotor Ataxy, at the 7th International Medical Congress (1881), established this disease as a distinct pathological entity. Charcot and Féré published the first observations of the tabetic foot (Pied tabétique) in the Archives de Neurologie in 1883. It was not until 1936, however, that W. R. Jordan established the association between neurogenic arthropathy of the foot/ankle and diabetes mellitus. Copyright 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.