Description
The word ‘coeliac’ is derived from the Greek ‘Koilakos’ which translates as suffering in the ‘bowels’. Coeliac disease is one of the more common chronic diseases to present to the gastroenterologist. It was first clinically described in the second century AD by Aretaeus, who noted bread to be deleterious in these patients. Samuel Gee in 1888 described the classical clinical features. Dietary manipulation was first identified as a treatment for these patients when Professor Karel Dicke made the observation that coeliac children improved on war-time rationing, when wheat, barley and oat flours were replaced by maize and rice.
