What are rheumatic diseases? Rheumatic diseases are a large group of diseases affecting bones, joints and their surrounding soft tissues such as muscles, tendons, bursae and fascia, etc. There are more than a dozen categories and more than 100 diseases. The most common type is diffuse connective tissue disease, including systemic lupus erythematosus, dry syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis, dermatomyositis, polymyositis, scleroderma, etc. In addition, the second type is spinal arthritis, and the ankylosing spondylitis suffered by Zhou Dong belongs to this type of disease. The osteoarthritis that the elderly often get is degenerative osteoarthropathy; gout or pseudogout is also related to metabolic; rheumatic fever is an infection-related rheumatic disease. “Although rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, osteoarthritis, rheumatic fever and gout all have arthritic manifestations, they are completely different rheumatic diseases. What is rheumatic fever? Rheumatic fever is a systemic non-suppurative disease of connective tissue associated with group A hemolytic streptococcal infection, and was once one of the major diseases endangering the life and health of school-age children and adolescents, involving the heart, joints, central nervous system and subcutaneous tissues, but the heart and joints are the most obvious. The lesions may be acute or chronic and recurrent, and may leave behind heart valve lesions to form chronic rheumatic heart valve disease. During the long years of lack of antibiotic treatment, the consequences of infection were unpredictable. A small sore throat or tonsillitis followed by what could be rheumatic fever and heart valve disease. The arthritis of rheumatic fever does not leave joint deformities and is not terrible, but heart valve disease severely impairs the patient’s ability to work and life expectancy. By the middle of the 20th century, with the widespread use of antibiotics, the incidence of rheumatic fever declined significantly in countries around the world. However, in the last 20 years, the incidence of rheumatic fever has picked up again. For this disease, the removal of streptococcal foci of infection as the etiologic treatment is paramount, and benzathine penicillin is now recognized as the drug of choice. What is rheumatoid arthritis? Rheumatoid arthritis is a connective tissue disease of unknown etiology with chronic, symmetrical, destructive, small joint involvement as the typical clinical manifestation, and may be associated with extra-articular organ involvement, such as lung and heart damage. The most important pathological mechanism of rheumatoid arthritis is the formation of subcutaneous vascular opacities in the inflammatory state and their erosive destruction of cartilage and bone, which often leads to joint deformity and disability. Morning stiffness, painful swelling of the wrist, metacarpophalangeal and proximal interphalangeal joints, and joint destruction and deformity are the most common clinical manifestations. The development of rheumatoid arthritis may be related to genetics, infection, sex hormones, etc. See here, I guess we all understand the “rheumatism” and “rheumatoid” of this “tangled good story”. Rheumatoid arthritis, an informal term derived from rheumatic fever, has left a deep imprint in people’s memory for thousands of years, even after the disease has been gradually withdrawn from our sight for 30 years, it still has a place in the name of the disease. I believe that with the strengthening and promotion of rheumatology science knowledge, this misconception should slowly be treated differently by non-specialist doctors and the general public.