Talk:Timeline of tuberous sclerosis

Inclusion criteria
One problem with any timeline of key events is deciding what to include. Unless some objective and obvious criteria can be established, then the decision will be subjective and count as original research if made by an editor. To solve this, I've drawn on the few timelines already in print:


 * "Hisorical Background" – a chapter of Curatolo's 2003 textbook on Tuberous Sclerosis, which is the only current textbook on the disease and supersedes the earlier monograph by Gómez.
 * "Zur Geschichte der Tuberösen Sklerose" – by HD Rott, et al for the German Tuberous Sclerosis Foundation in 2005.
 * "History of the tuberous sclerosis complex" – by MR Gómez in 1995.

All the key events in this timeline are present on those two timelines with the following exceptions:

Colin°Talk 17:28, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
 * 1850. From Jay (2004) "Historical contributions to pediatric pathology: Tuberous Sclerosis".
 * 1864. From Acierno (1994) "The History of Cardiology".
 * 1911. From Jay (2004)
 * 1954 and 1994. Yeung's 1994 paper provides the information on the Eker rat that is briefly mentioned by other histories.
 * 1966. From Bebin (1993).
 * 2002 – 2006. Curatolo's first edition doesn't reach this far. Rott's article covers the ground but cites informal 2004 TSC conference talks. I've taken these and found the 2002/2006 published papers that the talks will have cited or pre-date.

Style
There doesn't seem to be any one style for writing a detailed timeline on Wikipedia. Medical papers have their own distinctive style for summarising the history of a subject. The terse "Surname (Year) discovered xyz" style is dry and uninformative. Where possible I've added the nationality, location, full name and occupation. I've tried not to single-out the lead author if the team is large. Colin°Talk 17:28, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Scrapbook
The following entries are listed by Rott (2005) in his history. However, there doesn't seem to be much that is historically significant.

1993 Fernández-González et al. Lung transplant. (A letter to the journal. Does it suggest or report on a case?)
 * as cited in Rott (2005)

1997 Wendy Spangler and colleagues reported a case of a 5-year old boy with TSC who died after developing a cerebral aneurysm. Cerebrovascular complications are considered rare with TSC.
 * as cited in Rott (2005)

2002 A team from the Epilepsy Centre Bethel at Bielefeld in Germany reported on 8 patients with TSC who underwent epilepsy surgery to remove the leading epileptogenic tuber. Seizure outcome was good in all patients, with two becoming seizure free. The authors encouraged surgery at an early age in this patient group.
 * as cited in Rott (2005)

Sections
The current sections are:


 * 1) Nineteenth century
 * 2) Early twentieth century
 * 3) Mid-twentieth century
 * 4) Late twentieth century
 * 5) Twenty-first century

A recent change (reverted) was to:


 * 1) Nineteenth century
 * 2) 1900 - 1949
 * 3) 1950 - 1974
 * 4) 1975 - 1999
 * 5) Twenty-first century

I thing that grouping had some flaws:


 * It mixes words with digits
 * The grouping doesn't correspond with the discussion in the lead
 * The middle section is rather small

I don't claim the current section grouping is perfect. Can we improve it? Colin°Talk 08:42, 16 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure the current grouping is perfect, but it does have the advantage of dividing the timeline into chunks of text that are easily digestible. Pragmatically, I suspect it is probably as cleanly segmented as necessary. -- MarcoTolo 14:10, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Tony has suggested that "19th century" is preferable to "Nineteenth century". I'll make this change. Colin°Talk 16:26, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

1975
The 1975 entry
 * 1975
 * Riemann used kidney ultrasound in the case of a 35-year-old woman with chronic renal failure and TSC.[45]

seems a bit lacking in context—could a little more be added? E.g., what exactly was notable here—the description of renal failure or the use of ultrasound in identifying it? (Sorry Colin, but I just had to ask :) Fvasconcellos (t·c) 16:47, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
 * No problem, Fvasconcellos. It is the use of ultrasound to examine the kidneys in TSC. The renal failure was already a known feature of TSC. Hope my rephrasing clarifies this. Colin°Talk 13:41, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * It does, thanks. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 15:33, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Tense issue
It is not a big deal, and I totally support the article, you've done a great job. But one place I find that past tense reads oddly is in reference to the layout of book. For example: "It contained 22 large coloured plates with 400 figures presented in a systematic order. On page 20, fig. 1 was a drawing that is regarded as the earliest description of tuberous sclerosis." Surely if I were to pick up a copy of this book today it would still contain 22 large colored plates and the drawing regarded as the earliest description. The use of past tense in this case makes it sound as if the layout of the book is transient. Hm?--DO11.10 01:05, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
 * You are right. I made that change yesterday when I was trying to be consistent. But the book still exists and hasn't changed (you can read it online here) so past tense isn't appropriate. Thanks. Colin°Talk 07:56, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm still reads a bit oddly to me, rewording the passage to avoid assigning any tense to the layout may be better. Something like:

French dermatologist Pierre François Olive Rayer published an atlas of skin diseases containing 22 large coloured plates with 400 figures presented in a systematic order. Figure 1 on page 20, a drawing entitled "végétations vasculaires", is regarded as the earliest description of tuberous sclerosis. Here Rayer noted these were "small vascular, of papulous appearance, widespread growths distributed on the nose and around the mouth".

This puts the tense squarely (I think) on the words "published" and "regarded", and would keep the verb tense consistent. Just a suggestion it's up to you.--DO11.10 17:33, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm (also). Still thinking about this one. The book "was" and "is". While the above neatly sidesteps the issue of tense in a couple of places, it (1) makes the first sentence a little long (though a comma before "presented" might help) and (2) separates the "végétations vasculaires" from the "these were small ...". Colin°Talk 20:09, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

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