[Originators and eponyms of dermatomyositis : Ernst Leberecht Wagner (1821-1888) and Heinrich Unverricht (1853-1912)].

Dermatomyositis is a rare muscle disease that was first described by Ernst Leberecht Wagner and Heinrich Unverricht.After providing a survey on both scientists' life works, this contribution describes the most significant subsequent works on the diagnostics and classification of clinical symptoms and the progress of the disease that the author has been observing for more than three decades.Polymyositis/dermatomyositis (also known as Unverricht-Wagner or Wagner-Unverricht syndrome) was described in two publications by Ernst Leberecht Wagner in 1863 and 1887. Wagner was - probably uniquely in Germany - consecutively professor of pathology and also, as a successor to K. A. Wunderlich, of internal medicine at the University of Leipzig. The most frequently used designation for polymyositis/dermatomyositis today was originated by Heinrich Unverricht in 1891. After his education in his home town of Breslau, Unverricht was first employed as head of the clinic for internal medicine in Jena. From 1886 he was a professor in Dorpat, but he left this university when the language of teaching was changed to Russian in 1892. Unverricht then became the first director of the newly founded Sudenburg Hospital in Magdeburg (Medical Academy from 1954 to 1991).During the subsequent decades, further medical scientists have studied the disease and brought about today's precise classification criteria for diagnostics - based on Wagner's and Unverricht's findings.