“Jefferson’s history of rheumatology is replete with contributions in literature, teaching and patient care…  The pioneer rheumatologists at Jefferson were succeeded in the 1980s by full time investigators. Drs. Sergio Jimenez, John Varga and Reza Bashey provided research skills for the rheumatology program as well as for other departments engaged in the comprehensive studies of collagen and diseases marked by collagen defects and progressive fibrosis. The trio was ranked among the two most productive groups in investigation of scleroderma.”

In 1914, Dr. Solomon Solis-Cohen, Professor of Clinical Medicine at Jefferson, authored a  

paper that represented the first report in the English literature of the rheumatic entity later called palindromic arthritis. Dr. Abraham Cohen was one of the pioneer rheumatologists in the United States. He was a member of the staff of Jefferson Hospital with special interest in its arthritis clinic from 1931 until his death in 1969. He published the first definitive description of gout arthritis in black Americans, in 1941. Dr. Cohen’s effort with a trial of nitrogen mustard for patients with rheumatoid arthritis was prophetic. From 1946 to 1956 Dr. Richard Smith served as Chief of the Rheumatology outpatient clinic. Drs. Irvin Hermann, Roy Hays, Edward Mazur, Howard Lorenz, John Blizzard and Leon Weiner also participated in the Jefferson Arthritis Clinic.”