New ideas are vital to any science, but the importance of new discoveries cannot be appreciated without a strong sense of a discipline's framework, and the ideas that helped shape it. The editors of this book have therefore created a canon of texts that formed the basis of rheumatology. Experts have chosen what they believe are the key papers in their respective domains. Every paper is evaluated by its strengths, weaknesses, and contribution to the field. These papers defined new diseases or treatments, changed conventional thinking, or simply stood the test of time. They will stimulate debate, encourage readers to seek out the original texts, and inspire the writers of new classics.