Part 5 · Context & review
History & people
The history of myasthenia gravis from Willis in 1672 to the 2026 biologics and the first CAR-T cases. Press play to run the playhead across 350 years, jump between eras, or click any dot or year below; the scene, the mortality band and the treatment toolkit change as each milestone arrives.
The axis is stretched so the crowded recent decades stay readable. Every caption in the scene repeats a milestone below, with its sources in the note panel. Death-rate dots are published figures from different kinds of study (per crisis, overall, within two years of diagnosis), so they are shown as separate points, not one curve. 16,64,84,384,512 A toolkit item's year is the earliest paper on it in this guide's sources, not necessarily its first use.
Every milestone
The dots on the timeline, in order. Click a year to move the playhead there.
Names it has carried
For a time after Goldflam's 1893 review the disease was called the Erb-Goldflam syndrome. Jolly's 1895 name, "myasthenia gravis pseudoparalytica", was later shortened to the one used today. 100,257
1936 or 1939? The Blalock date
Blalock removed a thymic tumour from a patient with MG in 1936 and published it in 1939, so timelines disagree by three years about the same operation. His planned-thymectomy series in patients without thymoma followed in 1941. German reviews credit Sauerbruch's 1911 thymectomy, done for thyrotoxicosis in a young woman with MG, as coming first. 49,50,100,413,495
Three experiments that proved it
- 1973 Rabbits immunised with eel AChR became weak: the receptor is the target. 418
- 1973 MG junctions carry fewer receptors. 131
- 1975 Patient IgG injected into mice reproduces the defect: the antibody is enough. 519
- 1976 The antibody test: positive in 87% of 71 patients, 0 of 175 controls. 322
From often fatal to near-normal life expectancy
In 1934, 70% of the few people diagnosed died of respiratory failure or pneumonia within two years. 64 Deaths per crisis fell from 42% in the early 1960s to 6% in the late 1970s, with ventilation and intensive care. 84,100 Disease-specific mortality is now under 5% with nearly normal life expectancy. 276 Older cohorts still fare worse: 12% of ventilated crises in Germany, 2006–2015 (median age 72). 384
The toolkit, by its first paper here
Cell therapy Early evidence
The first person with MG treated with CAR-T cells was reported in 2023. By 2026 small series reported remission off immunotherapy for at least 19 months, and a 26-person randomised trial of an mRNA CAR-T met its primary endpoint. Larger trials are still running. 223,230,542 Toward a cure