Re: who discovered the shingles?

The short answer is, no one knows: the disease has been around for so long that it is hard to pin its discovery on a single person. As covered in a previous response in our archives, Shingles (herpes zoster) is caused by the Varicella-Zoster Virus (VZV) - also called Human Herpesvirus 3 (HHV3) - which is also the cause of chickenpox (varicella). Interestingly, the histories of chickenpox and shingles are distinct, since chickenpox was traditionally lumped with smallpox.

The distinguishing characteristic of shingles, beside its usually late onset, is its restriction to specific, lateral areas of skin reminiscent of belts, such that the Greek name, zoster, and the original Latin name, cingulum, (which was corrupted into the English, shingles) both mean "belt." The first real characterizations of the disease came in the late 19th Century and are covered in an article in the Archives of Neurology by Anne Louise Oaklander, "The Pathology of Shingles." In it she explains:

"In 1861, Felix von Bärunsprung identified the neural origin of shingles, originally hypothesized by Richard Bright in 1831, and after performing the first postmortem examination, identified its focus in the dorsal root ganglion. There were many other cases reported in the 19th century, including one by Charcot and Cotard in 1865. It is reported that 70 articles on shingles were published between 1895 and 1900, but medical knowledge remained rudimentary until (Sir Henry) Head and (A. W.) Campbell... detailed clinical and autopsy reports from 21 patients with shingles at intervals ranging from 3 to 790 days prior to death."

Head and Campbell mapped the "belts" to sensory dermatomes and showed definitively that each dermatome corresponded to a single dorsal root ganglion in the spine. They went on to characterize the onset, and progression of the disease from ganglion inflammation to skin rash to remission and on to the post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN) that plagues some patients. So, I guess the long answer is: no one knows who first recognized the belt-like rashes as a single disease, but Felix von Bärunsprung, Sir Henry Head, and A. W. Campbell identified the disease as it is know understood.