One hundred years have passed since Eduard Heinrich Henoch (Fig 1) described a clinical picture combining purpuric skin lesions, colicky abdominal pain, vomiting, melena, low-grade fever, edema, articular swelling, joint pain, occasional albuminuria of a benign character, and a characteristic course of short duration with frequent recurrences over a period of time, and—in the great majority of cases—ultimate recovery (Fig 2).1 He recognized this as a clinical entity distinguishable from "peliosis (purpura) rheumatica" of Schönlein and from Werlhof disease, now generally called thrombocytopenic purpura. Rightly or wrongly, he considered the latter as a group of hemorrhagic diseases "which can be subdivided into a number of distinctly separate syndromes." Perhaps he included in the term "Werlhof disease" such dissimilar illnesses as leukemia, thrombocytopenia, hemophilia, and bacteremia.
Henoch, in his address to the Berlin Medical Society, which follows in translation, showed himself to be an astute clinician. There is no reference