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History

The name chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is believed to have first been used in 1965. Previously it has been known by a number of different names, including chronic obstructive bronchopulmonary disease, chronic airflow obstruction, chronic obstructive lung disease, nonspecific chronic pulmonary disease, diffuse obstructive pulmonary syndrome.

The terms emphysema and chronic bronchitis were formally defined as components of COPD in 1959 at the CIBA guest symposium and in 1962 at the American Thoracic Society Committee meeting on Diagnostic Standards.

Early descriptions of probable emphysema began in 1679 by T. Bonet of a condition of "voluminous lungs" and in 1769 by Giovanni Morgagni of lungs which were "turgid particularly from air". In 1721 the first drawings of emphysema were made by Ruysh. René Laennec, used the term emphysema in his book A Treatise on the Diseases of the Chest and of Mediate Auscultation (1837) to describe lungs that did not collapse when he opened the chest during an autopsy. He noted that they did not collapse as usual because they were full of air and the airways were filled with mucus. In 1842, John Hutchinson invented the spirometer, which allowed the measurement of vital capacity of the lungs. However, his spirometer could only measure volume, not airflow. Tiffeneau and Pinelli in 1947 described the principles of measuring airflow.

Air pollution and the increase in cigarette smoking in Great Britain at the start of the 20th century led to high rates of chronic lung disease, though it received little attention until the Great Smog of London in December 1952. This spurred epidemiological research in the United Kingdom, Holland and elsewhere. In 1953, George L. Waldbott, an American allergist, first described a new disease he named smoker's respiratory syndrome in the 1953 Journal of the American Medical Association. This was the first association between tobacco smoking and chronic respiratory disease.

Modern treatments were developed during the second half of the 20th century. Evidence supporting the use of steroids in COPD was published in the late 1950s. Bronchodilators came into use in the 1960s following a promising trial of isoprenaline. Further bronchodilators, such as short-acting salbutamol, were developed in the 1970s and the use of long-acting bronchodilators began in the mid-1990s.