11 Famous People With Rheumatoid Arthritis

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Raoul Dufy

The prolific Fauvist painter became ill with RA in 1935, when gold salts were the main treatment for the disease. After an article in Life magazine brought his illness to the world’s attention, he was invited to Boston in 1950 to participate in a trial of corticosteroids.

The therapy gave him more energy and renewed his appetite. Dufy even painted a work he called "La Cortisone," which he gifted to the drug company developing the medication.

The artist continued to take steroids for the rest of his life, and continued to feel better—and experience the side effects that now make steroid therapy a stopgap, rather than the cure it was initially thought to be.