Thomas Hodgkin - Work in Medicine

Work in Medicine

Hodgkin collaborated with Joseph Jackson Lister, who in 1830 enunciated design principles for the achromatic microscope. By that time Hodgkin and Lister had already published research on tissue samples, based on observations made with Lister's innovative microscope, in particular on the "globule hypothesis" of the time which was held in particular by Henri Milne Edwards. They denied the existence of globules in tissue; Ernst Heinrich Weber in 1830 contradicted them, and the debate continued for a decade. For a while microscopy suffered in its reputation, but by 1840 histology was a recognised discipline, and in time the view of Hodgkin and Lister that "globules" were optical artefacts became accepted. The 1827 paper they published has been called "the foundation of modern histology".

Hodgkin described the disease that bears his name (Hodgkin's lymphoma) in 1832, in a paper titled On Some Morbid Appearances of the Absorbent Glands and Spleen. He received 33 years later the eponym through the recognition of British physician Samuel Wilks, who rediscovered the disease. It is a malignancy that produces enlargement of lymphoid tissue, spleen, and liver, with invasion of other tissues. A more benign form is called Hodgkin's paragranuloma, while a more invasive form is called Hodgkin's sarcoma.

Hodgkin published as a book his Lectures on Morbid Anatomy in 1836 and 1840. His major contribution to the teaching of pathology, however, was made in 1829, with his two volumed work entitled The Morbid Anatomy of Serous and Mucous Membranes, which became a classic in modern pathology.

Hodgkin was one of the earliest defenders of preventive medicine, having published On the Means of Promoting and Preserving Health in book form in 1841. Among other early observations were the first description of acute appendicitis, of the biconcave format of red blood cells and the striation of muscle fibers.

Hodgkin also translated with Thomas Fisher, from the French of William-Frédéric Edwards, On the Influence of Physical Agents on Life (London, 1832; Philadelphia 1838). Edwards was a vitalist in physiology, who studied the effect of physical forces on processes in living organisms. The work as it appeared in English was much more than a translation, since it contained an appendix of over 200 pages containing two dozen papers, a compendium of medicine and science tangentially related to themes in Edwards, but related to his general approach. It included early work by Hodgkin and collaboration with Lister, as well as something on electricity and meteorology. He also published The Means of Promoting and Preserving Health (London, 1840), of which a second edition appeared in 1841, and an Address on Medical Reform (1847).