History
Hodgkin's lymphoma was first described in an 1832 report by Thomas Hodgkin, although Hodgkin noted that perhaps the earliest reference to the condition was provided by Marcello Malpighi in 1666. While occupied as museum curator at Guy's Hospital, Hodgkin studied seven patients with painless lymph node enlargement. Of the seven cases, two were patients of Richard Bright, one was of Thomas Addison, and one was of Robert Carswell. Carswell's report of this seventh patient was accompanied by numerous illustrations that aided early descriptions of the disease.
Hodgkin's report on these seven patients, entitled "On some morbid appearances of the absorbent glands and spleen", was presented to the Medical and Chirurgical Society in London in January 1832 and was subsequently published in the society's journal, Medical-Chirurgical Society Transactions. Hodgkin's paper went largely unnoticed, however, even despite Bright highlighting it in an 1838 publication. Indeed, Hodgkin himself did not view his contribution as particularly significant.
In 1856, Samuel Wilks independently reported on a series of patients with the same disease that Hodgkin had previously described. Wilks, a successor to Hodgkin at Guy's Hospital, was unaware of Hodgkin's prior work on the subject. Bright made Wilks aware of Hodgkin's contribution and in 1865, Wilks published a second paper, entitled "Cases of enlargement of the lymphatic glands and spleen", in which he called the disease "Hodgkin's disease" in honor of his predecessor.
Theodor Langhans and WS Greenfield first described the microscopic characteristics of Hodgkin's lymphoma in 1872 and 1878, respectively. In 1898 and 1902, respectively, Carl Sternberg and Dorothy Reed independently described the cytogenetic features of the malignant cells of Hodgkin's lymphoma, now called Reed-Sternberg cells.
Tissue specimens from Hodgkin's seven patients remained at Guy's Hospital for a number of years. Nearly 100 years after Hodgkin's initial publication, histopathologic reexamination confirmed Hodgkin's lymphoma in only three of seven of these patients. The remaining cases included non-Hodgkin lymphoma, tuberculosis, and syphilis.
Hodgkin's lymphoma was one of the first cancers which could be treated using radiation therapy and, later, it was one of the first to be treated by combination chemotherapy.
Read more about this topic: Hodgkin's Lymphoma
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“If you look at history you’ll find that no state has been so plagued by its rulers as when power has fallen into the hands of some dabbler in philosophy or literary addict.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
“Regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized—the question involuntarily arises—to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)