Today Haematologists and Health Care workers discuss the classification of Leukaemias and their prognosis and treatment. There is no doubt that improvements in treatment have occurred especially in the therapy of Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia with TKI inhibitors. Things are not so good in the treatment of elderly patients with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia. Did you know that the battle for the recognition of Leukaemia is relatively recent?
The two names that are linked to the term Leukaemia are John Hughes Bennett and Rudolph Virchow. John Hughes Bennett (1812–1873), an Englishman, graduated from Edinburgh after a brilliant undergraduate career and subsequently went to Paris and was greatly influenced by the great microscopist Alfred Donné (“Did you know?”, April 2022). He spent 2 years in Germany before returning to Scotland. Although brilliant he was rather short tempered and made some sarcastic comments about his colleagues!
Image credit: John Hughes Bennett. Source: Wellcome Images, via Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
His main rival was Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902). Although he was in Paris at the same time as Bennett there is no record of them meeting. Both men made their observations at the autopsy table. Both looked for evidence of infection but found none. Both, apparently, carried out an acrimonious battle in the medical journals.
Image credit: Rudolf Ludwig Karl Virchow. Author unknown. Source: Smithsonian Institution Libraries Digital Collections, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
A few years later the word Leukaemia was introduced by Neuman who suggested that the problem in Leukaemia lay in the bone marrow. The morphological classification of Leukaemias was greatly helped when Erlich introduced new methods of staining blood films.
Careful observation even in the absence of scientific understanding, was then, and still is very important in unravelling diseases.