Major neoplastic blood diseases: nineteenth century historical highlights and epistemological achievements.

Abstract

In this paper the initial description and the historical evaluation of leukemia, lymphoma and multiple myeloma, the major neoplastic blood diseases, are synthetically examined, and the basic insights into the progress of the study of these disorders in the course of the nineteenth century is illustrated from diachronic and epistemological perspectives.

The quarter century from 1847 to 1873 sees the coinage of the (still current) names of these hematologic neoplasms, and in the eighteen hundreds a number of illustrious scientists, from various countries and with different professional backgrounds, provided notable contributions to their definition and characterization. Physicians, pathologists and surgeons active in Great Britain, France and Germany, just to cite only some examples, worked hard in the time course of a few decades to attain relevant biomedical results in the fields of the classification, pathophysiology and diagnosis of leukemia, lymphoma and multiple myeloma.

Even if, in the period examined, the treatment for these hematological malignancies was limited, the original research of such scientists as Rudolph Virchow, Paul Ehrlich, Alfred Donné, Henry Bence Jones, Thomas Hodgkin (names so relevant as to become eponyms in the course of medical history), shaped conceptual frameworks propaedeutic to twentieth century acquisitions in the health care area of major neoplastic blood diseases.