Hematology all time.

  I am sure, everyone knows or atleast have heard about Sherlock Holmes. There are short stories, novels now being made into movies and series.   Is there a link between Sherlock Holmes and Hematology? What do you think ? Please do share in comments section if you could relate Sherlock Holmes with hematology. Those who are curious to know the answer, proceed reading further and for those who wants to think, take your time, think and then read further. Now the questions are: Is Sherlock Holmes related to hematology, the answer is Yes. How is he related ? To which hematological disorder, is he related? Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle between 1887 and 1927. He had written 4 novels and 58 short stories. Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was a British writer and physician. He had written a letter to editor in Lancet on a case of leucocythemia. You can see the screenshot of this published article below. So, friends, I ho...

  Do you know how Philadelphia chromosome got its name? The Philadelphia chromosome was discovered in 1959 by David Hungerford, from Fox Chase Cancer Centre in collaboration with Peter C.Nowell. David Hungerford was a junior research fellow at Fox Chase Cancer Centre, at the time of discovery and he was pursuing PhD at the University of Pennysylvania. He was working in collaboration with pathologist Peter C.Nowell of the University’s medical school. As a part of his doctoral dissertation, Hungerford was studying leukemic cells on human chromosomes. They discovered a tiny chromosomal abnormality from the cultured blood cells of chronic myeloid leukemia patients and this came to be known as the Philadelphia chromosome later. This was the first consistent chromosome abnormality with neoplasia. It was discovered by both Hungerford of Fox Chase Cancer Centre and Nowell of the University of Pennysylvania and was therefore named after the city in which both institutions were located...

Hi friends, I was thinking what to write for this week’s blog post. Initially, I thought of writing about a landmark discovery in one of the hematological malignancies but when I was reading in detail about that, I came across other interesting things, which am sharing in this post. Lets start with the origin of the word “cancer”. Cancer is derived from the greek word “karkinos”, meaning crab. The Greek physician Hippocrates is credited for coining the term cancer. And guess why he called it as cancer?   Hippocrates noticed that the blood vessels around a malignant tumour resembled the claws of crab and hence the word cancer. Now moving on to “leukemias” There is not much literature stating when leukemias were first discovered.   It dates back to 4 or 5 century BC and recognized by the ancient Greeks.  Most of the literature are from the 19 th century and initially started as description of cases with uncommon alterations of blood. FIRST DESCRIPTION ...

We have talked in detail about Romanowsky/Malachowski stains in my previous posts.   I hope its now clear that the so called Romanowsky effect is because of polychromed methylene blue. In this post, lets see in detail what polychromed methylene blue is. Poly- chromed Prefix ‘Poly’ is derived from greek word, which means ‘many’ and ‘Chrome’, comes from the greek word- chrom, which means colour.  So, in simple terms, polychromed means many colours. Methylene blue when used in pure form did not produce many colours. It produced multiple colours along with the characteristic purple hue only when the methylene blue used was aged. In Romanowksy type stains, eosin Y is combined with polychrome methylene blue or azure B. Methylene blue when subject to oxidative demethylation, results in the breakdown of methylene blue into multiple other stains, some of which produce subtle variations in colour. This is known as polychromed methylene blue.   It may contain upto 11 dye...

This post is in continuation with my previous post on Romanowsky stains. In the previous post on ‘Romanowsky stain and Dmitri Leonidovich Romanowsky’, I talked about three people, Ehrlich, Chenzinsky and Romanowsky who worked on this staining methods. This post is about yet another important person, who has independently produced the same stain combination as Romanowsky and even earlier than him, however his work was ignored. And he is Ernst Malachowski.                                                                          Ernst Malachowski Ernst Malachowski was born on March 12, 1857 in Poland. He went to grammar school from 1867 to 1876 in Posen, Prussia (now Poland) at the Friedrich Wilhelm Gymnasium. Then, he moved to Germany, where he st...

Hi friends, I started writing during the initial phase of this lockdown and now we are in my 25 th post. Thanks to all my followers, subscribers, parents, siblings, teachers, family and friends for all your encouraging and lovely comments which keeps me writing.. Being the silver jubilee of my blog, I thought of making it different and special..   I would like to start with a quote by Dr.Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan whose birth anniversary is celebrated as teachers day.  "The true teachers are those who help us think for ourselves." My teachers taught me to question, to think, to reason out in  learning the subject. I feel writing about them is special and a way to show my gratitude to them. Each and everyone is unique and I have equal respect and  admiration for all my teachers, starting from my school teachers, my MBBS teachers, my MD teachers (including my senior residents and seniors), my teachers at AIIMS, Delhi and my teachers at CMC, Vellore. ...

Romanowsky is credited with the most important staining method used in hematology.  Was he the first person or is there anyone else before him who tried a similar staining?  Romanowsky introduced this staining in 1891. Paul Ehrlich in 1870 Even before this, in 1870, Paul Ehrlich made a significant contribution of todays blood stain. He made a neutral stain which had a mixture of acidic dye (acid fuchsin) and basic dye (methylene blue) for blood smears. To make it more interesting, I will tell you how he made this neutral stain. Ehrlich poured saturated aqueous solution of methylene blue into saturated aqueous acid fuchsin solution until the supernatant liquid was clear. Following this, he added more acid fuchsin until the precipitate redissolved. Methylene blue is said to be as one of Ehrlich favourite dyes. So what colour this neutral stain gave to blood cells? It stained the red blood cells and eosinophil granules as red, nuclei deep blue, lymphocyte cytopla...