Addison and the white corpuscles : an aspect of nineteenth-century biology / L. J. Rather.

  • Rather, L. J.
Date:
1972 [i.e. 1971]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Addison and the white corpuscles : an aspect of nineteenth-century biology / L. J. Rather. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    'more' that had clearly fallen out of one of Addison's sentences. The only other name mentioned by Cohnheim in this connexion is that of Zimmermann, who, he writes, claimed in 1852 that all cells present in inflammatory exudates were by origin white blood cells. But Zimmer- mann's claim, according to Cohnheim, rested on hypothesis alone. Why Cohnheim used the comparatively late date of 1852 is not clear, for Zimmermann's hypothesis was put forward long before that time. In an article published in 1847 Virchow referred to Zimmermann's espousal of the hypothesis as one of several years' standing. Interestingly enough, Virchow at that time allowed for the passage of a few red and white cor puscles from the bloodstream to the tissues during inflammation. 'We know,' he writes, ' that during inflammation red as well as colourless cor puscles often pass out, but that nothing develops from them, instead they retrogress and succumb.' {Herr Dr. Zimmermann und der Eiter, Literarische Beilage zur med. Zeitung , V/9, September 1847.) 5. Cooper's Dictionary of Practical Surgery and Encyclopaedia of Surgical Science, 2 vols., London, 1872, vol. 2, article 'Inflammation', by R. Druitt, p. 72. 6. Med. Times Gaz., loc. cit. The writer states that up to the present time, i.e., 1881, 'Virchow's notion had been generally accepted that the con nective tissue cells or fixed corpuscles were the chief agents concerned in multiplying, under irritation, and with a due supply of nutritive material, so as to create heaps of pus corpuscles or other new formations, and that the blood vessels simply served as a means for conveying an increased quantity of nutrient elements to the part'. The remark is somewhat mis leading, for Virchow's ideas on the subject did not receive widespread acceptance until some time after the publication of his Cellularpatkologie in 1858. Even then many dissenters remained (see Appendix C). The obituarist states also that while Addison had expressed some of his views in 1841 and 1843 'it was not until 1849, after Waller's experiments had been made public . . . that Dr. Addison, in a new work on Healthy and Diseased Structure, was able to formulate his doctrines clearly and pre cisely'. The implication here that Addison knew of Waller's paper is plain, but I have not been able to find any other evidence that he in fact did. 7. Achille Monti, The Fundamental Data of Modem Pathology, trans, from the Italian by John Joseph Eyre, London, 1900, p. 36. 8. Hugh A. McCallum, 'William Addison, M.D., the world's first haema- tologist', Lancet, 1907, i, 182-83. McCallum's generous tribute is un fortunately a compendium of errors. Among other things he claims that Addison was the first to recognize the leucocyte as a separate blood cell in man and the mammals. The article also says nothing of the theoretical context in which Addison placed his observations. 9. World Who's Who in Science: A Biographical Dictionary of Notable Scientists from Antiquity to the Present, ed. by Allen G. Debus, Chicago,