The British physician Thomas Hodgkin’s life (1798–1866) is the stuff that movies are made of: Born a Quaker, he was forbidden by his religion from marrying his love, a first cousin. He pursued a career in medicine, introducing the stethoscope to England and working as a professor of medicine. In his later years, he embarked on a second career studying geography and philosophy, traveling through the Middle East. But despite all these dramas and accomplishments, Hodgkin is best known for identifying a type of cancer in the lymphatic system, a part of the immune system.

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This network of vessels and nodes stores and produces white blood cells; the tonsils, thymus, bone marrow, and spleen are also parts of the lymphatic system. When certain white blood cells called B cells mutate and become cancerous, that’s called Hodgkin’s lymphoma, or Hodgkin’s disease. The other types of lymphoma, which are more common, are known as non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The symptoms and diagnostic testing procedures are similar for all of them, but the prognosis is much better for Hodgkin’s disease.

Symptoms include swelling of the lymph nodes, fever, fatigue, weight loss, and itching. Depending on the severity of the disease, treatments include radiation and chemotherapy. If the cancer has spread throughout the body, a bone marrow transplant may be required. Each year, some 8,000 Americans develop non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and 1,350 die of it. If caught early enough, the disease can be cured.

ADDITIONAL FACTS

  1. Abnormal, cancerous B cells are known as Reed-Sternberg cells, named after the two scientists who discovered them.
  2. Men, people between the ages of 15 and 40 or over the age of 55, and those who have had illnesses caused by the Epstein-Barr virus, such as mononucleosis, are more likely to develop Hodgkin’s disease.