Who discovered the pathognomonic giant cell of Hodgkin's disease?

IN i832 there appeared a report by Thomas Hodgkin of certain "morbid appearances of the absorbent glands and spleen" found at autopsy in a group of seven patients. Hodgkin stated that although the structural alterations described were "probably familiar to many practical anatomists" they had not been made the subject of a special report., His paper was the subject of extensive comment in the English and foreign medical literature throughout the i9th century. All commentators agreed that he had included a diverse group of diseases in the report. Nevertheless they found a residue of cases that could not be placed in the recognized categories of disease and continued to devote their attention to them. Among diseases involving the lymph nodes and spleen the leukemias were separated out in mid-century by Virchow and Bennett.2 After many terminological vicissitudes, marked by the names "lymphoma," "lymphadenoma," lymphadenome, Lymphosarrkom, Pseudoleukaemie, among others, an ailment common to at least some of Hodgkin's original group of patients has come to be designated "Hodgkin's disease." At the present time most pathologists hold that the presence of a certain highly characteristic giant cell (variously referred to as the "Sternberg," "Dorothy Reed," "SternbergReed," or "Reed-Sternberg" cell) is the sine qua non of a histopathological diagnosis. Because these giant cells are pathognomonic of Hodgkin's disease (when they occur in the proper context of altered tissues) they have come to be defined very precisely in order to mark them off from other large cells-Langhans, Touton, and foreign body giant cells, tumor giant cells, megakaryocytes, etc.-that are encountered under other circumstances. A very recent description (197 I), for example, states that the pathognomonic cell is "multinucleated, binucleated or bilobed, the nuclear membrane is thick, and the cytoplasm is