Thymic carcinomas and thymic neuroendocrine tumors: a tribute to Dr. Juan Rosai.

Throughout his career, Dr. Juan Rosai greatly impacted our understanding of mediastinal tumors, both as a scientist and as a teacher. This review highlights his manifold contributions in the field of thymic carcinomas and thymic neuroendocrine tumors from a historical perspective.

"I have had an exceedingly beautiful life" The Jewish gynecopathologist Robert Meyer (1864-1947) and his extraordinary response to Nazi repression.

The Jewish scientist Robert Meyer received worldwide professional recognition as a pioneer gynecopathologist. Before his death, he wrote a memoir in which he gave an entirely positive assessment of his life. The latter, however, is at odds with the fact that he was disenfranchised by the National Socialists and driven into emigration. But even before Hitler's seizure of power, he had to cope with several strokes in private as well as in professional life. This article takes these apparent inconsistencies as an occasion for a fundamental analysis of Robert Meyer's life and work. Special attention is paid to his scientific achievements, but also to repressive experiences in the Third Reich, the background of his emigration and his specific handling of these adversities. Various archival documents, Meyer's memoirs, and other contemporary writings by and about Robert Meyer and about the development of the field of gynecopathology serve as central sources. The study concludes that Meyer made fundamental contributions to the embryology of the vagina, ovarian tumors, cancer diagnosis, endometriosis, and genital and fetal abnormalities. Despite his scientific merits, he was never granted a regular professorship - mainly, because he was professionally caught between two stools (gynecology and pathology), but also due to low career ambition. Nevertheless, thanks to influential supporters, he was able to hold out in Germany until 1939, when he emigrated to the United States. Meyer considered his life "beautiful" despite many misfortunes because he defined happiness in life primarily in terms of fulfilling personal relationships and was willing to accept life as it comes. In addition, he found distraction and fulfillment in his scientific work.

John Hatton's manuscript record of the surgical and pathological lectures given by Joseph Jordan, FRCS, in 1837-1838.

John Hatton, LSA MRCS FRCS MD (1817-1871), was apprenticed from 1833 to Joseph Jordan, MRCS FRCS (1787-1873), a well-known Manchester surgeon. Jordan, who had been teaching anatomy since 1814, closed his Mount Street Medical School in 1834 and was elected as surgeon to the Manchester Royal Infirmary in 1835. He continued to lecture on surgery and surgical pathology at the Infirmary, and sometimes at the Pine Street Medical School run by Thomas Turner, LSA FRCS (1793-1873). During 1837-38 Hatton transcribed and illustrated these lectures in a bound manuscript and also added notes and drawings in his personal copy of The Dublin Dissector. He gained his Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries (LSA) in 1836 and Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons (MRCS) in 1839 and set up in Manchester as surgeon from around 1840. This paper is based on three previously unrelated documents in the University of Manchester Archives: a handwritten catalogue of specimens in Jordan's Anatomy Museum, Hatton's annotated copy of The Dublin Dissector and his manuscript record of Jordan's lectures. These documents provide a valuable insight into medical education during the 1830s.

Alfred Biesiadecki (1839-1889) and his place in the history of dermatology.

Modern dermatology, as a separate branch of medicine, came into being in the 19th century. Alfred Biesiadecki was an outstanding anatomic pathologist and the pioneer in the histopathologic examination of the skin. Biesiadecki was the first to describe the exact distribution of lymphatic vessels in the skin. He dealt with the histopathologic mechanisms of dermatitis and skin grafts, and his work was the forerunner of studies of neoplasms in the skin vasculature. His scientific achievements secured him a prominent place in the history of dermatology in Europe and around the globe. The present work outlines a biography of Alfred Biesiadecki and his most important studies of both dermatology and other branches of medicine.

Hans Frederick Bettinger (1897-1975) - "Father of Australian obstetrical and gynecological pathology" and victim of Nazism.

The German-Australian Hans Bettinger is regarded as one of the most important and influential pathologists of his time. Bettinger's research focused on gynecological pathology, with a particular interest in intersexuality, ovarian and cervical cancer. He received global recognition for his achievements: among others, he was a Honorary Fellow at the International Academy of Cytology, the Royal Australian College of Physicians, the Royal College of Pathologists of Australia, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists, London. Far less well-known is German-born Bettinger's role as a victim of Nazism. This significant yet hitherto "blind spot" in Bettinger's life is the focus of this paper. Previously undiscovered archival material from the German Federal Archives in Koblenz, supplemented by documents from the Public Record Office Victoria, Australia, and the University of Melbourne Archives, served as the central sources for this study. This paper reveals that Bettinger, as the husband of a Jewish woman in Nazi Germany, was disenfranchised, and subsequently forced to emigrate. After considerable efforts, he succeeded in building a new life in Australia, where he became the "father of obstetrical and gynecological pathology". In the 1950s Bettinger submitted an application for "reparations" to the Federal Republic of Germany. The legal claim was successful: From April 1951 onwards, Bettinger received a substantial pension and was thus officially recognized as a victim of Nazism. He was, however, never able to bring himself to return to Germany, and spent the rest of his life in Australia.

Role of German-speaking scholars in the development of pathology in Turkey.

The Westernization efforts initiated in the Ottoman Empire (also historically known as the Turkish Empire) in the 1800s also addressed medical training. Sultan Mahmud II opened a Western-style medical school, the Imperial School of Medicine, in Galatasaray, Istanbul, in 1839. Dr. Karl Ambros Bernard (1808-1895) from Vienna, who was educated at the Josephinum Military Medical Academy, was appointed as the director. The Sultan allowed the use of cadavers and autopsies, provided that they were carried out on deceased Christians. Dr. Sigmund Spitzer (1813-1895) from Vienna joined the medical school as an anatomy and dissection specialist in 1839. In the pre-World War I period, Professor Robert Reider (1861-1913) from the University of Bonn and Professor Georg Deycke (1865-1938) from Eppendorf Hospital in Hamburg came to Istanbul to train Turkish military doctors in postgraduate studies. The Gulhane Military Postgraduate Education & Training Hospital was opened in 1898. A student of the hospital, Hamdi Suat, was sent to Germany to specialize in pathology. He completed his education under the supervision of Professor Marchand (1846-1928). Professor Hamdi Suat Aknar (1873-1936) is regarded as the founder of pathology in Turkey. The Nazi pressure on scientists of Jewish origin during the pre-World War II period led to the emigration of scientists from Germany to Turkey. Professors P. Schwartz (1894-1977) from Frankfurt University and S. Oberndorfer (1876-1943) from Munich-the latter of whom was the first to define carcinoid tumors-took charge at Istanbul University, where they established the contemporary under-postgraduate pathology education and training system.

As the world turns, evolving lymphoma classifications-past, present and future.

The last century and a half has seen first the recognition of lymphomas, and then the publication of one lymphoma classification after another often together with highly critical comments about preceding classifications or a welcome that was less than warm. The introduction of HUMAN PATHOLOGY in 1970 came just before one of the very acrimonious periods in lymphoma classification, as we were learning more about the normal immune system and with the proposed functional lymphoma classifications of Lukes/Collins and Kiel in 1974 relating the lymphomas to their normal B-cell or T-cell 'counterparts'. Those difficult times were followed by the regressive strictly morphologic NCI Working Formulation in 1982, with the REAL classification in 1994 putting us back on a rational path, once again grouping the lymphoid neoplasms first into those of B-cell and T- and putative NK-cell origin, and then using multiple parameters to define specific entities. Planning for the first modern WHO lymphoma classification began soon afterward, with concordance and collegiality leading to the 2001 WHO classification, which then evolved with publication of the 2008 and 2016 WHO classifications. While this review looks at these important past developments which have gotten us to where we are today, it also concentrates on where we are now, what has been learned since the most recent WHO classification and 'Blue Book' were published and on some of the unanswered questions that remain as we look to the future.

Pathology of liver disease: advances in the last 50 years.

Liver disease has been recognized in various forms for centuries. Incredible advances, however, have been made especially in the last 50 years, driven by improvements in histology, the development of immunostains, the development of high resolution imaging methods, improved biopsy and resection methods, and the emergence of the molecular era. With these tools, pathologists and their clinical and basic science colleagues moved from classifying liver disease using an observational, pattern-based approach to a refined classification of disease, one based on etiology for medical disease and tumor classification for neoplastic disease. Examples of liver specific diseases are used to illustrate these exciting advances. These impressive advances of the past provide the foundation for hope in the future, as liver pathology continues to play an important role in improving patient care through disease identification and classification and emerging roles in guiding therapy for cures.

Don't stop the champions of research now: a brief history of head and neck pathology developments.

The field of head and neck pathology was just developing 50 years ago but has certainly come a long way in a relatively short time. Thousands of developments in diagnostic criteria, tumor classification, malignancy staging, immunohistochemistry application, and molecular testing have been made during this time, with an exponential increase in literature on the topics over the past few decades: There were 3506 articles published on head and neck topics in the decade between 1969 and 1978 (PubMed source), with a staggering 89266 manuscripts published in the most recent decade. It is daunting and impossible to narrow the more than 162000 publications in this field and suggest only a few topics of significance. However, the breakthrough in this anatomic discipline has been achieved in 3 major sites: oropharyngeal carcinoma, salivary gland neoplasms, and sinonasal tract tumors. This review will highlight selected topics in these anatomic sites in which the most profound changes in diagnosis have occurred, focusing on the information that helps to guide daily routine practice of surgical pathology.

Fifty years of thyroid pathology: concepts and developments.

The past half century has seen a number of advances in pathology of thyroid diseases, especially neoplastic lesions. These include the description of new entities, the definition of prognostically important lesions, the incorporation of fine needle aspiration biopsy and its functional risk stratification of diagnoses into the clinical evaluation and therapeutic recommendations of the patient with thyroid nodules and the understanding of thyroid neoplastic development, diagnostic and prognostic parameters by use of molecular analysis so that such techniques are becoming standard of care for patients with thyroid tumors. The histopathologist and cytopathologist have been and continue to be at the forefront in the definition and understanding of these areas of thyroid disease. This review describes many of the most important advances in this area in an attempt bring the practicing pathologist up to date in these developments.

[Eulogy to Prof. Dr. Med. Michael J. Mihatsch : Presentation of the Rudolf Virchow Medal 2019 of the German Society of Pathology]. / Laudatio auf Prof. Dr. med. Michael J. Mihatsch : Verleihung der Rudolf-Virchow-Medaille 2019 der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Pathologie.

Michael Mihatsch, born in 1943 in Gleiwitz, studied medicine in Bonn and Freiburg, and then went to Basel to begin studying pathology. In 1978, he became Assistant Professor at the University of Basel, and led the Institute there from 1988 until 2007. Mihatsch made Basel a center for prospective renal pathologists.His most significant achievement is the description of the connection between phenacetin administration and nephropathy with renal atrophy and the concomitant occurrence of urothelial carcinoma. His campaign against phenacetin finally contributed to a ban on the medication.His textbook Renal Pathology in Biopsy is a classic of medical literature.As a leading nephropathologist worldwide, Prof. Dr. Med. Michael J. Mihatsch received the Rudolf Virchow Medal of the German Society of Pathologists in 2019.

Diagnostic histochemistry: A historical perspective.

Histochemistry has a history which, in some ways, goes back to ancient times. The desire for humans to understand the workings of their bodies, and the roles that various chemicals have in them, is long-standing. This review considers the evolution of histochemistry and cytochemistry as scientific disciplines, culminating in the pairing of those techniques with basic biochemistry. They have served as the bases for a synthesis of microscopy, chemistry, immunology, and molecular biology, particularly in the practice of anatomic pathology.