Review Article The Road to Hodgkin’s Disease and on to the Millennium S. M. Watkins 1 and R. N. Poston 2 1 Lister Hospital, Stevenage and 2 King’s College, London, UK Introduction Two hundred years after his birth, Thomas Hodgkin is best remembered for his description of the diseases that bears his name. This achievement was all the more astonishing because his astute analysis of those original cases was based on clinicopathological findings, without the benefit of microscopy. Today we can look at his work with the aid of histology and immunocytochemistry, which have improved our understanding of these diseases and thus helped to develop increasingly effective modern treatments. Hodgkin’s road to this discovery involved a broad early education, which, combined with excellent training, led ultimately to his seminal work in pathology. However, he was not only a great pathologist but also a fine clinician and scientist, a man of vision, an educationist and dedicated philanthropist: indeed, an extraordinary man. Educational Background He was born in 1798, the elder surviving son of John and Elizabeth Hodgkin. His family were committed Quakers, and he was brought up in an atmosphere of piety, strict discipline, thrift and sobriety. Quakers were fervent abolitionists and seekers after the truth. All these early influences had a lifelong effect on both his private life and his career. His father, a teacher and calligrapher, taught him English composition, mathematics, Greek, geography and penmanship, and a private tutor supplemented his education. The breadth and depth of his early training gave him scientific curiosity, discipline, application and ambition. As a boy he attended lectures on natural philosophy (i.e. general science) and became increas- ingly interested in science and experimentation. With his brother he constructed an electrical machine and a battery consisting of nine gallon bottles, in order to perform electrical experiments. From the age of 12 he was destined to be apprenticed to an apothecary, William Allen, a Quaker family friend, who undertook chemical analyses and scientific experiments as well as the preparation and selling of medicines. Hodgkin started as his secretary at the age of 18 and was influenced not only by his scientific work but also by his abolitionist interests and philanthropic efforts. The following year he was apprenticed to his cousin, John Glaisyer, an apothecary of Brighton. There he worked at his pharmacy by day; at night he studied chemistry, entomology and the classics. The Sussex Downs provided material for his growing interests in botany, geology and palaeontology, as well as walking and swimming. In addition, he was an accomplished linguist, fluent in French, German, Italian and Latin. His pharmaceutical studies stimulated an interest in therapeutics, and hence in medicine. In 1819 he enrolled at Guy’s Hospital, attending lectures and demonstrations, and ‘walking the wards’ for medical and surgical training. However, in order to practise medicine he needed a university medical degree, but, as a non-Anglican, he was not eligible for Oxford or Cambridge, the only degree-granting medical schools in England. He therefore went to Edinburgh, a miserable 4-day sea journey. He was critical of university education, complaining that the lecturers arrived late and were too brief or too discursive. Following the fashionable trend, he spent a year studying in Paris, where he worked closely with Laennec, becoming proficient in the use of his cylindrical stethoscope. Returning to Edinburgh, he wrote a thesis in Latin entitled ‘De absorbendi Functione’ (‘On the function of the absorbent glands’, i.e. the lymphatic system). He duly graduated in 1823. Clinical Oncology Clinical Oncology (2000)12:93–97 # The Royal College of Radiologists Correspondence and offprint requests to: Dr S. M. Watkins, Medical Oncologist, Lister Hospital, Stevenage SG1 4AB, UK.