PSEUDO-LEUKEMIA 

 (HODGKIN'S DISEASE AND BANTI'S DISEASE) 



By H. senator, Berlin 



We often meet with cases characterized by the following lesions : a more 

 or less well-developed anemia, together with multiple lymph-gland enlarge- 

 ments, a very decided enlargement of the spleen, or both. This glandular and 

 splenic enlargement also occurs in leukemia, which, however, differs from 

 pseudo-leukemia in possessing a characteristic condition of the blood, particu- 

 larly a great increase of leukocytes, which is not present in pseudo-leukemia. 



To this difference from leukemia, which these cases often resemble greatly, 

 Bonfils and Wilks in the year 1856 were the first to call attention, though 

 Virchow had described leukemia eleven years previously, in 1845. 



Soon the publication of cases of this kind increased, and new names were 

 repeatedly invented for them. Bonfils designated his cases as " cachexia with- 

 out leukemia " ; Wilks called his " anemia lymphatica," and later " Hodg- 

 kin's disease," since Hodgkin had described such cases explicitly, long before 

 the discovery of leukemia, that is, in the year 1832. The counterpart to 

 "anemia lymphatica" (in which enlargement of the lymph-glands is the only 

 lesion or is much more marked than that of the spleen) is the term " anemia 

 splenica," a condition in which the lesions are confined to the spleen. The 

 combination of both conditions has been called " anemia lymphatico-lienalis." 

 Still other names have been proposed which I do not intend to mention, since 

 they are based wholly on the anatomical condition without regard to the 

 clinical phenomena, and are not adapted to all the eases belonging in this 

 category. They have all been superseded by the term introduced by J. Cohn- 

 heim in the year 1865, "pseudo-leukemia," which, in spite of all objections, 

 has maintained its place until to-day and will probably maintain its vogue 

 for a long time. 



It is true that "pseudo-leukemia" has become a collective name for a 

 number of different affections, but since these affections cannot always be 

 separated from one another, and since this name is short and conveniently 

 expresses what is common to them all (namely, that they resemble leukemia 

 but still are not leukemia, at least clinically), the name pseudo-leukemia will 

 be employed in this article. 



The difficulties in the nomenclature of this disease are the same as, for 

 example, in " ileus." Every physician knows that the clinical picture desig- 

 nated hy this name is hrought about by various anatomical changes of the 

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