Like with any other type of cancer, the mention of the word leukemia drives fear into the heart of patients and their loved ones. Leukemia is also called blood cancer. It refers to a condition in which the white blood cells are misshapened and multiply rapidly. The white blood cells eventually outnumber red blood cells which are responsible for carrying oxygen around the body and which also help to remove carbon dioxide.
Types of Leukemia
There are different types of leukemia, which are broken down into two main groups, acute and chronic. The two types under acute leukemia are:
acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL)
acute myelogenous leukemia (AML)
Chronic leukemia groups are:
chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL)
acute myelogenous leukemia (AML)
Who Discovered Leukemia?
As is the case with many discoveries in medicine, it is a little murky as to who first actually discovered leukemia. Some sources list Dr. Alfred Velpeau as the person who first discovered and accurately described leukemia in 1827. Dr. Velpeau could technically be called the person who discovered the disease since his autopsy of a patient accurately described leukemia. However, at the time no official name was assigned to the condition.
A French doctor, Alfred Donné is also credited as being the first to actually describe this cancer, calling it an unknown disease. He gave a description of leukemia in a publication in 1844, a year before Benett made his diagnosis.
However, English physician, John Hughes Benett was the first to officially diagnose it as a blood disease in 1845. It is for this reason that Benett is often referred to as the person who first discovered leukemia. He called the condition leucocythaemia. In 1851 he published a series of case studies on leukemia.
The name leukemia is a combination of the Greek words, ‘leukos’ and ‘heima’ which means ‘white blood’. This refers to the abundance of white blood cells in the body.
Many other European physicians have some association with the discovery of leukemia, chief among these were Paul Ehrlich, Alfred Velpeau and Rudolph Virchow. Virchow described the disparity between white and red blood cells as “weisses blut” which translates to “white blood”. Ernst Neuman noted in 1872 that leukemia was a disease of the bone marrow.
It is obvious that modern knowledge about leukemia owes a debt of gratitude to numerous European physicians. 
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