A Hodgkin's fact for the day:
The disease was named after Thomas Hodgkin, a British physician who came to be considered one of the most prominent pathologists of his day. Born in 1798, he published a paper with the snappy title "On Some Morbid Appearances of the Absorbent Glands and Spleen", which first described the disease that would come to bear his name. A modest man, he attributed the first mention of the disease to the Italian biologist and physician Marcello Malpighi, in 1666. Although Hodgkin set out observations that had not been made in such detail before, he didn't think his work to be of any great significance. It was one thing identifying an illness in the pathology laboratory after an autopsy, and quite another to apply the knowledge to curing the 19th century patient.
It wasn't until 1865 that his moniker was given to the lymphoma by physician Sir Samuel Wilks, who effectively rediscovered the illness and Hodgkin's paper, confirmed his research, and coined the name to honour the man and his work. He published "Cases of enlargement of the lymphatic glands and spleen" that year.
Thomas Hodgkin travelled to Palestine in 1866. He contracted dysentery and died there on 4 April, aged 67. He is buried in Jaffa.