Osler and the black corpuscles: profiles of three early students of phagocytosis

摘要

Summary: The discovery of phagocytosis is associated indelibly with Elie Metchnikoff,nwho coined the term, but more than 30 persons had observed the phenomenon (orninferred its existence) before Metchnikoff came to dominate the field. Two of these earlyninvestigators were William Osler and George Miller Sternberg. Osler recognized carbonnparticles within the phagocytes of patients with miner’s lung and carried outnexperiments in kittens. Sternberg only theorized about phagocytosis but, unlike Osler,nbitterly contested Metchnikoff’s priority of discovery.