When Medicine Meets Comics: Little Orphan Anne’s Eyes

Papillary thyroid cancer is a disease that every doctor and medical student will encounter in the process of learning. Naturally, it is also an undisputed focus in pathology courses.

So let’s take an examination of everyone: Is the clinicopathological manifestation of papillary thyroid carcinoma from how?

Can’t remember? Then look at the picture and talk!

Papillary thyroid carcinoma

The answer is: frosted glass-like nucleus, the nucleus is evenly stained, and there are pseudo inclusion bodies in the nucleus. Concentric circles of calcium salt deposition can be seen in 40% of the cases, which is called [sand body].

This sentence is a description in the domestic pathology textbook, and it is really not easy to imagine what it looks like. Until later, I accidentally saw the description of papillary thyroid cancer in Bethesda’s reporting system:

Nuclear Features: Large oval, molded or irregular nuclei, with crowding/overlapping, nuclear clearing (so called “Orphan Annie” eyes) with power chromatin, nuclear grooves, or nuclear pseudoinclusions.

Orphan Anne’s Eyes

In this pile of [abstract and obscure] lexical descriptions, there is a very kind, lovely and eye-catching word, [so called Orphan Annie eyes], literally translated as [so called Orphan Annie’s eyes].

Hey, is this what?

Who is little orphan Anne?

What do her eyes look like?

Is it [those eyes, such as colchicine, such as cold stars, such as precious beads, such as white mercury with two pills of black mercury…]

However, the truth is this…

Let’s put aside the comments on this strange painting style for a moment, let’s carefully observe the little girl’s eyes, and then try to recall the picture of papillary thyroid cancer at the beginning. Don’t you think the description and pathological legend of the above passage are exactly the same as her eyes? Say yes, please! ])

The girl’s name is Anne and she comes from Little Orphan Annie, the best-selling comic book created by Harold Gray and first published in 1924. The comic book ranked first in the 1937 Fortune magazine comic book poll and even surpassed Popeye.

The author insisted on writing until his death in 1968. After the author died, the cartoon was serialized by others, but its limelight gradually faded. The last issue was published on June 13, 2010.

Naming the nucleus after cartoons must be a otaku…?

Not really.

According to records, the characteristic nucleus of papillary thyroid carcinoma was originally described by Dr. Nathan Friedman and was intended to be named [hot eyes] because he thought the nucleus was very similar to Martha Scott’s eyes. The first time Google pictures, well, a picture is worth a thousand words:

Martha Scott

After doctors and scientists have made new discoveries, one of the greatest pleasures is to give their discoveries a strange name.

Why was it called Orphan Annie eyes again? The term was originally coined by Dr. Nancy Warner.

Dr. Warner did not choose the name of a doctor. She (yes, she) was very young and called the nucleus Orphan Annie eyes nuclei to commemorate her lost youth and the strange cartoon style of that era.

The term first appeared in her 1971 book Basic Endocrine Pathology, where she wrote:

The epithelium may betray its malignant nature by a nuclear pattern; The nuclei have sharp etched membranes and instead of hyperchromism, the center of nucleus is related empty (like Orphan Annie eyes).

Professor Nancy Warner

There is a more bizarre coincidence about the naming of this pathological manifestation, psammoma bodies, which is the sand body in the Chinese part of the opening paragraph.

In the cartoon Little Orphan Annie, the little orphan Anne has a pet dog named Sandy (not Wujing). Psammoma is taken from Greek psammos, which means sand…

You said it was a coincidence! Coincidentally! ) You said it was easy to remember but not easy to remember! Easy to remember! )

So, as long as a little excavation, medicine is so interesting…

In addition, a few years ago there was a very popular little game Don’t Starve, whose Chinese name was [Famine], in which the heroine was called Willow. She looked like this: