science · 28 February 1911 · 113 years ago
birth
Born 28 Feb 1911; died 23 Mar 1993 at age 82.
Denis Parsons Burkitt was an Irish surgeon and medical researcher who first identified Burkitt's lymphoma. In 1957, in Uganda, Burkitt found several children suffering from fast-spreading tumours in the head and neck. When they died within weeks, Burkitt recognised this was a previously undescribed cancer disease. He showed that these and all cases were characterized by infiltration of the affected tissues by lymphocytes. With colleagues Edward Williams and Clifford Nelson, he plotted the geographical incidence of the disease, and found it in the same areas endemic with malaria. This survey is regarded as one of the pioneering studies of geographical pathology. Burkitt helped to develop chemotherapy for the disease. Later, he championed high fibre diets.
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