When you go to the doctor, you tell the doctor your symptoms and expect the doctor to come up with a diagnosis and prescribe you a treatment so that you get better. In 1845, two doctors, Drs. John Bennett in Edinburgh and Drs. Rudolph Virchow in Berlin, had patients whose blood was sick. They did not know what the disease was—it was not in their books. They were the first to describe the symptoms of this new disease. It was a blood cancer that is now known as chronic myeloid leukemia (CML).
In the blood, there are three type of cells: red blood cells (erythrocytes) carry oxygen toward the tissues and waste products, such as carbon dioxide, to the lungs; white blood cells (leucocytes) help defend us from infections; platelets (thrombocytes) build a natural plaster to seal up wounds. In CML patients, the blood is full of cancer cells that occupy all the space normally taken up by the useful types of blood cells. This is pretty much all that was known about this disease until 1956.

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