To the Editor-in-Chief:
Apoptosis is a type of cell death that has specific morphological, biochemical, and regulatory characteristics, somehow different from necrosis. 1 It was described in our time by the Australian pathologist John Kerr 2,3 and given its present name by Kerr et al in 1972. 4 It is interesting that this type of cell death was also described by Glucksman in 1951 as present in normal embryological development. 5
We found recently that the famous German pathologist and biologist Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902) described apoptosis in a lecture given in 1858. 6 In it, he described two types of cell death, necrobiosis versus necrosis. The former is “always here to deal with a gradual decay and death, a dissolution. . . . Necrobiosis is death brought on by (altered) life, a spontaneous wearing out of living parts, the destruction and annihilation consequent on life, natural as opposed to violent death (mortification). . . . But the idea of necrosis really does not offer any analogy to these processes. . . .”
In summary, we should add to Virchow’s accomplishments the early suggestion of apoptosis, which he called necrobiosis and which, he made very clear, was different from necrosis.
References
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