Discovery
Although red blood cells had been known since van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723), the German anatomist Max Schultze (1825–1874) was the first to describe platelets. He described "spherules" that were much smaller than red blood cells and that occasionally clumped and were found in collections of fibrous material.
Giulio Bizzozero (1846–1901), building on Schultze's findings, used "living circulation" to study blood cells of amphibians microscopically in vivo. He is especially noted for discovering that platelets clump at the site of blood vessel injury, a process that precedes the formation of a blood clot. This observation confirmed the role of platelets in coagulation.
Read more about this topic: Platelet
Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
“We are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have been making up our world entirely without it.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“That the discovery of this great truth, which lies so near and obvious to the mind, should be attained to by the reason of so very few, is a sad instance of the stupidity and inattention of men, who, though they are surrounded with such clear manifestations of the Deity, are yet so little affected by them, that they seem as it were blinded with excess of light.”
—George Berkeley (1685–1753)