SICKLE CELL HISTORY

 Sickle cell disease went unreported in African medical literature until the 1870s. The symptoms were similar to other tropical diseases in Africa and blood was rarely  examined. Children born with sickle cell disease died and were typically not seen by physicians. Most of the early reports of this disease invovled black patients in the US.

African people were all too familar with the disease and created their own names for it. Tribal names also imitates the cries and moans of the sufferes or formed such phrases as "body phrases" or "body biting" which described thdescribed their terrible pain and torment. In one west African tribe, children that died after birth were called "ogbanjes" meaning children who come and go. They believed that an evil spirit was trying to be born into a family with ogbanje children,but the babies bravely died to save the rest of the family from the demon. Some tribes had as many as 40% of the people to carry the sickle cell gene.

In the US in 1846, a paper entitled "Case of Absece of the Spleen", was the first to describe sickle cell disease. In the paper, it discussed a case about a runaway slave who had been executed. His body was autopsied and found to have the strange phenomenon of man having living without a spleen. The first formal report of sickle cell disease came out of Chicago about 50 years later, in 1910. In 1922,the disease was named "sickle cell anemia".

In 1904, Dr. James Herrick reported "peculiar elongated and sickle shaped" red blood cells in "an intelligent negro of 20". The patient had shortness of breath, heart palpitatims, abonormal pain, and aches and pains in his muscles. He felt tired sometimes, had headaches, attacks of dizziness, and had ulcers on his legs. The doctor took blood samples. 

Studies have shown that African Americans,who have lived in malaria free areas for a long time, have lower sickle frequencies than Africans. Similarly, the sickle cell gene is less common among blacks in Curacao, a malaria-free island in the Carribbean, than in Surinam, a neighboring country where malaria came from the same region "Africa".Over-all, sickle cell disease is most common among the African Americans.

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