A brief history of head and neck pathology

Surgical pathology had its beginnings in the late 1800s. A biopsy that gained much attention was from the larynx of Crown Prince Frederick in 1887. The tissue was seen by Rudolph Virchow and the clinical management of the Prince eventuated in a highly publicized furor. During the first half of the twentieth century, numerous entities in the head and neck were described by dozens of pathologists worldwide. The information was scattered in clinical journals for radiotherapists, general surgeons, and otolaryngologists. The first book on ear, nose, and throat pathology did not appear until 1947 and by 1956 two atlases were available. The book was "Histopathology of the Ear, Nose and Throat" by Eggston and Wolff (1947), and the atlases were the first Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) fascicle on salivary gland tumors by Foote and Frazell (1954) and "An Atlas of Otolaryngic Pathology" by Ash and Raum (1956). Clinicopathologic studies accelerated in the 1960s as laryngeal conservation therapy evolved and radiation therapy became more sophisticated. The years 1968 and 1974 mark major events for the emergence of Head and Neck Pathology into a clear-cut discipline. In 1968, Vincent J. Hyams was appointed Director of Otolaryngic Pathology at the AFIP, and 1974 was the publication date of "Tumors of the Head and Neck" by John G. Batsakis. The past 25 years have been filled with hundreds of articles on new entities and the application of fresh technology to old entities. Specialized therapeutic approaches have demanded greater diagnostic precision. This paper touches on a few representative aspects in the history of Head and Neck Pathology during the past 130 years.