A German-Swedish collection of histopathological slides from 1893

A collection of 159 histopathological slides from 1893 was studied as to origin, condition and documentary value. The slides were dated in Leipzig, Germany, September 26-October 10, 1893. They had apparently been studied jointly by a Swedish veterinary surgeon (Knut August Hjalmar Dahlström) and one or several unknown German colleagues of his in Leipzig, and labelled with their diagnoses. In this paper the collection is referred to as the Leipzig collection. The majority of the slides were well preserved. They reflect part of the animal disease situation, and in some instances also human diseases. Some interesting cases are briefly presented in this paper, one of them even in this abstract, i.e. a case of embryonal nephroma in pig. Six years before Wilms in 1899 described this tumour in children, and 14 years before Day in 1907 described the first case in pig, our then colleagues failed to recognize the embryonic character of the tumour. Their diagnosis was renal adenoma. About 80 percent of the slides were diagnosed as done according to present day procedure. The quality of the slides and that of the diagnostic skill of which they bear witness certainly reflect the far-reaching progress that was made in the knowledge of the nature of diseases and their causes during the second half of the 19th century.