So, yeah, you'll have
noticed by now that I haven't blogged in like, a month. Booooooooooo.
Well, I've been busy.
Personal things, you know. In any case it's my blog and I don't see
you paying for it, freeloader, so if I want to quit for a month, I
will.
Besides, the more you blog,
the larger the blogging center of your brain gets; but if you stop
for awhile, it shrivels up, and then it's harder to think of ideas.
 |
| Pictured: The blogging center of the brain. |
I've been having problems
thinking of something to blog about. But, like so many great artists,
I take a lot of inspiration from my life, and it just so happens I
had a pap smear this morning. The midwife says I have a perfect
cervix, by the way.
 |
| Thanks, I grew it myself. |
1) The Pap smear is named after
Dr. George Papanicolaou, a Greek doctor who began researching vaginal
cytology in 1920, while at Cornell University Medical School's
Anatomy Department. In 1923, Dr. Papanicolaou began examining vaginal
secretions taken from a group of women. He hoped to identify and
categorize cellular the cellular changes that occur in a lady's parts
over the course of her menstrual cycle. One of his subjects was
suffering from uterine cancer. When Dr. Papanicolaou looked at her
cervical cells under a microscope, he saw the difference right away.
As he wrote later, this discovery was one of the “greatest thrills”
of his entire medical career.
 |
| Pictured: A great thrill. ~ Alex Brollo |
2) By 1928, Dr. Papanicolaou
had developed a means of diagnosing cervical cancers by examining
vaginal cells beneath a microscope. Skepticism greeted presentation
of the technique to a conference in Battle Creek, Michigan.
3) Dr. Papanicolaou won an ally
in Dr. Herbert Traut, with whom he collaborated to publish a 1941
paper on the diagnostic value of his technique. Their
creatively-titled 1943 paper, “Diagnosis of uterine cancer by the
vaginal smear,” finally won them the medical community's acceptance
of their work. Because of his work in the field of cervical cancer
diagnosis, many now regard Dr. Papanicolaou as the father of
cytopathology.
4) To perform a Pap smear, a
medical professional removes cells from both the outside of the
cervix and inside the cervical opening. Lab technicians stain the
cells using a Pap stain, also developed by Dr. Papanicolaou. The
stain uses five dyes, which will stain the specimen literally all the
colors of the rainbow.
 |
| Which are these ones, in case you forgot. ~ Wing-Chi Poon |
5) The popularity of regular
Pap screenings, have reduced the incidence of cervical cancer deaths
in developed countries by almost 70 percent since World War II.
Cervical cancer remains the world's deadliest gynecologic cancer.
Women who are screened regularly (every two to three years) have
about a 20 percent chance of developing cervical cancer, and a one
percent chance of death from cervical cancer.
