Where diagnoses are confirmed — histology, clinical chemistry and molecular tests, underneath most clinical decisions.
11 topics · 12 curated works
No prior grounding assumed.
Diagnostic Tests 1: Sensitivity and Specificity
Douglas G. Altman & J. Martin Bland · 1994
Explains why a test's sensitivity and specificity, not its apparent accuracy, determine how much a positive or negative result should actually change…
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
Hemoglobin Components in Patients with Diabetes Mellitus
Lawrence A. Trivelli, Helen M. Ranney & Hin Tak Lai · 1971
Finds a minor haemoglobin fraction elevated in diabetic patients in proportion to blood glucose, establishing what became the HbA1c test as a measure…
+4 more at this level
Primary sources and full treatments.
De Sedibus et Causis Morborum per Anatomen Indagatis
Giovanni Battista Morgagni · 1761
Systematically correlates symptoms recorded during life with lesions found at autopsy across hundreds of cases, establishing that disease has a…
+5 more at this level
12 works
Douglas G. Altman & J. Martin Bland
Explains why a test's sensitivity and specificity, not its apparent accuracy, determine how much a positive or negative result should actually change what a clinician believes.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Lawrence A. Trivelli, Helen M. Ranney & Hin Tak Lai
Finds a minor haemoglobin fraction elevated in diabetic patients in proportion to blood glucose, establishing what became the HbA1c test as a measure of average glycaemic control over preceding weeks.
Alec J. Jeffreys, Victoria Wilson & Swee Lay Thein
Shows that repetitive regions of the genome vary enough between people to produce a pattern as individually distinctive as a fingerprint, founding DNA profiling as used in forensic identification and paternity testing.
Kary B. Mullis
Mullis's own Nobel lecture account of conceiving PCR, arguing the technique's power lies in its conceptual simplicity — repeated cycles of a simple reaction — rather than any single clever reagent, and tracing how that simplicity was initially underestimated.
link checked 17 Sept 2026World Health Organization
Sets out the minimum equipment, staining and culture technique a laboratory needs to identify common bacterial pathogens without relying on automated systems.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Laura Dean
Explains the biochemistry and inheritance behind each blood group system and why mismatched transfusion or pregnancy across them causes haemolysis.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Giovanni Battista Morgagni
Systematically correlates symptoms recorded during life with lesions found at autopsy across hundreds of cases, establishing that disease has a specific anatomical seat and founding pathological anatomy as a discipline distinct from bedside description alone.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Rudolf Virchow
Argues that disease originates in changes to individual cells rather than an imbalance of bodily fluids, founding modern pathology on the cell as the basic unit of life and disease.
link checked 17 Sept 2026George N. Papanicolaou
Demonstrates that exfoliated cervical cells collected on a simple smear can reveal cancer before it becomes symptomatic, the basis of the Pap test for cervical cancer screening.
William Dameshek
Proposes that polycythaemia vera, chronic myeloid leukaemia and related blood disorders are variants of one underlying process of bone marrow overproduction, rather than unrelated diseases that happen to share some features.
Donald F. Gleason
Grades prostate cancer by the glandular growth pattern visible under low-power microscopy rather than by cell-level detail, on the finding that architectural pattern predicted outcome as well as more complex schemes did.
Randall K. Saiki, Stephen Scharf, Fred Faloona, Kary B. Mullis, Glenn T. Horn, Henry A. Erlich & Norman Arnheim
Demonstrates that a targeted DNA sequence can be enzymatically copied a millionfold before testing for a disease-causing mutation, introducing the polymerase chain reaction as a practical basis for molecular diagnosis.
link checked 17 Sept 2026