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teachers in histology class, was
to help students in introductory
courses use the observatory’s
telescopes to find an assigned list
of astronomical objects: a planet,
a nebula, a galaxy, and so on.
After the observatory closed at
night, I could do my own research
in spectroscopy, and I often got so
involved in what I was measuring
David Steensma, MD, is senior
that I lost track of time and was
physician at the Dana-Farber
surprised to see a pre-dawn glow
Cancer Institute and associate
in the East.
professor of medicine at Harvard
Since this was Western MichiMedical School in Boston, MA.
gan, lake-effect clouds and poor
visibility meant that most winter
nights the observatory closed up, and I learned that an empty
observatory is also a great place to study or, alternatively, to hang
out with girls and conduct other types of research.
The sense of wonder that I saw in most of the students who
came to the observatory was the same jaw-dropping awe that I
felt when I first saw that amazing eosinophil. Not a night went by
without at least one, “Wow!” or “Holy cow!” or “Awesome!” from a
person looking into an eyepiece. (And sometimes a “Dude, that is
totally radical!” – it was the 1980s after all). One student memorably burst into tears the first time she saw the spectacular M57
Ring Nebula in the constellation Lyra. “I’ve had such a bad day, but
now, looking at that, it all seems like nothing,” she said, echoing
sentiments Tennyson described in his poem “Vastness” a century
earlier: What is it all but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a million
million of suns?
Morphology is still central to hematology, but it is losing primacy. In this age of flow cytometry and molecular genetics, we’ve come
to distrust the meaning of cells that we see with eyes aided only by a
lens. It is still important to look for eosinophils, but when the blood
teems with too many of them, it is equally critical to know whether
their presence is accompanied by an imatinib-sensitive rearrangement of the platelet-derived growth factor receptor.
I still enjoy sitting at the multi-headed microscope and bringing students to come look at slides. Last month, when I was attending on a hospital service, the residents, students, [