Immunohistochemistry in the Diagnosis of Whipple's disease

"In 1907 Dr. George Hoyt Whipple of The Johns Hopkins Hospital performed an autopsy on a 36 year-old medical missionary, who succumbed to a strange illness. Review of tissue samples from the case demonstrated a peculiar accumulation of foamy macrophages within both the lymph nodes and in the lamina propria of the small bowel, findings characteristic of the disease that would eventually come to bear his name. Although initially named “intestinal lipodystrophy,” in the 1990’s, the causative organism of Whipple's disease was specifically identified as Tropheryma whipplei (an acinetobacterium) using PCR technology."