Editing Blood cell (section)

==Discovery==

In 1658 Dutch naturalist [[Jan Swammerdam]] was the first person to observe red blood cells under a microscope, and in 1695, [[microscopist]] [[Antoni van Leeuwenhoek]], also Dutch, was the first to draw an illustration of "red corpuscles", as they were called. No further blood cells were discovered until 1842 when French physician [[Alfred Donné]] discovered platelets. The following year leukocytes were first observed by [[Gabriel Andral]], a French professor of medicine, and [[William Addison (physician)|William Addison]], a British physician, simultaneously. Both men believed that both red and white cells were altered in disease. With these discoveries, [[hematology]], a new field of medicine, was established. Even though agents for staining tissues and cells were available, almost no advances were made in knowledge about the morphology of blood cells until 1879, when [[Paul Ehrlich]] published his technique for staining blood films and his method for differential blood cell counting.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hajdu |first1=Steven I. |title=A Note from History: The Discovery of Blood Cells |journal=Ann Clin Lab Sci |date=2003 |volume=33 |issue=2 |pages=237–8 |pmid=12817630}}</ref>