On a day like today, George Papanikolaou, the creator of Test-Pap, who saved millions of women and brought a real revolution in cancer prevention, was born. Apart from his enormous discovery, few people outside the medical field know about the intense skepticism that Dr. Papanikolaou received and his advanced life attitude for the standards of the era in which he was born.
George Papanikolaou was born in 1883 in Kymi of Evia in a Greece that reached as far as Thessaly at that time. He was the son of the doctor, mayor and MP Kymis Nikolaos Papanikolaou. An easy financial life and a sure career as a physician-statesman awaited him after he graduated from Athens Medicine, in 1904, at the age of 21. Then he will support the vernacular openly. He has intense spiritual quests and comes into contact with the radical intellectuals of the time, such as Delmouzos, Skliros and Glinos. In fact, in 1908, in the magazine “Numas” with an article of his, he will openly stand in favor of elementary school. The conflicts over the language issue and the outcry from the local community of Kymi, through the ironic comments of the local newspaper, will lead him to leave for studies and research in Germany.
His great love for the sea from a young child formed the heart of his investigative nature. Many times his hands were injured by the jellyfish he opened and cut them. The toxin they were releasing was reddening his hands. His love of research was considered “laziness” by his conservative father. When he returns to Greece from Germany, his father demands that George formalize his bond with Koula Stefanou from whose family he also asked for a dowry. Papanikolaou will come to a direct break with his father and will ask Koula to steal them. But she will not accept it and their bond will end.
Machi Mavrogenous: The woman behind the scientist
A beacon in his life and his support will be the future wife of Machi Mavrogenous, of the well-known family of Mykonos, the heroine of 1821. He will meet her in the summer of 1910. She was a family friend and he singled her out because she was not like her other women their era. They will fall in love, travel together to Paris, where the doctor will propose to her. In fact, they will be married secretly by the Papanikolaou family on September 30, 1910. Machi will accept George’s condition for them to live together: never to have children so that he can devote himself to research. In addition to the support, the Papanicolaou Battle contributed the most to the doctor’s research because he took and studied samples from her that led him to the well-known Pap test.
America and the “Greek Storyteller”
The idea of leaving for America with Machi will be put to him by the Sarafian brothers when he meets them in Kozani. There he will serve as an adjutant in the Balkan Wars. In October 1913, with 250 dollars in hand, George and Machi will leave for the New World. In New York they will experience poverty and hardship. Battle will sew buttons in a shop and the doctor will sell carpets for a living. Thanks to the geneticist Morgan who knew Papanikolaou from his doctoral dissertation in Freiburg, the doctor will receive recommendations for N.Y. Hospital. In 1920 he will start his first study on the vaginal smear and the determination of ovulation. He will compare samples of sick women with those of the Pap smear and in fact will open a new branch, that of Exfoliative Cytology. In the 1920s only biopsy was considered the correct way to diagnose cancer.
The “New Cancer Diagnosis”, as he will announce it in 1928, will cause surprise to the medical community with his colleagues calling him the “Greek Fairytale”! Only 13 years later, in 1941, his new method would become accepted. In essence, Papanicolaou by studying the dead cells that are expelled from the cavities of the body (such as the uterus), long before the cancer manifests itself, can determine the strange forms (that is, the cancer cells) and prevent the disease. In 1948, the Pap test was introduced with financial support from the American Cancer Society.
He did not hold the patent
In the 1950s, the future cytologists of the country will come from Greece, who will later open the first cytology laboratories in “Alexandra” and “Laiko”. All of them are students of G. Papanikolaou.
He never patented his invention. He was not concerned with making money. He was awarded many times with various prizes, but unfortunately he never received the Nobel Prize in Medicine, although he was nominated 5 times! All he was interested in was the development of the method by his students.
Georgios Papanikolaou was a rare case of a scientist who combined love for people, medical knowledge, the transferability of knowledge to his students and a warm supporter of new technologies. Already in the 1950s he considered the use of computers to study the samples important.
The world doctor passed away at the age of 79 on February 19, 1962. A few months before he saw the opening of the Cancer Institute in Miami that would bear his name. It was printed on drachmas, a stamp in the USA (in a special ceremony in his honor in 1978 at the White House), but more so “Dr Pap”, with his method he became a symbol of Medical science. His restless spirit, insight, unceasing support of the Battle and unquenchable passion for research led him to save and still save millions of women’s lives.
Because as he himself has written: “Research is the soul of progress”.
*Sources:
“GEORGIOS N. PAPANICOLAOU. Through his life and work”, Kedros publications
Notes from the documentary series “Those who dared-G. Papanikolaou”, produced by Cosmote TV
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