History lesson...

I was helping my mum dusting the bookshelf the other day, and stumbled across a book. It was badly damage, the spine came apart with loose pages flying everywhere as I examined it. The book was ancient, probably older than my grandparents and they are like, very, very old... I couldn't read the title because there was a dark ink stain over it, but by the looks of the loose sheets and the cover, the book had something to do with the human body. Flipping through the pages, I came across a section about the discovery of Thalassemia.

According to the ancient book, the word Thalassemia originated from a Greek word 'Thalassa' meaning sea. Therefore, Thalassemia means sea in the blood because 'Mia' came from the word 'Anemia'  which, obviously means blood if Thalassemia means 'sea in the blood'. 

In the year 1925, an American physician, haematologist and professor of hygiene and medicine Dr. Thomas Cooley, first described the disease and called it 'Erythroblastic anemia' but because its such a mouthful, people refer to it as Cooley's anemia. 

Now a days, with the help of technologies, scientists are able to determine that originally, Thalassemia is found in warm areas of the world such as: the Middle East, Gulf region, Mediterranean countries, Northern parts of Africa, South-East Asia and Indian sub-continent. 

So this is a map that I found on google image,
showing countries where Thalassmia originated.