Linus Pauling: Making an analogy with antibodies, we might say that perhaps these patients manufacture
an abnormal sort of hemoglobin molecule that is capable of combining with itself;
that has a region on one side that just fits neatly onto the region on the other side
of a similar molecule. The molecules of hemoglobin would clamp onto one another, the
second one onto the first one, the third one onto the second, and so on, forming a
long rod. This long rod would line up with similar rods; general forces of attraction
would bring them together, forming a long, needle-like crystal of hemoglobin, which
as it grew in the red cell, would finally become longer than the diameter of the cell.
Then as it continued to grow it would twist the red cell out of shape into the elongated
forms that are observed.
