In 1907, George Hoyt Whipple, then an instructor in pathology at Johns Hopkins University, published a case report of a 36 year old physician who had been domiciled in Constantinople.1 He developed recurring arthropathy, weight loss, and steatorrhoea, became worse, and died. At necropsy the intestine and mesenteric lymph glands were infiltrated by mononuclear and polynuclear giant cells and deposits of fat and fatty acids. Whipple described the large “foamy” mononuclear cells in the intestinal mucosa which were later shown to contain periodic acid Schiff (PAS) positive material. The aetiology of the condition was not established and he wrote “Gland tissue treated by the Levaditi method shows great numbers of a peculiar rod-shaped organism (?) which does not stain by the aniline dyes . . .” Whether this is the aetiological factor in this disease cannot be determined from this case”. A prescient observation. He suggested intestinal lipodystrophy as a name for the disease.