• pituitary tumours
• acromegaly
• Pierre Marie’s disease

Because physicians of the early nineteenth century were unaware of the endocrine system, acromegaly was regarded as an intrinsic bone disease. Andrea Verga¹ in 1864 and Vincenzo Brigidi in 1877 reported early macroscopic and microscopic descriptions of pituitary tumours in acromegalic patients.²

However, Saucerotte³ reported in 1772 an atypical case in a 39 year old man published in 1801.⁴ Lombroso had in 1869 described the enlarged organs and limbs as macrosomia. Major also relates a case with an enlarged pituitary gland at autopsy reported before Marie’s paper by Klebs, and Fritzsche in 1884.

Marie published his pathological studies in two patients in 1886,⁵ and gave his name to the disorder; he mentions Saucerotte’s patient. This was followed by longer communications in the Nouvelle Iconographie de la Salpêtriére, and in Brain in 1890. By this time, …