The Pancreas in Diabetes Mellitus.

Goullon, in his prize essay on diabetes, remarks: Rokitansky found in thirty cases thirteen times the pancreas remarkably small, relaxed and anaemic. Observations of other authors leave it without a doubt that the pancreatic shrinking or degeneration is more constantly found in diabetic corpses than in any other pathologico-anatomical state. Recklinghausen describes a case where the central part of the pancreas was changed in a circular sac of the size of a child's head, the head only being preserved. The sac might have originated by extension of the ductus Wirsungianus. A body corresponding in form and size to the pancreas was found in another case instead of it, whose lobules consisted nearly entirely of fatty tissue. The ductus was greatly dilated, and by lateral dilatations took on the form of varices. Hartsen gives two cases with atrophy of the pancreas of such a grade that it could not be recognized any more. Fles found at the dissection of a diabetic patient the pancreas changed into connective tissue.—North American Journal of Homoeopathy.

The Eclectic Medical Journal, Vol. XXXIV, 1874, was edited by John M. Scudder, M.D.