A recent study1 showed that rapid atrophy and sclerosis of the entire pancreas was produced by tying the ducts and separating the pancreas from the duodenum. In a dog killed two months after the operation the gland was reduced to a small mass of dense fibrous tissue. On microscopic examination small areas of pancreatic acini were seen surrounded by connective tissue. Dr. Ordway, who made a careful histological study, failed to find any remains of the islands of Langerhans in the atrophied gland.
According to the theory most generally accepted the islands of Langerhans furnish an internal secretion to the blood that enables the organism to destroy sugar. The association of lesions of the islands and diabetes was observed by Opie2 and Ssobolew3 in 1900. Since that time many investigators have studied the nature and frequency of the pathological changes of these structures in diabetes,