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Article
April 1929

STUDIES IN ACROMEGALY: VIII. EXPERIMENTAL CANINE ACROMEGALY PRODUCED BY INJECTION OF ANTERIOR LOBE PITUITARY EXTRACT

Author Affiliations

From the Laboratory of Surgical Research, Harvard Medical School, and the Surgical Laboratory of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, Boston.

Arch Surg. 1929;18(4):1708-1736. doi:10.1001/archsurg.1929.01140130808054
Abstract

The possibility that the peculiar and distinctive disorders, acromegaly and acromegalic gigantism, were due to overactivity of the anterior lobe of the pituitary body has been suspected for many years. Although other data were not lacking to confirm the suggestion, it may be said that the possibility was first transformed into a probability by the production of gigantism in rats by injections of an emulsion of the anterior lobes of beef hypophyses by Evans and Long.1 Their prodigious animals could not actually be considered acromegalic, however. They underwent a general proportionate enlargement, but aside from a peculiar change in the ovaries they showed no qualitative structural alteration. The absence of the specific enlargement of the "acral parts," which gives the disease its name, might be attributed to the fact that in the rat the bony epiphyses never unite. It obviously became desirable to extend the experiment to larger animals

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