Pathogenesis and Physiopathology of Cystic Fibrosis of the Pancreas

Abstract

CYSTIC fibrosis of the pancreas is the most recently recognized of the major chronic diseases of man. Reported for the first time by Fanconi¹ in Switzerland in 1936, fibrocystic disease of the pancreas was not recognized as a separate and distinct disorder until the extensive work of Dorothy Andersen in New York² in 1938 and the simultaneous reports of Blackfan and May³ in Boston and Harper in Australia.⁴ Previously, patients with this disease had succumbed either to bronchopneumonia in infancy, so common in the preantibiotic era, or to malnutrition, but the underlying basic condition had not been recognized.On the . . .