Surgical and Biochemical Aspects of Pancreatitis

The pancreas was known to Greek and Roman physicians, but it was not until 1642 that Wirsung described the main pancreatic duct, and a further two hundred years passed before Claude Bernard (1856) demonstrated ferments in the pancreatic juice and their role in digestion. Balser (1882) described necrosis of fat tissue in connexion with pancreatic inflammation, and in 1889 Fitz published his paper in which, for the first time, an effort was made to correlate the clinical findings and pathological changes in acute pancreatitis. Bayliss and