He remained well
and very strong until the age of thirty-seven, when he
overlifted, and following this he developed an extreme deformity
of the spine and trunk, the latter "telescoping into itself"
until the nipples were on a level with the anterior superior
spines of the ilium. For two years he suffered with debility,
fatigue, bronchitis, night-sweats, headache, and great thirst.
Mentally he was dull; the bones of the face and extremities
showed the hypertrophies characteristic of acromegaly, the soft
parts not being involved. The circumference of the trunk at the
nipples was 62 inches, and over the most prominent portion of the
kyphosis and pigeon-breast, 74 inches. The authors agree with
Dana and others that there is an intimate relation between
acromegaly and gigantism, but they go further and compare both to
the growth of the body. They call attention to the striking
resemblance to acromegaly of the disproportionate growth of the
boy at adolescence, which corresponds so well to Marie's terse
description of this disease: "The disease manifests itself by
preference in the bones of the extremities and in the extremities
of the bones," and conclude with this rather striking and
aphoristic proposition: "Acromegaly is gigantism of the adult;
gigantism is acromegaly of adolescence.
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