A STUDY OF UNTREATEI “FRÖHLICH’S SYNDROME WITHOUT BRAIN TUMOR”

Abstract

BABINSKI (i) in 1900 described the case of a girl with obesity and failure to mature sexually. These symptoms were associated with an intracranial expanding lesion in the region of the sella turcica. Frohlich (2) in 1901 described a boy with a similar clinical picture and diagnosed a tumor of the hypophysis. This syndrome of obesity and infantilism has come to be known as Frohlich’s syndrome or adiposogenital dystrophy. The early experimental ablations of the hypophysis carried out by Crowe, Cushing and Homans (3), and by Aschner (4), suggested a hypopituitary origin to this syndrome. However, Camus and Roussy (5) and Bailey and Bremer (6) pointed out that these early operations were invariably accompanied by damage to the hypothalamus. These workers claimed this latter injury was the true cause of the syndrome. The conflict remained unsettled until the fundamental work of P. E. Smith (7). Smith was able to remove the hypophysis without injury to the h y pothalamus and conversely, to produce a lesion in t...