Pathology of the Pancreas

The recent advances in the techniques for imaging the pancreas without surgical inter­ vention have reduced the inaccessibility of the pancreas. However, although certain lesions of the pancreas can now be recognised and localised without an operation, the pathology of the pancreas remains to be more thoroughly investigated. Moreover, the almost unrelated exocrine and endocrine functions of the pancreas have led to the management of different pancreatic diseases by different groups of specialists, while the effects of primarily non-pancreatic diseases upon the pancreas have tended to escape recognition. Even in the autopsy room the pancreas is often inadequately examined, and autolysis may make microscopiC examination unrewarding. This book is an attempt by a general histopathologist to make available some of his experience of the various aspects of pancreatic disease that he has encountered during his working career. My interest in the pathology of the pancreas was aroused while working with Prof. Arnold Rice Rich of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore. Rich himself, in his earlier work, had continued the tradition, begun in the same department of pathology by Opie, of carrying out morbid anatomical and experimental studies on pancreatic disease. Rich later became more involved in work on tuberculosis and on the collagen diseases but his interest in disease of the pancreas persisted and the work he allotted to me included an experimental study of chemically induced diabetes mellitus.