Acromegaly was first described in 1886 by Pierre Marie, who noted ΓÇÿa striking noncongenital hypertrophy of the extremitiesΓÇÖ including the face, hands and feet. In 1891 Minkowski noted that this hypertrophy was always accompanied by an enlarged pituitary, which Tamburine in 1894 recognised as a pituitary adenoma.
However, Harvey Cushing, in 1909, was the first to use the word ΓÇÿhypopituitarismΓÇÖ to describe the condition. This was confirmed in 1922 by Evans, who demonstrated that the parenteral injection of extracts of the anterior lobe of the pituitary gland causes true gigantism in rats, whose epiphyses never fuse, and acromegalic-like features in dogs, whose epiphyses do.
