Cushing ' S Syndrome

In 1932 Harvey Cushing described a number of patients presenting a similar clinical picture which he had collected from the literature, and he added two more from his own records. The presence of minute adenomata of basophil cells in the anterior lobe of the pituitary gland was demonstrated at autopsy on some of them and Cushing regarded these as the causative lesions and called the syndrome 'pituitary basophilism.'.: Since' that. time many additional case reports have been published in which a similar clinical picturehas been associated with a variety of different pathological lesions in the endocrine system. Much new information has been collected about the disorder and it is recognized that Cushing's conception of the pathological basis is wrong, but the complete picture of disordered function has not yet been fully elucidated despite extensive research and prolonged controversy. The clinical manifestatioas had been described earlier, particularly by Parkes Weber (1926) who considered that they were due to a primary adrenocortical disorder, and also by Leyton, Turnbull and Bratton (I93I) who reported them in association with thymic carcinomata. But they are known by the term Cushing's syndrome because of the larger series of patients presenting similar symptoms which was collected and recorded by Cushing.