JMS Pearce
Hull, England

Pierre Marie (1853–1940) described two patients in Charcot’s clinic who showed enlargement of the extremities and face, for which he proposed the term acro-megalie.¹ He established and named acromegaly as distinct from other causes of somatic overgrowth. He also acknowledged Saucerotte’s unmistakable earlier account of 1801.²

Pierre Marie described the now classical features in a woman named Fusch, aged thirty-seven, complaining of amenorrhea and headache. Within his detailed account he noted, “The whole feet are large …the hands are very large, but of regular form…the tongue is enlarged.” (Fig 1). His second patient, a woman aged fifty-four years, complained that her menstruation had ceased when she was twenty-nine. Aged thirty, she completely lost her eyesight.* Her waist, hands, and feet were getting bigger, and she was excessively thirsty.

The causal growth hormone-secreting pituitary tumors were not then recognized.³ He concluded his Essays on Acromegaly (1891) with his pupil Souza-Leite (Fig 1.):

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Pierre Marie was born in Paris. He trained under Charcot and received his doctorate in 1883. A versatile, brilliant clinician and teacher, he described amongst other conditions the neurological sequelae of exanthemata, tabes dorsalis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (familial peroneal muscular atrophy). He worked at the Hospice de Bicêtre where he published papers on Marie-Bamberger disease (pulmonary hypertrophic osteoarthropathy), Marie-Strümpell disease (ankylosing spondylitis), and aphasia. He held the chair of pathological anatomy, but not until 1918 was he appointed to Charcot’s chair of neurology at Salpêtrière.

End note

* Presumably owing to optic chiasmal compression by a pituitary tumor.

References

1. Marie Pierre. Sur deux cas d’acromegalie. Hypertrophe singuliere no congénitale des extrémités supérieures, inférieures et cephalique. Révue Medicale Française 1886; 6:297-333.
2. Pearce JMS. Nicolas Saucerotte. Acromegaly before Pierre Marie. J Hist Neurosciences 2006;15:269-275.
3. Marie Pierre. Sur deux cas d’acromegalie. Hypertrophe singuliere no congénitale des extrémités supérieures, inférieures et cephalique. Révue Medicale Française 1886; 6:297-333.