Hemorrhagic pancreatitis was clearly recognized about fifty years ago by Klebs, 2 who believed that the eroding action of the ferments formed by the pancreas was responsible for its occurrence. The classification of acute pancreatitis almost universally adopted, and knowledge of the symptomatology of the various types of inflammation date from the Middleton-Goldsmith lecture of Fitz, s delivered before the New York Pathological Society twenty years ago. A certain medico-legal importance has been attached to a disease which may be a cause of sudden unexplained death, but it is perhaps noteworthy that some writers who have emphasized this view have described as hemorrhagic pancreatitis the relatively common post-mortem autolysis which occurs in the pancreas. The cause of the lesion has remained obscure until comparatively recent studies have shown that it can be readily reproduced in lower animals by a variety of means. Human cases have been carefully studied with the aid of these experimental data, with the purpose of defining the cause of the lesion.

It is probable that the physiologist, Claude Bernard, 4 produced the lesion, though he failed to recognize it, years before it had been described in man. It is noteworthy that he injected into the pancreatic duct that fluid, namely, bile, which, as subsequent observations have shown, may cause the lesion in man. In his lectures on experimental physiology, published in 856, Claude Bernard describes the injection of a mixture of bile and sweet oil into the