Linitis plastica historical perspective

Reports on linitis plastica date as far back as the sixteenth and seventeenth century. The term “linitis plastica” meaning leather bottle was first used by Dr. William Brinton, an English physician, in 1854 in reference to the appearance of the stomach’s wall lining.

Dr. Brinton was the first to categorize this cancer as a separate entity to other pathologies. The stomach muscle lining was uncharacteristically thicker than usual. For many years, this type of cancer could not be classified as either benign or malignant. In 1953, Dr. Arthur Stout noted that there were scattered cells among the filamentous bands of scar tissue that were malignant. Dr. Stout then further proposed that this cancer was, in fact, a subset of gastric cancer.^[1]

• Linitis plastica was first discovered by Dr. William Brinton, an English physician, in 1854.^[2]
• In 1953, Dr. Arthur Stout was the first to categorize linitis plastica as malignant.

Napoleon Bonaparte, a French military and political leader is thought to have died from this type of cancer.^[3]

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