MULTICENTRIC RETICULOHISTIOCYTOSIS OF THE SKIN AND SYNOVIA

Abstract

GANGLIONEUROMA is the title which Montgomery and O'Leary used in 1934 to describe a case characterized by multiple cutaneous tumors, composed of a mixture of inflammatory cells and many large, pale-staining cells with vesicular nuclei. The authors demonstrated granules in the cytoplasm of these cells which they interpreted to be Nissl's granules. They felt that the cells were of neural origin, probably ganglionic; hence the name ganglioneuroma. Others who studied this patient or histologic sections, however, including Senear and Caro, Jaffe, Klemperer, and Foot, denied the neural origin of these cells and made a diagnosis of reticulohistiocytic granuloma. In 1936, Parkes Weber and Freudenthal presented a man, aged 35, whose illness began with pain and stiffness in various joints, followed by swelling of the knee joints and tendon sheaths on the backs of the wrists. Later he developed peasized cutaneous nodules on the backs of the fingers and