CHRONIC ATROPHIC GASTRITIS AND CANCER OF THE STOMACH

The question of the etiologic importance of chronic atrophic gastritis to gastric cancer has been the subject of numerous studies during the past few decades. The association of gastric atrophy with various types of chronic disease has been known for many years. One of the early contributors to the subject, seldom cited today, is Samuel Fenwick.¹His work comprises two papers on "Atrophy of the Stomach" published in the<i>Lancet</i>in 1870 and 1877. These papers alone should be sufficient to arouse suspicion that gastric atrophy is rather more widely found than might be expected by those who would seek to show it a precancerous lesion from the point of view of gastric cancer, merely on the basis of finding morphologic evidence of atrophic gastritis in a large proportion of cancerous stomachs, for Fenwick reported gastric atrophy associated with cancer of many organs. Thus he found gastric atrophy associated