[First case report in Mexico of a diaphragmatic hernia, by Agustín Arellano in 1839]

Reports on partial lacking of the diaphragm and diaphragmatic hernia date to seventeenth century reports. In 1939 Arellano published in Mexico, a necropsy case of diaphragmatic hernia with holoprosencephaly and cyclocephaly. Agustín Arellano's was the the fifth or sixth report ever published worldwide and his manuscript was reported nine years before Bochdalek's publication. Before 1839, in the Americas, there is no other existing report describing this type of pathology, and we can safely assume Arellano's work was the first of its kind in the Western hemisphere. It is well known that, at the time, the quality ofscientific publications of this Mexican medical researcher could be compared to the level of any medical publication in the developed world. It is worth noting that the Journal were Arellano's work was published, named "Periodico de la Academia de Médicina de Mégico (sic), "founded and directed by Dr. Manuel Carpio in 1836, is the direct precursor of the present-day "Gaceta Médica de México" the oldest current medical journal in the Americas.