Hunterian peptic ulcers and Helicobacter pylori

Gastric spiral organisms were first described in man in 1939 and identified as Helicobacter pylori causing peptic ulcers in the early 1980s. Surgical specimens of gastric resections from 1939 showed H. pylori to be present. Full-thickness sections of gastric mucosa from gastric specimens from the eighteenth-century Hunterian Collection at The Royal College of Surgeons of England were examined by histology for the presence of H. pylori. Four gastric ulcers and a section from an oesophageal varix showed remarkable preservation of the overall architecture, but surface autolysis did not allow identification of the bacteria. However, the presence of lymphoid aggregates in the Hunterian specimens suggests that H. pylori may have been present before autolysis.