ACROMEGALY, the name given to a disease characterized by a true hypertrophy (an overgrowth involving both bony and soft parts) of the terminal parts of the body, especially of the face and extremities. It occurs in both sexes, usually between the ages of 25 and 4o. Its causation is associated with morbid changes in the pituitary gland, and an extract of this body has been tried in the treatment, as one of the recent developments in organo therapeutics ; thyroid extract has also been used, but without marked success, on the apparent analogy of acromegaly with myxoedema. (See ENDOCRINOLOGY.)