THE MECHANISMS concerned in the pathogenesis of chronic pancreatitis still remain a matter of some dispute despite interest in the disease for many years. Much of the discussion has centered around the relationship of accompanying biliary tract disease, and only recently has the confusion on this point become lessened. Moreover, earlier concepts to the contrary, chronic pancreatitis is not rare, nor is its symptomatology ill-defined. Part of the difficulty in obtaining a clear picture of this entity from reading of the past literature is due to artificial separation of cases into groups based on such criteria as the presence or absence of pancreatic calcification or the degree of functional abnormality evident. Insofar as such case differences are merely expressions of the variations in the disease manifestations, it would seem to detract from basic understanding to consider them separately. During the three-year period January, 1950, to January, 1953, a total of