The diversity of terms applied to proliferative and cystic changes in the breast since the recognition of such changes over a century ago illustrates the efforts made to interpret the varied clinical, pathologic and anatomic findings.
The condition was first described by Cooper1 in 1829, in the chapters on "hydatid," "irritable" and "chronic" mammary tumor in his "Illustrations of the Diseases of the Breast." Included in the early nomenclature are such terms as "abnormal involution of the breast,"2 "cystic disease of the breast (Reclus' disease),"3 "sero-cystic tumors of the breast,"4 "chronic cystic mastitis,"5 "chronic cystic mastopathia,"6 "cystadenoma (Schimmelbusch's disease)"7 and "senile parenchymatous hypertrophy."8a Later, Bloodgood wrote of "shotty breast" and "bluedomed cyst."8b Cheatle and Cutler9 added "mazoplasia" and "cystiphorous desquamative hyperplasia"—conditions of the breast which, they concluded, differ biologically and morphologically from one another and which together represent the condition