ABSTRACT
Harold Hirschprung described the disease that bears his name at a pediatric conference in 1886 after observing two children die from repeated bouts of enterocolitis. Although recognized as a disease entity in the early 1900s, the pathophysiology of Hirschsprung’s disease (HD) was not clearly elucidated until 1948, when the invariable absence of ganglion cells in the distal bowel was identified in patients afflicted with this disease.
