Up to the present time there have been few reports in the English literature on the subject of ochronosis. The term ochronosis (Greek, pale yellow) was applied by Virchow,1 in 1866, to the pigmentation of cartilages and cartilage-like tissues found at autopsy in a man, aged 67, who died of an aneurysm of the ascending aorta. Fine microscopic sections showed the pigment to be yellowish (ochre colored), but grossly the pigmentation was blackish. Indeed, the "rib cartilages, pelvic synchondrosis, and the intervertebral disks were so black that they appeared as if they had been dipped into ordinary ink." Since Virchow's time, fifty-one cases have been reported.
Albrecht2 (1902) first suggested the relationship of ochronosis to alkaptonuria. Osler3 (1904), however, was the first to recognize the condition clinically; he reported two cases of ochronosis with alkaptonuria which occurred in brothers. The clinical diagnosis was made because of the deep pigmentation of