Word: thyroid
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...week. Small, frail, sombre, he rose from his seat to accept the medal, big as his palm, and in return to tell the College a simple chain of endocrine events which may lead to a simple cure for the ugly form of goitre called Graves's Disease. The thyroid may not be appreciably enlarged in a case of Graves's Disease. But in all cases the eyes bulge. In extreme cases the eyes may pop out of their sockets...
Professor Loeb found that the cause of this bulging was not in the individual's thyroid itself, although the thyroid was overworking as hard as any goitrous thyroid. By systematically shuffling the hormones of many creatures, he found that the seat of Graves's Disease is in the pituitary gland, a chestnut-sized nugget lying midway between the temples. Through its many hormones the pituitary in one way or another manages the activities of practically all the other ductless glands. One of the pituitary's hormones, Professor Loeb found, specifically excites the thyroid and causes the eyes...
...scoffed at total excision of the thyroid. The theory is that the thyroid drives the heart more than the heart can stand and that without the thyroid's slave-driving the heart can take its own time and method of pumping blood through the coronary arteries. Thyroidectomy does relieve drive on the heart and does prevent angina. But it does not cure the source of trouble and, except for lifelong dosing with the thyroid hormone, makes an idiot of the coronary patient...
Overactivity of the vagus nerve is tied up with overactivity of the thyroid. Goitres, said Drs. Nahum and Hoff last week, "change the heart in such a way as to make it susceptible to overactivity of the vagus nerve. Some patients are naturally subject to vagus action. Some develop it reflexly from high blood pressure and it is probable that all hyper-thyroids are sensitive to the vagus nerve. In this way, overactivity of this nerve develops, which precipitates auricular fibrillation...
...Thyroids for Fatherhood, Premier Mussolini, who wants to raise every Italian boy to be a soldier, has discovered why, despite God, Nature and women, some Italians cannot become fathers. According to Research Director Allan Winter Rowe of Boston's Evans Memorial Hospital, the trouble with these peculiar Italians is that their thyroid glands neglect to secrete a newly-discovered hormone. The special duty of this hormone is to invigorate sperm cells. To reach and fertilize an ovum, a sperm cell must live at least 24 hours. Premier Mussolini found that the sperms of his peculiar Italians died before they...