Nervous and mental diseases / by Archibald Church and Frederick Peterson.

  • Church, Archibald, 1861-1952.
Date:
1908
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Nervous and mental diseases / by Archibald Church and Frederick Peterson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    perceptible. At the age of ten numerous and large cervical glands had been removed with probable resulting damage to the thyroid. Thereafter the physical, genital, and mental growth of the lad had remained stationary. Schmidt ^ has treated three cases of this sort in which growth was retarded, by the administration of thyroids, with immediate improvement. Etiology.—If we look upon myxedema as the manifestation of defective thyroidation, its causes are those of disease or absence of the thyroid body. In some cases it is a teratological defect; in others it is the result of a thyroiditis which may be dependent on infectious processes, as the infectious fevers, rheumatism, etc.; in others it is cystic degeneration; in others the result of trauma or surgical extirpation. Taking all causes of myxedema together, there is a pre- ponderance of females which reaches large propor- tions in the spontaneous adult varieties. It is probable that the close relation of the thyroid and uterine functions is at the bottom of this fact. It is only necessary to mention the. in- creased size of the thyroid in pregnancy, its fre- quent enlargement in pubescent girls, its usual congestion in some women during menstruation, and its final retraction at the menopause. Ery- sipelas of the neck and head and syphilis of the thyroid gland have induced myxedema. Reojardins; the manner in which defective thyroidation affects the trophic apparatus and induces the mucoid deposits, two general points of view depending upon opposite physiological hypotheses are maintained. As yet all is theory. Many, with SchifP, believe that the normal thy- roid elaborates some substance indispensable to the proper action of the nervous system. This substance, however, has never been isolated nor its characteristics determined. Others, with Hors- ley, conceive that the thyroid transforms the mu- cinoid elements of the blood into utilizable meta- bolic constituents, or, as a modification of this idea, that the thyroid eliminates certain harmful elements from the blood. The blood in myxedema is poor in oxygen and the urine is of an increased toxicity. Both of these conditions are favorably modified, as is the myxedematous state, by the administration of thyroids. It now is determined that the thyroid gland is essential to life and to the proper neurotroj)liic balance. That it is essentially secretory is proven by its embryonal duct in man o])en- ing at the root of the tongue and its active connection with alimentary processes in the lower orders. 1 Therapeutische Wochen., Nov., 1896. I'ij,'. 220.—>Iyxeili;iiiu- tous iiifuiitilism, youth nine- teen years old (Brissaiul).