Observations and experiments on the pathology of Graves's disease / by Walter Edmunds.

  • Edmunds, Walter.
Date:
[1895]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations and experiments on the pathology of Graves's disease / by Walter Edmunds. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    1 4 ; being able, to a great extent, to reijlace the other physiologically, ij but also because (1) the parathyroid resembles the embryonic ' form of the thyroid; (2) the two tissues are occasionally found side \ by side in the parathyroid of the dog; and (3) because they are closely connected anatomically; in the monkey the parathyroid is embedded in the substance of the thyroid. Now it has been supposed that the symptoms of Graves's disease (other than the goitre) are due to the action of the internal secretion from the enlarged thyroid : there does not, however, exist any evidence that thyroid secretion can produce exophthalmos. The eating of the thyroid of sheep, or the receiving of the subcutaneous injection of the extract, has produced unpleasant symptoms in healthy persons; in the subjects of myxoedema an excessive dose has produced grave and, it is stated, even fatal symptoms; but it does not appear that the eye symptoms of Graves's disease are among these effects. In animals, thyroid feeding jjroduced, in my hands, no very obvious results, certainly no exophthalmos. To a healthy dog were given, in one day, the thyroids of sixteen sheep, without any apparent result; and to another dog were given sheep's thyroids, two per diem, for some days without effect. Also monkeys were treated daily with large doses of the extract subcutaneously without the production of obvious symptoms, except that in one case, about the time of stopping the treatment, suddenly an area of baldness appeared on each temple, extending downwards to the shoulder: this hair gradually grew again, but an attemjjt to reproduce the result in the same monkey by the re-application of the supposed cause, i. e. the administration of thyroid extract in large doses and then suddenly stopping it, failed. If it be argued that the thyroid of Graves's disease is not merely an enlarged one, but is also altered in structure, and that therefore the secretion is also probably altered, it must be answered that that may well be, but that no evidence has yet been brought forward that this altered secretion can produce exophthalmos. The ajjparent contrast between the symptoms of Graves's disease and myxoedema, coupled with the brilliant success which has attended the treatment of the latter, and also of cretinism ^ by thyroid taking, certainly helps the secretion theory. But there are one or two considerations that go against it.