XII 
CLINICAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE USE OF 
ANTERIOR PITUITARY AND THYROID SUB- 
STANCES IN GOITRE AND NEURASTHENIA 
By LEIGH F. WATSON, M.D., Chicago, IIl.* 
The purpose of this paper is to report the results se- 
cured with pluriglandular medication—a combination 
of anterior pituitary substance with thymus and thy- 
roid—in 75 cases of goitre and neurasthenia. 
EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 
A disturbance in the endocrine balance is the gener- 
ally-accepted cause of the symptoms of toxic goitre as 
well as of neurasthenia. This hypothesis is supported 
by the pathological studies of Louis Wilson, of the 
Mayo Clinic, who has definitely proved the constant 
association of exophthalmic goitre with primary hyper- 
trophy and hyperplasia of the thyroid gland. His asso- 
ciate, Kendall, has isolated from the thyroid an active 
hormone, called “thyroxin,’’ which, when injected into 
a normal person, increases pulse-rate, vigor, metabo- 
lism and nervous irritability. 
It is well known that physiological enlargement of 
the thyroid—a compensatory hypertrophy—is most 
frequent in women at puberty, during pregnancy, and 
at the menopause. Kimball and Marine have demon- 
strated that the feeding of sodium iodide to children 
living in goitrous geographical belts, will lessen the fre- 
* The writer of this essay received the first prize of $250.00. 
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