Reprinted from THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSIOLOGY 

 Vol. 56, No. 1, May, 1921 



A STUDY OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF IODINE BETWEEN 

 CELLS AND COLLOID IN THE THYROID GLAND 



III. THE EFFECT OF STIMULATION OF THE VAGO-SYMPATHETIC NERVE 



ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND CONCENTRATION OF IODINE IN THE 



DOG'S THYROID GLAND 



HARRY BENJAMIN VAN DYKE 



From the Laboratory of Physiological Chemistry and Pharmacology, University of 



Chicago 



Received for publication February 5, 1921 



For many years it has been held that the thyroid gland is supplied 

 with true secretory nerves. In support of this assertion there is con- 

 siderable anatomical evidence and some physiological evidence. Of 

 late the nerves which anatomists have traced into the thyroid gland and 

 have considered to be possibly secretory in function have been declared 

 to be branches of the cervical sympathetic nerve. And recent physi- 

 ological work has tended to confirm this view. Only twelve years ago 

 Wiener (1) published the report of experiments from which he concluded 

 that extirpation of the inferior cervical ganglion produces a marked 

 atrophy of the thyroid gland on the side of the extirpation. Wiener 

 maintained that no comparable effect on the lobe of the thyroid gland 

 on the side of the operation could be produced by vagotomy or by 

 removal of the superior cervical ganglion. More recently Rahe et al. (2) 

 announced that they were able to produce a quite marked diminution 

 in the iodine concentration of the lobe of the thyroid gland on one side 

 by stimulating the thyroid nerves in several different ways. They 

 stimulated the nerves of the superior thyroid artery, the intact vago- 

 sympathetic nerve as well as the vago-sympathetic nerve near the level 

 of the superior cervical ganglion after ligating the nerve low in the neck 

 and cutting the nerve central to the point of stimulation. They found 

 that the most marked loss was brought about by the stimulation of the 

 intact vago-sympathetic nerve. 



Watts (3) undertook to find out whether or not the results obtained 

 by Rahe, Rogers, Fawcett and Beebe might be due to vasomotor 



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