4o8 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OP FISHERIES. 



changes leading to carcinoma of the thyroid in the Salmonidae as we have described it. 

 In figure 84 the change from flattened to columnar type, with deeply staining protoplasm, 

 lengthening and flattening of the tubules, closely resemble those found in the mam- 

 malian thyroid by Hitzig and Michaud, and, with the exception of the hyperaemia, 

 which is associated with the more intensive chnges, in the hyperplasia of the thyroid in 

 the Salmonidae. The advent of isolated nodular growths, sometimes sharply circum- 

 scribed (fig. 45), indicates that focal proliferation of the thyroid tissue in the fish fre- 

 quently leads to the development of nodules presenting the picture of nodular struma 

 in mammals. The structure of the normal thyroid in the Salmonidse is so simple and its 

 amount so limited, that a careful study of this structure in all age periods of the fish 

 renders it clear that the advent of tubular structures with columnar epithelium clearly 

 represents a pathological change, and here we are not troubled with the many questions 

 which arise to complicate the study of these structures in the mammalian thyroid. We 

 can, in the thyroid of the Salmonidae, definitely exclude the idea voiced by Kramer, 1910, 

 that such tubules in the mammalian thyroid were probably originally the remnants 

 of execretory ducts persisting from an earlier period of development of the mammalian 

 thyroid. It is plainly evident from the study of the normal thyroid in the Salmonidae 

 and the genesis of hyperplasia, nodular growths and fully developed carcinoma, that the 

 changes in this organ are brought about by the action of some agent working focally 

 upon the epithelium of normal vesicles, and we can clearly exclude all possibility of 

 embryonic rests playing a part in the genesis of circumscribed adenomata or cancer. 



The evidence adduced on this subject therefore confirms, so far as the eyndence is 

 applicable, the conclusions of Virchow, Hitzig, and Michaud that struma nodosa develops 

 as the result of focal change in the epithelium of normal structures of the thyroid. The 

 production of tubules and irregularly distorted spaces lined with columnar epithelium 

 and the process of development of new follicles by budding, as described and illustrated 

 by Michaud, are repeatedly encountered in our specimens, especially in the earliest stages. 

 (Fig. 36.) The theory that carcinoma of the thyroid develops especially from the 

 adenomata of nodular struma and that endemic goiter is the result of a physiological 

 hyperplasia of normal thyroid tissue, finds no support in our study of carcinoma of the 

 thyroid in the Salmonidae. The theory of Marine that iodine affects alone physiological 

 hyperplastic changes of the thyroid tissue and does not affect these adenomata, and may 

 thus be used as a means of distinguishing between physiological hyperplasia and cancer, 

 is obviously untenable, as we find that iodine, as well as mercury and arsenic, affect 

 not only fully developed carcinoma of the thyroid but where tumors contain individual 

 adenomata these are likewise affected. Well-developed tumors in the Salmonidae some- 

 times closely simulate the structures of nodular struma in the mammal. Figure 65 

 represents such a tumor and may be compared with figure 66, struma nodosa in man. 

 The tumors of the fish frequently contain the so-called Wachstum centra of Aschoff. 

 (Fig. 66.) 



Although it may not be wise to go too far in the comparison of carcinoma in the 

 Salmonidae with carcinoma of the thyroid in mammals, yet inasmuch as we will show 



