VIII 



THYROID THERAPY IN SOME INFECTIOUS 

 DISEASES 



BY DR. J. KOOPMAN, The Hague, Holland 



The possibilities of organotherapy in the treatment 

 of infectious diseases have until quite recently been very 

 poorly studied. This may astonish workers in the field 

 of endocrinology ; but none the less, it is quite compre- 

 hensible. In many other diseases where organotherapy 

 has been tried, the control of the effect is often difficult 

 or even impossible. Doctor, as well as patient, may 

 suggest to themselves much that another perhaps would 

 never be able to observe. I do not hesitate to assert 

 that this is the reason why more nonsense has been 

 written about the interesting and highly useful subject 

 of organotherapy than any other medical topic. In 

 the organotherapy of the infectious diseases, with 

 which I shall deal in this paper (syphilis, typhoid 

 fever), all phantasy and imagination is excluded and 

 suggestion impossible, as the serological methods of ex- 

 amination give us a mathematical certainty of the cor- 

 rectness of our views. 



In syphilis, the Wassermann test may be used as an 

 indicator; in typhoid fever, the formation of agglu- 

 tinins. Since two reactions belong, with many others, 

 to the reactions on antibodies, I shall first try to give 

 a general view of the influence of the thyroid on the 

 formation of antibodies. The first opinion I found on 

 this subject is formulated by Charrin (1), who stated 

 that removal of the thyroid diminished the natural im- 



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