30 FIELDING H. GARRISON 



tiquity that Juvenal (xiii., 162) has preserved its commonplace aspects 

 in a sin-le lin<f : "Quis tumidum guttur mimtur in Alpibus" ("Who won- 

 ders at goiter in the Alps?") ; and Pliny, in his Natural History (XL, 

 68) hinted at one theory of its causation when he said that "only men and 

 swine are subject to swellings in the throat, which are mostly caused by 

 the noxious quality of the water they drink." In the sixteenth century 

 Paracelsus found goiter to bo endemic in the Salzburg region, again 



attributed it to metallic and min- 

 eral constituents in the water, and 

 noticed that it coexisted with an- 

 other disease of the same locality, 

 cretinism or myxedema. "While 

 goiter is not a necessary character- 

 istic of idiots (proprium stultor- 

 um)" says Paracelsus, "yet it is 

 most commonly found among them 



( so ir ^ es die a>m &i * ten ')" 

 after which he wanders off into his 



usual astrological theories, in 

 which few can follow him. The 

 important point is that in goitrous 

 regions, as Dock (&) (1909) says, 

 cretins may have goiter or goitrous 

 mothers, while the marriage of two 

 cretins is usually sterile, which 

 makes the observation of Paracel- 

 sus fit in very well with his main 

 theory of the provenance of idiots 

 (genemtio stultorwn). Long be- 

 fore the time of Paracelsus, the 

 use of iodin, in the form of sponges 



and sea weeds, in the treatment of goiter, was taught by the Salernitan 

 surgeon, IJoo-cM' of Palermo (1180). 



In Kill Felix Plater, another Swiss physician, published an observa- 

 tion whieh, in connection with the doctrine of the "status thymico-lym- 

 phaticns," seems truly modern, an autopsy of a five months' infant, who 

 had Keen suffocated by enlargement of the thymus gland (mors thymica). 

 As we heii'in to perceive the relation of these varied phenomena to the 

 doctrine of internal secretions, it will not seem strange that Bordeu, who 

 first stated the modern theory, should have hit upon the sexual gonacls as 

 the most obvious illustration, for nearly all these glands are in some way 

 connected with the sexual characteristics of the individual. We may now 

 pass from the sta^e of haphazard observations to that in which certain 

 diseases were closely and accurately described, like objects in natural his- 



3. Fdix Plater 

 (if)3(i-iGi4) 



