488 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The occurrence, in the formative period of infancy and child- 

 hood, of a disease which attacks fundamentally nutrition, de- 

 velopment, and growth, has much more disastrous effects than 

 when its appearance is delayed until the organism has reached 

 maturity. 



And while it is possible that the removal of causes inhibitory 

 to growth may result in a gradual return of developmental pro- 

 cesses, the thyroid treatment of infantile myxoedema has in no 

 case been carried out for a sufficient length of time to permit 

 the assertion that such will be the case. In no case is treatment 

 reported to have lasted more than three years, and in few cases 

 is it said that the patient is in all respects cured; but from 

 the fact that in nearly all of the cases treatment was not insti- 

 tuted until the child was several years of age and had developed 

 but little or not at all for a considerable length of time, several 

 years would be necessary, by the natural processes of develop- 

 ment, for the complete re- establishment of normal growth. 



Although data sufficient to justify positive assertions are 

 lacking, it seems entirely in the range of possibility that if the 

 treatment of sporadic cretinism were begun at the outset of the 

 disease, before growth was seriously interfered with, it would 

 permit the proper development of the child without myxcedema- 

 tous symptoms as long as the thyroid was administered. 



From the consideration of the history of myxoedematous con- 

 ditions it will have been seen that all this treatment promised to 

 do was to supply to the body the necessary substance which the 

 thyroid gland was no longer able to produce. It never under- 

 took to supply a new thyroid gland ; and the disappearance of the 

 symptoms of myxoedema under the thyroid treatment means that 

 the necessary secretion is being artificially supplied, and not that 

 the function of the gland has been restored. 



Consequently, any one in whom the activity of the thyroid 

 gland has been lost, whether it be by myxoedema, or operation 

 which has induced the condition of cachexia thyreopriva, must 

 continue the use of the thyroid glands of animals for the remain- 

 der of life. Dr. Murray's original case is still taking thyroid, and 

 after five years remains well. 



The therapeutic use of the thyroid has now been tried in 

 many other conditions with varying success. From its efficacy 

 in reducing the size of ordinary goiters it has to a great extent 

 supplanted the knife in the treatment of that condition. Recent 

 reports from Germany would seem to indicate that it exerts a 

 beneficial influence upon the development of children who are 

 physically or mentally backward, although they have none of the 

 characteristic symptoms of cretinism. Its power to reduce ex- 

 cessive fat is becoming very widely known, and when properly 



