FOOT — ON GOITRE IN ANIMALS. 2o 



another of the three was similarly affected. There had been nothing 

 of the kind observed in either of the parents. The tumour was very- 

 visible, especially in profile, and when the pup was let run along the 

 ground the neck bagged downwards like a dewlap — the girth of the 

 neck over the tumour was eight and a-half inches. The tumour gave 

 a thrilling impulse to the fingers, and when pressed against the ear a 

 bruit was audible ; but it was not easy to ascertain whether this sound 

 proceeded from the tumour or from the arteries of the neck. There 

 was no protrusion of the eyes, difficulty of swallowing, or alteration in 

 the voice perceptible. It was a lively and active pup, and the gentle- 

 man who owned it, being anxious to rear it, had shown it to me for the 

 purpose of knowing what would cure it. I recommended him to rub 

 tincture of iodine diligently to the swelling, and made an agreement 

 with him, that if the treatment proposed did not prove beneficial, I 

 should be given the pup to do what I liked with it. When I next 

 heard of it, 17th January, 1870, the report was that the swelling had 

 been so much reduced, that the pup was not likely to become my property. 

 The pup has now grown very much, the swellings are smaller, but still 

 in the same situation, distinctly double, soft and elastic to the feel, 

 moving up and down with the windpipe, apparently making no inter- 

 ference with the neighbouring parts. The circumference of the neck 

 over the swelling is now eight inches; but the natural increase from 

 growth in the thickness of the neck, in the space of more than two 

 months, prevents this measurement of the prominence of the tumour 

 being an accurate indication of its decrease in size. 



I may perhaps be allowed to refer for a moment to the nature and 

 situation of the part which is the seat of the affection, popularly known 

 in men and animals, as goitre. The disease consists in an en- 

 largement of an organ in the neck, closely related to the windpipe, 

 and called the thyroid body, from its proximity to one of the cartilages 

 of the larynx, shield- shaped in man. This organ is recognisable in all 

 classes of mammalian animals ; yet its use is totally unknown, and 

 respecting its functions, nothing reasonable has even been suggested. 

 It is a most remarkable fact that, in reference to a permanent body found 

 in all the higher animals, and whose conditions in health and disease 

 can be investigated almost daily, nothing beyond its anatomical struc- 

 ture should be known ; no satisfactory hypothesis having yet been sug- 

 gested as to its office or function in the economy of man or the lower 

 animals. This thyroid body consists of a pair of oblong, rounded 

 massesj which in some of the higher mammalia, as in man, are united 

 by a transverse band of like substance, crossing the sternal aspect of 

 the air tube. The thyroid glands of the adult lioness, here exhibited, 

 will best illustrate the usual appearance of this structure. It is this 

 organ which is the seat of the affection called goitre, probably from the 

 word guttur or throat. Many animals have been observed to be subject 

 to goitre, and I have endeavoured to collect, by research and inquiry 

 on the subject, as many cases of the occurrence of this affection as pos- 

 sible, in order that they may form a nucleus for a larger collection, or 



VOL. VI. £ 



