EARLIER OBSERVATIONS 



295 



dema had been observed in some cases of removal 

 of the thyroid gland on account of disease (goitre). 

 In April 1883, Kocher of Berne read a paper on 

 this subject, before the Congress of German Sur- 

 geons ; but he attributed this myxcedema after 

 removal of the gland (cachexia strumipriva) not 

 directly to the loss of thyroid-tissue, but rather to 

 some sort of interference with free respiration, due 

 to operation. On 23rd November, Sir Felix 

 Semon brought the subject again before the 

 Clinical Society; and on 14th December 1883, the 

 Society appointed a Committee of Investigation to 

 study the whole question. 



Their report, 215 pages long, with tabulated 

 records of 119 cases of myxcedema, was published 

 in 1888. It is a monument of good work, historical, 

 clinical, pathological, chemical, and experimental. 

 Twenty years ago, the purpose of the thyroid 

 gland was unknown : a few experiments had been 

 made on it, by Sir Astley Cooper and others, and 

 had failed ; and Claude Bernard, in his Physiologie 

 Opdratoire (published in 1879, soon after his death), 

 makes it clear that nothing was known in his time 

 about it. He is emphasising the fact that anatomy 

 cannot make the discoveries of physiology : — 



" The descriptive anatomy, and the microscopic 

 characters, of the thyroid gland, the facts about 

 its blood-vessels and its lymphatics — are not all 

 these as well known in the thyroid gland as in 

 other organs ? Is not the same thing true of the 

 thymus gland, and the suprarenal capsules ? Yet 

 we know absolutely 710 thing about the functions of 



