CARCINOMA OF THE THYROID IN THE SALMONOID FISHES. 
By HARVEY R. GAYLORD, M. D., and MILLARD C. MARSH 
WITH THE COLLABORATION OF 
FREDERICK C. BUSCH, M. D., and BURTON T. SIMPSON, M. D. 
INTRODUCTION. 
HISTORY OF THE PRESENT INVESTIGATION. 
In 1907, by the natural trend of the general investigation into cancer which was 
being conducted by the State of New York through the medium of the Gratwick Labo- 
ratory, now a part of the State Institute for the Study of Malignant Disease, that 
institution became interested in the possible distribution of cancer and allied affections 
in fish. Through publications of Plehn and Pick the attention of cancer investigators 
was attracted to a disease known as carcinoma of the thyroid in the Salmonidae. The 
disease had been described in the literature under various names and was known to fish 
culture as “gill disease,” “throat tumor,” etc. The work of Marianne Plehn had served 
to establish the nature of the disease as cancer or carcinoma of the thyroid, intimately 
associated with enlargement of that organ of a more simple nature which might be 
considered goiter. 
In 1907 the director of the Gratwick Laboratory took occasion to visit one of the 
hatcheries in New York for the purpose of inquiring into the prevalence of this disease 
in the hatcheries of the State. He learned that one or two fish with tumors at the 
junction of the gills had been found and in the spring of 1908 a report came from this 
hatchery that an epidemic was in progress, and an examination made on the spot 
revealed the presence of visible tumors in some 700 fish. Attempts were made to study 
the conditions under which the disease developed in this hatchery, and observations 
were carried through the summer of 1908. Attention was called to the existence of the 
disease in two other hatcheries in the State of New York, and at the conclusion of the 
summer’s work it became apparent that the great extent of the disease, the existence 
of which in other States had been reported to us, was such that a comprehensive inves- 
tigation could probably be successfully accomplished only in cooperation with the 
United States Bureau of Fisheries. 
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