The history of the discovery of thyroid disease is as complicated as the diseases themselves. The name "thyroid" was given to this small gland in the neck by Thomas Wharton ,who named it after the shape of an ancient Grecian shield. Leonardo da Vinci was the first to draw the thyroid, in 1500, and it was mentioned in Hindu holy texts in 300 BC. Medical discoveries over the years have led to cures that continue to improve the lives of people suffering from thyroid disease.
Medical Oddities
The path to medical discovery sometimes takes strange turns. In 650, Sun Ssu-Mo, a Chinese doctor, used dried and powdered shells mixed with chopped thyroid glands as a prescription for goiter, an enlarged thyroid. Seaweed and marine sponges were used as treatment for goiter throughout the ages, and today you can purchase seaweed as a remedy for some, but not all, thyroid conditions.
An interesting pharmaceutical note is that in 1917 thyroxine, the principle thyroid hormone, was produced for $350 per gram. Today the synthetic version of thyroxine is an inexpensive treatment for hypothyroidism, a condition in which the thyroid does not produce enough hormone.
Graves' disease
Graves' disease, an autoimmune disease causing the thyroid to enlarge twice its size, causes increased heartbeat, irritability, insomnia and muscle weakness. It can also cause exophthalmos (bulging eyes). It has a hereditary link and affects women more than men.
Graves' disease was first named and described by an Irish doctor in 1835. Robert James Graves reported on a case of goiter and bulging eyes. The disease was named for Graves, but Karl Adolph von Basedow, a German doctor, reported the same symptoms in 1840 and the same disease was named the Basedow's syndrome. Other names were used, but Graves' disease was the name that stuck.
Graves was the first physician to give a full description of exophthalmic goiter. He noticed the rapid and loud heartbeat (he could hear it from 4 feet away) and enlarged thyroid. He lectured and published on what he observed: "The eyeballs were visibly enlarged to such a degree the eyelids were unable to shut during sleep and when trying to close the eye. When the eyes were open the white of the eyes could be seen in the breadth of several lines around all of cornea."
Before Graves' writings, a 12th-century Persian physician, Sayyid Ismail al-Jurjani, wrote in "Thesaurus of the Shah of Khwarazm"-- the authoritative medical ext of the time, about the connection of goiter and the bulging eyes syndrome.
Hashimoto's disease
A silent and painless autoimmune disease, Hashimoto's disease is the most diagnosed thyroid disease and the most common cause of low thyroid production. Hashimoto's thyroiditis occurs when your body makes antibodies that gradually stop the hormone-producing cells in your thyroid.
Hakaru Hashimoto was born into a family of doctors and was one of the first graduates of a new medical school at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan. Hashimoto was the first to describe this disorder of the thyroid, which he called struma lymphomatosa. The thyroid glands of these patients were explained as "diffuse lymphocytic infiltration, fibrosis, parenchymal atrophy, and an eosinophilic change in some of the acinar cells," which is still the medical definition.
Iodine and Thyroid Disease
Iodine is an element needed by the thyroid to function. Iodized table salt reduced the incidence of goiters in the United States, but some countries and populations still are deficient in iodine. It is dangerous to take iodine supplements in some types of thyroid disease, however.
In 1811, Bernard Courtois discovered iodine by oxidizing burnt seaweed with sulfuric acid. A few years later, in 1820, Jean Francois Coindet made the connection between iodine deficiency and goiter, and he began treating goiters with iodine.
In 1907, David Marine suggested treating Graves disease with iodine. The hazards of overdose of iodine were outlined in 1912 by Theodore Kocher, who won a Nobel Prize for his reseasrch on the thyroid.
The "goiter belt" in the United States was defined in 1926: the iodine concentration in rainwater and in drinking water decreases as one travels from the Atlantic coast to the Great Lakes. The soils around the Great Lakes are iodine depleted and people who lived there had more incidences of goiter than those in other areas..
Thyroid Cancer
Thyroid cancer is not like the autoimmune diseases Graves and Hashimoto. Thyroid cancer is rare, accounting for only 1 percent of the cancers diagnosed annuallyThe exact cause is unknown, but a growing amount of research point is to a mutated gene, perhaps caused by exposure to radiation in childhood. .
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