Recent advances in endocrinology / by A.T. Cameron.

  • Alexander Thomas Cameron
Date:
1933
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Recent advances in endocrinology / by A.T. Cameron. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    58/402 (page 46)
    Various other investigators have put forward observations supporting the theory of a water-borne infection (85, 46). Others have suggested factors which might prevent the absorption of iodine from the gastro-intestinal canal, such as its presence in an unassimilable form (128), or chronic digestive infections (193). (It should always be remembered, in contrasting the incidence of goitre with the iodine content oi drinking water, that, almost always, in the absence of definite addition of iodine, the greater part of the iodine we ingest is taken with the solid food constituents.) Ineffectiveness of iodine in treatment of goitre has been reported by a few investigators (224, 132), who form but a small minority of those who have published results concern¬ ing the treatment. Stott (234) has studied the distribution and cause of endemic goitre in the United Provinces (India). Graves disease is absent, but subthyroidism and cretinism are common, and the association between deaf-mutism, cretinism and goitre is confirmed. In India as a whole congenital deaf-mutes, cretins and goitrous persons are located in a main endemic area in the Himalayas, and in districts bordering the Himalayan foothills, especially where the drainage water is carried from the Himalayas to the sea. Where the local distribution of this disease group has been investigated it is associated with a definite water supply, and in that water supply lime is usually present in excessive amounts. “ Nowhere in India or Burma is the deaf-mute rate higher than among the Kachins of N. Burma. . . . These Kachins drink water from hill-streams which are no doubt impregnated with calcium, and moreover it is customary amongst the Kachins to eat calcium as a powder in large quantities.” (With these observations may be associated Hellwig’s experimental results quoted on p. 49.) Several investigators have claimed to be able to isolate