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Forgotten Foundations of Thyroid Knowledge - Page 2
© Edna Kyrie
Page 2
Mar 16, 2001
1942 -- Broda O. Barnes published Basal Temperature Versus Basal Metabolism in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The author proposed that the basal metabolism test was unsuitable for low thyroid patients. They weren't able to get calm and relaxed! He also noted that hypothyroid and hyperthyroid symptoms were sometimes very similar. As part of his graduate study he had demonstrated to medical students the effects on rabbits when the thyroid was surgically removed. In the course of his medical practice, he saw the 'rabbit' in patients that his medical training was of no help in diagnosing and treating successfully.The research of Wharton and Barnes was published just before and during World War II. Thyroid seemed old-fashioned and irrelevant for an increasingly specialised medical profession. It was the era of "wonder drugs" such as penicillin and sulpha. Drug companies were becoming more influential and there was not much profit in selling dessicated thyroid tablets. 1957 -- Arnold S. Jackson published Hypothyroidism in the Journal of the American Medical Association. He proposed that doctors were relying too much on only one test to diagnose thyroid dysfuntion. He felt that hypothyroidism was in fact very common and often missed as a diagnosis. Many thyroid tablets were useless due to poor manufacture or prolonged storage prior to use.Have we come full circle? 2000 -- G.R.B. Skinner proposed that priority be given to clinical signs and symptoms not just to blood tests in Clinical Response to Thyroxine Sodium in Clinically Hypothyroid buy Biochemically Euthroid Patients published in the Journal of Nutritional & Environmental Medicine.
In summary, there is just too much information. It is difficult if not impossible for doctors to keep track of what is relevent for treating patients. The 1887 British Medical Journal was one volume that I could grasp in my hand. I would be hardpressed to hold the 1997 volume in my arms. It is extremely rare for different specialities to share information or look at how they can enhance the work of one another. Medicine is very future focused with little attention paid to what could be learned from the work, research and vast experience of practitioners in the past. "Just as we search all our patients for tuberculosis, syphilis, alcoholism, a day will come when a systematic examination will also be made to ascertain their thyroid powers and defects. The question of the internal secretions is coming more and more to the foreground. Innumerable possibilities may arise from it." Hertoghe 1914 lecture
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