Abstract. It is well known that iodine is an indispensable component of thyroid hormones. The discovery of iodine deficiency and its adverse effects upon human beings is an instructive example of the transfer of scientific and medical knowledge to the benefit of the public health. Physicians have known for more than a century that deficient iodine intake is associated with endemic goiter, creti...

group are diseases requiring the same sort of treatment. A glance at the table of contents will show how this is done : the catarrhal group ; the serous effusion group (pleurisy, pericarditis, etc.) ; the calcium insufficiency group (purpura, chilblains, rickets, cretinism) ; the ansemic group (anaemia, chlorosis, Banti's disease, leukaemia) ; the vitamine insufficiency group (scurvy, beri-beri...

One hundred and eighty three children suffering from mental retardation were studied over a period of 17 months (December’80 April’82). Mental retardation in 101 cases (5 5.2%) was due to preventable causes i.e. tubercular meningitis, birth trauma, encephalitis, cretinism and kernicterus. Majority of them belonged to lower socio-economic group and had no access to medical facilities, therefore ...

Studies were performed to assess the role of combined selenium and iodine deficiency in the etiology of endemic myxedematous cretinism in a population in Zaire. One effect of selenium deficiency may be to lower glutathione peroxidase activity in the thyroid gland, thus allowing hydrogen peroxide produced during thyroid hormone synthesis to be cytotoxic. In selenium-and-iodine-deficient humans, ...

THE processes involved in the progress of scientific knowledge have fascinated philosophers, scientific workers and non-scientists. Kuhn (1970), in his interesting essay on the structure of scientific revolutions, sees the road which the growth of scientific knowledge follows, not marked by discoveries but by what he names paradigms, 'theories that gain their status because they are more succes...

the eighteenth century. Because of Neuburger's brief, he gives only a short but effective account of electrophysiology. Dr Brazier, although concerned with all of neurophysiology, has selected the reverse arrangement: little reference to brain localization with no account of Willis's important contribution, and great emphasis laid on nerve conduction. Even in Part I, the latter topic receives c...

patient, who was kindly sent to me by Dr David Menzies, is suffering from sporadic cretinism?in other words, from the infantile form of myxcedema. She was admitted to the Edinburgh Eoyal Infirmary on March 30th, 1893. At that time, though she did not look more than 2 or 2| years of age, her actual age was 16 years and 4 months. She measured only 29? inches in length, and weighed only 2 st. 5| l...

Selenium status was determined in an endemic-goiter area and in a control area of Zaire. Compared with the reference values of a noniodine-deficient area, serum selenium in subjects living in the core of the northern Zaire endemic-goiter belt (Karawa villages) was seven times lower in 52 school-children and similarly low in 23 cretins; erythrocyte glutathione peroxidase (RBC-GPX) was five times...