Excerpt from The Thyroid Gland in Health and Disease

A period of sick leave from active service has afforded me an Opportunity to incorporate into one volume the results of some fourteen years of study of the thyroid apparatus and its diseases.

When, in 1902, I undertook the investigation of the aetiology of its maladies a maze of hypotheses and uncertainties surrounded the subject. Knowing nothing, premising nothing, I determined to examine it from the combined epidemiological, clinical, experi mental and pathological points of view. Some years of extensive epidemiological research cleared the ground of many false hypo theses, resolved some uncertainties, and brought to light certain facts which suggested an infectious or toxic origin for some of the thyroid's most common disorders. Clinical experience during the same period added further facts which strengthened this supposition, observations on man and experimental work on a large scale on animals converted the supposition into what I believe to be fact, and pathological studies have since confirmed my belief.

Meanwhile it became necessary to revert to the study of the normal thyroid gland in order fully to understand the various processes of abnormality. As a result of this study a number of important points relating to the gland's normal range of physio logical action were elucidated, whereby it became possible to interpret the pathological changes to which various experimental procedures had given rise.

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