Word: parathyroids
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...universal in Nature. But not quite. The bones of animals generate a young cell called an osteoblast, which becomes a middle-aged cell called an osteoclast, which becomes an aged cell called a fibroblast, which ultimately dies. Dr. Franklin C. McLean and his University of Chicago co-worker fed parathyroid extract to aged fibroblasts, turned them into baby osteoblasts...
...know that "it apparently has been of value in 22 of the 34 cases in which it has been used." Just as inexplicable but more successful were the results which Philadelphia's Drs. Harry Lowenburg and Theodore M. Ginsburg attained by poisoning two purpuric little boys with parathyroid hormone. That hormone increased the amount of calcium in the children's blood to such an extent that they vomited persistently, became listless. When the children were on the verge of dying from hypercalcemia. the doctors stopped the parathyroid injections. At once the victims perked up, ceased vomiting-and ceased...
...into the front of her neck. By lifting the flap of skin, the surgeon exposed the thyroid gland lying around the windpipe, excised almost all of it. He took special pains not to damage Mary's laryngeal nerves, which might cause her to choke to death, nor her parathyroid glands, which might throw her into spasms. Final step in the thyroidectomy was to bring the edges of the divided skin of the patient's throat together so neatly that each layer butts exactly against its companion layer...
Thus a person with an underactive thyroid need not take thyroxin the rest of his life. Nor need one with a deficient parathyroid forever take calcium-bearing drugs to ward off spasms. If Professor Stone can extend his system of culturing minced glands to include the pancreas and the adrenals, he indicated last week, surgeons would have a simple, permanent cure for diabetes and Addison's disease. But, warned the able doctor: "No type or method of grafting can reasonably be expected to yield 100% successful results...
Johns Hopkins' Professor Harvey Brinton Stone was cautiously vague last winter when he let it be known that he was successfully transplanting human thyroid and parathyroid tissue by new methods (TIME, Dec. 18). More sure of his methods this year, Professor Stone has been publishing the details of this difficult surgical procedure in the Annals of Surgery. By last week, when he was asked to tell the American College of Surgeons (see p. 35) what he was doing, he had achieved sufficient boldness to pack his whole story into a few simple sentences. Said...