Word: thyroids
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Like a chameleon on a piece of Scotch plaid, the patient has a complex pattern of response. Several of the endocrine (ductless) glands go to work. The adrenals pump out both adrenalin and cortisone-like hormones. Both lobes of the pituitary step up their activity. So, probably, does the thyroid. Triggered by these hormonal reactions, about which much is yet to be learned, the body's chemistry changes in a dozen ways...
Some extremely dangerous drugs have been promoted for reducing, said Dr. Stormont. Thyroid extract, still popular with some physicians, should not be; it can do grave harm, and there is no reason for giving it, since an underactive thyroid is very rarely the cause of obesity. Also sharply condemned: other hormones, such as pituitary extract (they have nothing to do with overweight), laxatives and dinitrophenol (it raises the temperature so that "the obese are literally frying in their own fat," and it causes cataracts...
Surefire Cure. In St. Albans, England, Frederick Thompson, shot in the neck by an alert householder whose house he was breaking into, startled police doctors when he suddenly recovered from a severe thyroid gland disorder...
Norman is a lanky boy of 13 who has been playing basketball this season at Madisonville (Ky.) Junior High, and hopes to play football next fall. Two years ago, despite surgery and X rays, Norman was wasting away with a spreading cancer of the thyroid. Then his doctor got him into the little (30-bed) hospital at Oak Ridge, Tenn., which is set aside for atomic medicine. There, Norman had an "atomic cocktail"-radioactive sodium iodide dissolved in water. The cancer colonies soaked up the iodine; from each radioactive atom, beta particles and gamma rays shot out to destroy cancerous...
...benefits of radio-iodine extend to patients with chronic, congestive heart disease and angina pectoris. If, as is common in such cases, the healthy thyroid's activity is too high for a damaged heart, then a dose of iodine-131 can be used instead of the surgeon's knife to reduce the gland. Two-thirds of the heart cripples so treated at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital show worthwhile improvement, and half of these are so much better that they can lead nearly normal lives. Equally gratifying, the treatment releases many patients from the agonizing "tight" pains...