Experiments on the thyroid and parathyroid glands / by Walter Edmunds.

  • Edmunds, Walter.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Experiments on the thyroid and parathyroid glands / by Walter Edmunds. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    [From the Proceedings of the Physiological Society, May 18, 1895.] Experiments on the Thyroid and Parathyroid Glands. By Walter Edmunds. It has long been known that in dogs and cats excision of the thyroid gland is followed in the great majority of instances by death within a few days. In rabbits however the same result has not followed the operation. In these animals there are certain small glands called parathyroid : they are two, and are situated one on each side of the trachea. They do not at all closely resemble the adult thyroid for they contain no vesicles and no colloid but consist mainly of secreting cells arranged more or less in columns. As these glands are situated some distance below the thyroid proper, in operations for the removal of the latter they have not been excised. Gley finds that if with the thyroid gland the parathyroids are also removed the animals die. These ex- periments of Gley’s have been repeated by the writer and it was found that (1) if the thyroid and parathyroids are removed the animals as a rule die: (2) if the parathyroids are alone removed no obvious result fol- lows : (3) if the thyroid is removed and the parathyroids left some of the rabbits live and some die: some of these latter die with symptoms of chronic myxoedema, the hair falls out and a remarkable swelling occurs in the lower part of the lace. In these last experiments (group 3) the parathyroids are left to carry on all the work of the thyroid : they seem to hypertrophy some- what but no marked changes are found even under the microscope : they certainly do not develop into thyroid tissue proper, no vesicles and no colloid appear even after the lapse of months.