Observations on the remarkable effects of iodine in bronchocele and schrophula : being a translation of three memoirs published by J.R. Coindet, M.D. of Geneva.

  • Coindet, Jean François, 1774-1834.
Date:
1821
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the remarkable effects of iodine in bronchocele and schrophula : being a translation of three memoirs published by J.R. Coindet, M.D. of Geneva. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    dénie nor painful, differing in this respect to what happens with lymphatic ganglions. It not unfrequently happens, that, independent of these organic changes, the centre of these tumours consists of distinct sacs, containing different fluids, sanguine, purulent, gelatinous, aqueous, &c., similar in all these appearances to the cysts of the ovaries. The organic alterations of the goitre are, probably, the effect of acute, or even dull or obscure pains, of spasms, contractions, swellings, which the patients experience, particularly about spring, on the change of season, or the approach of critical periods, symp¬ toms too often despised or neglected, but which, to obviate their effects, would, in a great number of cases, demand a peculiar mode of treatment. Medical practitioners have been greatly deceived by the false denomination of thyroid gland. This is not, perhaps, a gland; (affording an explanation why the goitre is an affection essentially distinct from scrophula)—it is an organ whose use is unknown. It differs in size according to age and sex ; it is larger in the infant than in the adult, in women than in men ; it varies in the colour of its tissue ; we are unacquainted with its intimate nature ; it has no particular coat, nor any excretory duct ; it possesses nerves, and blood-vessels, which are proper to it. These last acquire, in their developement a consider¬ able bulk, and thereby render the excision of the goitre frequently impossible, and almost always dangerous. One of the forms of goitre, not uncommon, is what we vulgarly name goitre en dedans, in which the de¬ velopement of one or both lobes takes place in the interior. It embraces the tracheal artery, which it compresses and flattens to a certain extent. The voice becomes affected—the respiration considerably embarrassed, particularly if the patient has taken exercise or walked much. It projects but little ex¬ ternally. Such cases, which are, fortunately, of rare occur-