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History of Hypothyroidism

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SAGE-Hindawi Access to Research Journal of Thyroid Research Volume 2011, Article ID 809341, 10 pages doi:10.4061/2011/809341

Review Article Hypothyroidism and Thyroid Substitution: Historical Aspects
J. Lindholm and P. Laurberg
Department of Endocrinology, Aarhus University Hospital, 9000 Aalborg, Denmark Correspondence should be addressed to J. Lindholm, j.lindholm@ofir.dk Received 15 January 2011; Accepted 17 March 2011 Academic Editor: Marian Ludgate Copyright © 2011 J. Lindholm and P. Laurberg. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The last part of the 19th century was a period of great achievements in medicine and endocrinology. The thyroid gland evolved from being considered a rudimentary structure to an organ related to specific diseases. The singular importance of iodine became acknowledged. Graves-Basedow’s disease was described. Surgical treatment evolved with extraordinary speed. Theodor Kocher observed that the clinical picture in patients after total thyroidectomy was similar to the one seen in cretinism. In 1850, the first case of hypothyroidism or myxedema was described. Less than 50 years later, effective treatment was introduced. Another 50 years later, autoimmune thyroiditis was ascertained as the most frequent cause of hypothyroidism (in areas with no iodine deficiency). This paper gives a short survey of the history of hypothyroidism and its treatment.

1. Introduction
During the 50 years preceding World War I, medicine saw a wealth of new ideas and novel procedures, not in the least within the field of endocrinology. Among major achievements of this period were the recognition of the importance of the pituitary gland, first suggested by Oscar Minkowski (1858–1931) [1] and

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