Cause of Goitre. -- the swelling of the thyroid gland in the neck, producing the repulsive deformity of Goitre, or Derby Shire neck, seems to be intimately connected with mineral impurities and water. In Nottingham England, where this disease is not unfrequently met with, the common people attribute it to the hardness of the water, and in other parts of Great Britain is found to prevail only, or at least especially, in those districts where the magnesium limestone formation abounds.

Okay I have to admit that this time I had no idea what goiter was, or why it was spelled with what appears to be a French spelling. But I was curious and so I decided to look it up on Wikipedia.  When I did this, I found thisdisturbing pictureof a woman with an extremely swollen neck.

So as I look this up on Wikipedia, I learned that basically this disease occurs due to a lack of iodine.  It's not caused by the presence of chemicals as thought 100 years ago,but by the absenceof iodine in a person's diet.

Today salt is commonly fortified with iodine, which helps to prevent the spread of this disease.

Here's an interesting history on the treatment of goitre from Wikipedia, which might help with this and more perspective.

Chinese physicians of the Tang Dynasty (618–907) were the first to successfully treat patients with goiter by using the iodine-rich thyroid gland of animals such as sheep and pigs—in raw, pill, or powdered-mixture-in-wine form.^[1] This was outlined in Zhen Quan's (died 643 AD) book, as well as several others.^[2] One Chinese book (i.e. The Pharmacopoeia of the Heavenly Husbandman) asserted that iodine-rich sargassum was used to treat goiter patients by the 1st century BC, but this book was written much later.^[3]

In the 12th century, al-Jurjani, a Persian physician, provided the first description of Graves' disease after noting the association of goitre and exophthalmos in his Thesaurus of the Shah of Khwarazm, the major medical dictionary of its time.^[4][5] Al-Jurjani also established an association between goitre and palpitation.^[6] The disease was later named after Irish doctor Robert James Graves,^[7] who described a case of goiter with exophthalmos in 1835. The German Karl Adolph von Basedow also independently reported the same constellation of symptoms in 1840, while earlier reports of the disease were also published by the Italians Giuseppe Flajani and Antonio Giuseppe Testa, in 1802 and 1810 respectively,^[8] and by the English physician Caleb Hillier Parry (a friend of Edward Jenner) in the late 18th century.^[9]

Paracelsus (1493–1541) was the first person to propose a relationship between goitre and minerals (particularly lead) in drinking water.^[10] Iodine was later discovered by Bernard Courtois in 1811 from seaweed ash.

Goitre was previously common in many areas that were deficient in iodine in the soil. For example, in the English Midlands, the condition was known as Derbyshire Neck. In the United States, goitre was found in the Great Lakes, Midwest, and Intermountain regions. The condition now is practically absent in affluent nations, where table salt is supplemented with iodine. However, it is still prevalent in India,^[11] Central Asia and Central Africa.

Some health workers fear that a resurgence of goitre might occur because of the trend to use rock salt and/or sea salt, which has not been fortified with iodine. New research indicates that there may in fact be a tendency to inherit an increased vulnerability to goitre.

Interesting, but I'm glad we figured out the cause and the solution for this one.  Next up, Viagra and acne cream, :-)  just kidding seems like we've covered some of the more serious things over the last hundred years and now fiddling around with less serious things.

Additional Articles from the Book of Medicine:

• Wonderful It All Is
  
  

  Wonderful It All Is.–Wonderful!  Within us is an Almighty Architect, who superintends a thousand skilled laborers, that make a way which puzzles human comprehension; theory fiber of muscle; they are a filament of nerve; here constructing a bone; they are uniting attendant — fashioning each with the most scrupulous care and unerring nicety.  Without the buzz of a saw, or the sound of a hammer; without the slightest compression, or the least particle of boys; with a regularity, certainty and exactness, the glorious temple of man, in the image of his Creator, goes up and up, day by day, skilfully put together by these noiseless, tireless and expert workman.

   

  First off it like to point out that this section utilizes the words “superintends” and it spells the words ’skilfully’ with one ‘l’ in skill.  These two spelling items or word usages seem to be a good illustration of the change of spelling and vocabulary over a hundred years.  I’ve read thousands of books never seen the word superintends in print before.  I’ve never seen the word skillfully printed with one L. either.

   

  Second, this section is definitely full of nonsecular references.  It’s the closing paragraph of this particular section that was several pages long covering the digestive apparatus and its wonders.  This section seems to have included more information about the wonders than the actual digestive apparatus, which would have been suitable for a Bible but not necessarily for a medical textbook.

   

  Finally this section has a number of crazy references again which seems to capitalize on the last two or three sections that were full of gibberish that were put there for no apparent purpose whatsoever other than to fill pages with print.

• Avoiding Cholera
  
  

  Avoiding Cholera. — a first and highly important warning, therefore, which these and many other similar occurrences give us is never to drink any water which, by any possibility, could have become contaminated with the smallest particle discharge from the bowels of a person suffering from cholera or choleraic diarrhea.

  This ending on Cholera, is slightly confusing at first as the 100 year old grammar is slightly odd.  However, the general lesson seems to be coming across.  Its a lesson talking about germs essentially, Cholera specifically.  But the author is painting a picture for the lay person that small particles can contaminate water and make everyone sick.

• The Pelvis
  
  

  The Pelvis.  — The pelvis is an irregular-shaped basin, formed by the hip bones and the pubic bones in front.  In the upper and back part is the foot of the spinal column, consisting of a wedge-shaped bone called the sacrum.  It is observed firmly planted between the wide spreading hip bones of the pelvis, like the keystone of an arch, and gives a strong support to the burden above.

  Like the section referring to the composition of the chest this section has very little to remark upon other the fact that it has very little to remark upon and so I’ll leave it at that.  To certain extent I feel like I’m speeding through the sections is there just basically describing an image.  In the first chart this was a little bit more entertaining, however I know from looking for in the book that there’s much more entertainment to be had in future pages.

  The section does refer to ‘hip bones’ as opposed to the modern compound word spelling of hipbones.