Читать книгу Old Age Deferred. The causes of old age and its postponement by hygienic and therapeutic measures онлайн

48 страница из 141

The nutrition of the skin is entirely under the influence of the thyroid. After extirpation or degeneration of the thyroid, there occurs atrophy of the sebaceous and sudorific glands.

In myxœdema the skin is dry and never perspires. On the contrary, in Graves’s disease, or after thyroid medication in large doses, there is abundant perspiration.

Deposits of tartar are common symptoms in all forms of thyroid degeneration. Retraction of the gum follows and the teeth loosen and fall out. This is also a common symptom in diabetes, but here only in advanced cases. In such cases there is, as we^[36] have shown, an exhaustion of the thyroid gland, which develops as a consequence of the previous hyperactivity of the thyroid gland in the early stages of the disease. As a rule the teeth of a diabetic only fall out in the severer form of the disease, generally after acetone has begun to show itself in the urine.

Important changes take place in the subcutaneous tissue after extirpation of the thyroid gland. In such cases there is either augmentation of connective tissue or of fat. Thus, in the case of a young bull, whose history we followed, there has been an increase of thirty pounds of fat within a few months after extirpation of the thyroid. The same thing happened in the case of a young horse, whose thyroid was also extirpated.