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

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Persons of healthy constitution with a good working thyroid may get the sensation of heat and perspiration spontaneously after a cold, or gouty pains, even without salicylates, and feel better afterward, whereas persons with a deficient thyroid have difficulty in producing the symptoms of fever. Recently we observed a young man, aged 22 years, with symptoms of hypothyroidia as described by Hertoghe, who had follicular tonsillitis. He presented none of the symptoms of fever, but it took him ten days to get over it and he felt very weak afterward. There was this summer an epidemic of typhoid fever in the lunatic asylum of Colorno, near Pavia. We have it from Dr. Gassenghi, of the University of Pavia, that half of the patients died; but it is very interesting to note that there was no fever. This may be explained by the fact that many cases of insanity and idiocy stand in etiological relation to alterations of the thyroid gland, and may get better after the hyperactivity of the thyroid through fever. Indeed, by some authors,—e.g. Wagner—an improvement has been observed to occur in insanity by producing fever through injections with tuberculin. We feel sorry not to be able to enter more fully into this interesting subject, but we may briefly mention that, as we have stated in the Neurological Society of New York (April 2, 1906), we have observed several cases of dementia præcox and melancholia with alterations of the thyroid and sexual glands in each case. Alcoholics suffering from pneumonia seldom get high fever, but often die in a short time. Alcohol in large quantities not only causes degenerative changes in the heart, but also in the thyroid. And we should not forget that there exist very close relations between the activity of these two organs.