THE HEART IN THYROID DISEASE

Abstract

Fifty years before Graves' and Basedow's description of the symptom complex bearing their respective names, Parry and Flajani called attention to the occurrence of disturbances of the heart in association with goiter.¹ Adelmann appears to have described two forms of disturbances of the heart in goiter, while Potain contributed a clinical discussion to the subject.² Rose first emphasized the importance of the heart in the sudden deaths of patients with goiter, believing that the effect on the heart was purely mechanical.² Schranz, however, and with him Wölfler and Wette, not entirely content with the mechanical theory, added reports of cases in which they believed nervous factors were also operative.² In 1898, Friederich Kraus of Berlin described and differentiated various forms of goiter heart, dividing them finally into two principal groups; first, the mechanical goiter heart, and second, the monosymptomatic goiter heart.² The monosymptomatic goiter heart of Kraus was found in