EXPERIMENTAL PRODUCTION OF GOITER

Abstract

Numerous attempts have been made by various investigators to produce goiter experimentally in animals. In a review of the literature it is striking that there are so many diverse experimental solutions of a problem about which so little is known. In many instances the observer was too anxious to note hyperplasia of the thyroid gland, and possibly because of enthusiasm alone he found it. Moreover, the question of control for such experiments repeatedly arises. Were they adequately controlled? It does not seem sufficient, especially in endemic goiter regions, to have the thyroid gland of a dog examined grossly and microscopically for the first time at the end of the period that a trial stimulus has been applied and to pronounce it hyperplastic by comparing it with a gland from an entirely different dog. Because of the great number of the experimental methods that have been reported as successful in the