Newsletters
August 2008 Newsletter: History of goitre management
The German anatomist and surgeon, Lorenz Heister was born in Frankfurt in 1683 and appointed to the Chair in Surgery and Anatomy in Altdor. In his textbook “Chirurgie” we find some of the earliest descriptions of various medical and surgical approaches for the management of goitre.
April 2008 Newsletter: History of thyroid function
It is interesting to review historical attitudes towards the presumed function of endocrine organs prior to any real understanding of endocrine physiology or pathology. Much was supposition, based on either anatomical relationships or chemical analysis. The following is an extract from an early (1880) edition of Gray’s Anatomy in which the writer speculates on the possible function of the thyroid gland.
August 2007 Newsletter: Remarkables in art
Orlo Clark delivered the Historical Lecture entitled “Remarkables: endocrine abnormalities in art” at the recent IAES meeting in Montreal during International Surgical Week and is shortly to publish his book of the same title. It is well known that artists often truly depict anatomical realities associated with disease, including those depicting endocrine disorders. In his lecture Orlo Clark examined the aesthetic, social, cultural, spiritual and historical context in which these depictions take place.
September 2006 Newsletter: Conn’s tumours
Jerome Conn’s belief that adrenal adenomas are a common surgically correctable cause of “essential hypertension” may yet be proven correct. In 1954, two years after the discovery of aldosterone, Jerome Conn from Ann Arbor, Michigan, described the syndrome of primary aldosteronism. The first patient was a woman of 34 years who had intermittent tetany, paraesthesia, periodic muscular weakness and paralysis, polyuria, polydispsia, and mild hypertension, but no oedema.
June 2006 Newsletter: Endoc-criminology
Michael Bliss, historian from the University of Toronto, delivered an address at the recent AAES meeting in New York describing the interaction between Harvey Cushing, a surgeon, and the Endocrine Society which had just elected him one of its first presidents. Cushing was scathing about the budding specialty of endocrinology,
