Henry Baird Favill, AB, MD, LL.D., 1860-1916, a ... - University Library

I50 HENRY BAIRD FAVILL
the typical results are suggested. I contend that whether
we may recognize it or not, there is a sequence of conditions
more or less morbid which represent the various degrees
of thyroid lack.
Does not our diagnosis hang upon such close discernments?
Let us take the obverse picture, the typical condition
dependent upon over-influence of the thyroid, exophthalmic
goiter.
We know well the fully developed aspect. Do we realize
as fully the pathway toward that full result along which we
may expect to find a multitude of cases whose sufferings
are otherwise inexplicable?
These two extreme conditions of bodily perversion, presenting
the utmost contrast both of form and function,
reasonably well demonstrated to be due to under-thyroidation
or over-thyroidation, respectively, afford the most
suggestive text along the line which I suggest. If these
extremes exist, a priori reasoning, as well as abundant clinical
experience, will declare that gradations exist between.
Such I believe to be the fact. If true of thyroid influence,
is it not probably true of the other internal secretions?
May we not hope to add to the terms, hyperthyroidation
and subthyroidation, other terms equally comprehensive?
The time has come for estimating disease as an expression
of the whole, in response to a morbid influence. If
the local features become of importance, accord them their
rightful attention, but let us struggle against the folly of
regarding a hypertrophied nasal mucosa as explanatory
of hay fever, or catarrhal uterine mucosa as of different
significance from other catarrh, or either as independent
of constitutional conditions.
We have much to learn, even in the simple field of symptomatology.
Our grasp of significant phenomena is in a
measure weakened by the strong current toward technical
methods. I suspect we have decidedly retrogressed from