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Thought, according to this Crile theory, is a manifestation of short-wave radiation with the brain as the commanding centre of the body's electrical energy. The thyroid and adrenal glands govern the rate of radiation in the body. The adrenal glands produce the short, sudden energy of an outburst of temper, anger or rage. The thyroid gland controls the steady, long-time radiation necessary to the body's growth and performance. "Freed electrons charge up the cells; charged up cells cause muscle tone or muscle energy in nerve cells, such as the brain. Thus emotional and nerve activity is created."
No other theory of thyroid action or goiter cause had thorough, assured adherence at Memphis last week. Speakers still felt obliged to define terms meticulously. The thyroid is a double-lobed ductless gland in the neck, which ancients compared to a shield. (Greek thyreos means shield, and the word is properly thyreoid.) But the thyroid spans the windpipe more like a pair of saddle bags. In most people the lobes can be seen as gentle swells along the sides of the neck above the collar bone. The thyroid increases in size normally and temporarily in boys and girls at puberty, in women during menstruation and lactation.
Specialists generally call off three kinds of goiter—simple, adenomatous, exophthalmic.
Simple goiter, which is the commonplace type, may be transient. It is closely tied up with lack of iodine in the system. Dr. David Marine proved this by feeding Akron school children iodine twice a year from 1916 to 1919 and practically eliminating goiter from that bedeviled community. Most specialists work on the assumption that, for deficiency of iodine, the starved thyroid must work extra hard and grow bigger. On the other hand. Colonel Robert McCarrison from evidence he gathered in the Punjab is certain that germs in drinking water indirectly cause goiter. Iodine in drink or food, he believes, kills such germs in the intestines.
Theorists suggest that the present low incidence of goiters in the U. S. which the Mayos and other clinicians note, may be the result of the goiter scare last decade and the resulting exploitation of iodized salt. South Carolina, proud of its freedom from goiter, calls itself the "Iodine State," and thus labels its motor license plates.
Adenomatous goiters seem to be the result of alternate enlargements and shrinkings of parts of the thyroid.
Exophthalmic goiter is the most thunderous of the goiters. The thyroid enlarges, the eyes pop, the heart races, the nerves go atwitter. "It is," cries Professor William Boyd to his pathology classes in the University of Manitoba (Winnipeg), "as if some blast were blowing on the furnace of the body, fanning it into a condition of furious activity. . . . The disease is more or less self-limited. The fire burns itself out. . . . Many of the vital organs, particularly the heart, have been permanently damaged, and the patient is merely a wreck, and a permanent wreck."