IODINE FOR GOITRE.

White Ribbon, Volume 31, Issue 367, 18 January 1926, Page 11

IODINE FOR GOITRE.

We have l>een reading a great deal lately in regard to the treatment of goitre by iodine. One ent ills last in our IVtrliament went so far as to ask that it should be made illegal to sell table* salt unless iodine was put with it. It is just ns well that mothers should be on the alert and know a little about this drug which it is proposed to fore* ii|H>n our children. Goitre is very prevalent in Switzerland, but as long ago as November, 1822, the following appeared in Magen<lie’s “Formulaire”:— “At tiie present day the Genevese and Swiss physicians are much less enthu si.istio with regard to the advantages which they first imagined to have accrues! from the* preparations of iodine. They now say that serious accidents have followed their employment, sach as chronic inflammation of the stomach, and considerable inflammation of iho whole liody, particularly of the mammae.” We do not profess expert knowledge ourselves, but give the following opinions for mothers to study: Hr. Andrew Crotti, medical expert on goitre, before the* American Associatior for the study of goitre, said that iodine is not entirely a harmless agent, and while it may benefit some, it is very liable to convert a simple, non-poison-able goitre in some other children into severe poisonous ones. The “Pharmacol Advance,” a recog. nised drug magazine says: “lodine in excessive quantities, when introduced into the human system, is as fatal, or more so. than the much abused venezonte of soda. The human body contains so little* iodine that it is almost immeasurable, but nevertheless Nature has provided the essential elements in foods

in the proportion adequate for bodily rc quirements." Dr. W. H. Hay, of Buffalo, N.Y., is sued a warning against iodine poisoning, Novemlier 2»>th, HUM. He smid il crippled the function of the thyroid gland. The only iodine acceptable to the btxly can be taken as food suffeiently In the form of a cabbage n week. It has long been recognised that it is better to let sufferers from anaemia eat vegetables with a> large proportion of iron, fulfil ns carrots, l>eet. etc., than to give it in mineral form. The same is evidently true of iodine. The one is iron prepared in the great in!>omtory of Nature; the other prepared by the inorganic chemist who, like nil humans. is liable to err.