It wastes in the disease known as " myxoedema," and the above product gathers in the tissues, in that disease, to such an extent as to give rise to what has been termed a " solid oedema."
In the wasting of the thyroid gland in myxoedema, or when the gland is completely removed by operation, myxomatous areas are found in the subcutaneous tissue of the skin, nerve-sheaths, &c.
Hippocrates had no opportunity of verification by necropsy, and Sydenham ignored pathology; yet the clinical features of many but recently described diseases, such, for example, as that named after Graves, and myxoedema, both associated with perversions of the thyroid gland, lay as open to the eye of physicians in the past as to our own.
Observations were made on the connexion between thyroid gland and myxoedema, which appeared to show that this disease was dependent upon atrophy of the gland.
The most striking of all the results of organo-therapy are those obtained in myxoedema.