INTRODUCTION
Obscurity and darkness in the field of medicine excite the profession to research. This applies directly to the goiter question, where much has yet to be learned in order to unearth a causative factor which may act directly or indirectly, but, where possible, a careful study of a large series of persons will add, at least, a stepping stone to the necessary knowledge. In this country, before the last draft of men for our army, no thorough tabulation of thyroid enlargements in relation to large numbers examined, and to so many sections of the United States, could have been accomplished with any degree of accuracy. Previously, these data were collected from irrelevant groups, except in a few instances (O. P. Kimball and D. Marine1), but we must centralize our information about a thorough classification of many individuals in definite districts, and eventually, compare cause or causes from different areas.