New Aspects of Thyroid Therapy

Hormonal therapy of glandular deficiency has been, so far, more or less in the nature of replacement therapy, deficient production of a certain hormone being replaced by its extraneous administration. As the organism produces and requires only minute amounts of hormonal agents, comparatively small doses of the active principles as a rule suffice for this purpose. Only occasionally are large unphysiological quantities required to produce the desired results. This may be true e.g. of certain cases of cryptorchidism, testicular aplasia or other forms of hypogonadism, of certain forms of hypothyroidism,¹ or of diabetes mellitus such as diabetic coma. The nature of the mechanisms underlying such states of refractoriness is in the majority of cases yet obscure, notwithstanding extensive study of the subject. We can only assume that either hormone antagonists of various nature or physiochemical alterations in the reactivity of the peripheral tissues are causally involved.²

The present