The History and Iconography Relating to the Thyroid Gland

Abstract

This chapter is a brief summary of the history and art related to the thyroid gland. The reader is referred to other sources for an exhaustive exposition of these matters at the end of the chapter in its References. Knowledge of goitre (which was not known to be a thyroid enlargement until about the sixteenth century) goes back into antiquity. From this early documentation of goitre and cretinism in prehistoric times, to the discovery of iodine at the beginning of the nineteenth century and beyond, thyroid conditions and their treatment—including hyper- and hypothyroidism, cretinism, Graves’ disease, goitre, myxoedema, and fibrous thyroiditis—have been known by humankind for millennia.