Therapeutics of the Thyroid

Note.— This article and the articles in the previous issues ofThe Journalare part of a series published under the auspices of the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry. Other articles will appear in succeeding issues. When completed, the series will be published in book form.—Ed. One dictionary defines therapeutics as "the practical branch of medicine dealing with the treatment of disease." In this article "therapeutics" is interpreted to include both treatment of diseases of the thyroid and treatment of any diseases by means of the gland. The treatment of hypothyroidism, for example, is substitution therapy with thyroid, but there are also certain nonthyroid disorders in which thyroid may be used as a drug for the sake of its pharmacodynamic action, just as epinephrine is used in asthma. The latter is symptomatic, not specific substitution therapy. It is treatment with agland secretion, not treatment of a gland