It is particularly tragic when a great many people die from something as simple as a nutritional deficiency because the cause was unknown. Scurvy is the most familiar of these stories, because many sailors died before James Lind discovered that citrus fruit prevents scurvy, even before vitamin C was known. But it's not the only such tale.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many thousands of people in Switzerland, the majority in some places, suffered from goitre (often spelled goiter) and no one knew why. Even worse was the high incidence of birth defects. There was an inordinate percentage of babies born deaf, and even more that suffered from what they called cretinism, featuring severe brain damage as well as other physical abnormalities. Doctors and scientists flocked to Switzerland to study the phenomena, and came up with dozens of theories, but no solution. Over time, the leading theories became a pathogen in the environment or a genetic defect.
We now know that goitre is caused by a deficiency of iodine, which is necessary for thyroid function. In 1914, Swiss physician Heinrich Hunziker identified iodine deficiency as the root of the scourge, but he was shot down by the medical establishment. Everyone knew that iodine was poison! Read a fascinating account of the experiments that proved the theory, and the difficulty of introducing iodine to the Swiss Alps through resistance by medical experts, government officials, and a skeptical public, at the London Review of Books. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Wespi/Eggenberger collection, Institute for the History of Medicine, Univ. of Bern)
Nice find.I remember when I was a kid, like 45 years ago, a woman with a goitre down the street. Never seen one since.
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