3 ms·
How come that the disease wasn't widespread earlier?
by k__ 3y ago
How come that the disease wasn't widespread earlier?
- marcinzm 3y agoWhy do you say it wasn't present earlier?
- k__ 3y agoThe article made that impression on me.
- zweifuss 3y agoThis might interest you: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3169859/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3169859/ "The interests of people in the thyroid gland have always been immense because of the widespread prevalence of its diseases. Therefore the earliest references to the gland date back to 1st century AD. The Chinese, Egyptian, Indian, Greek and Byzantine medicines are especially rich in their knowledge on the subject."
- tekla 3y agoI am always flabbergasted when people question incredibly effective public health initiatives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goitre#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goitre#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodized_salt#In_public_health_initiatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodized_salt#In_public_health_... > Worldwide, iodine deficiency affects two billion people and is the leading preventable cause of intellectual and developmental disabilities.[1][2] According to public health experts, iodisation of salt may be the world's simplest and most cost-effective measure available to improve health, only costing US$0.05 per person per year
- evanjrowley 3y agoIt may not be a question of the initiative itself, rather, what conditions in Switzerland at the time led to an uptick in iodine deficiencies.
- suchire 3y agoMaybe they should just RTFA
- masklinn 3y agoThere was no uptick, CIDS was endemic to the alps as far back as roman times. Its consequences literally slipped into linguistic vernaculars (e.g. french as the insult "crétin des alpes", lit. "cretin from the alps", and "cretin" was the original term for CIDS-induced mental impairment).
- raverbashing 3y agoTiktok mind and some angry people can't comprehend how hard it was to actually get to the cause and solution to a lot of diseases
- k__ 3y agoCan I get some benefits of doubt please? :D I don't question the initiative. The article just read like it was some strange illness that affected Switzers around a certain time.
- hef19898 3y agoThe article mentions comments from the 19th century about the same subject. I think, that Switzerland, and especially those remote mountain regions, stayed more isolated than similar regions in France or Austria well into the early 20th century, making the issue stand out more in comparison.
- rurban 3y agoFrench alps had the very same problem. Austria I don't know. Many Austrian had the reverse problem with too much iodin and basedov eyes.
- bbu 3y agoThe country: Switzerland The people: Swiss The word Switzer isn’t in use since a very long time :)
- k__ 3y agoSorry, I was lazy and just translated Schweizer without checking :D
- concordDance 3y ago> I am always flabbergasted when people question incredibly effective public health initiatives. I think it comes from a generalised distrust of governments/big institutions. Which comes from hearing (often heavily distorted) stories about things like Tuskegee Syphilis, MKULTRA, CIA vaccinators in Afghanistan and Thalidomide.
- RobKohr 3y agoThis was pre-internet and in remote areas where there is a distrust of central authority. And there are loads of examples through history up till current day that show that blindly trusting authorities is naive. Heck, even in the article, some doctors were poisoning their patients with iodine. It is not far fetched that some people in these areas were informed of these problems. So a tiny amount kills us... and so you are saying any even tinier amount will save us. I'd be pretty skeptical too. It seems that when presented well and with personally verifiable evidence, people were willing to accept. I am really flabbergasted when people blindly accept in mass what authorities tell us.
- bee_rider 3y agoI think it was. We just don’t think about it because we’ve defeated it completely by putting iodine in the most popular spice, and also people in the past were afflicted by all sorts of horrible illnesses. It doesn’t stand out from the noise of the past being generally a mess.
- k__ 3y agoAh, okay. The article just read like there were some unusual strange things going on around 1900 in Switzerland.
- jeffrallen 3y agoSwiss geology (retreat of the glaciers 10000 years ago) meant that the normal local products that would give a population iodine (milk and eggs) were themselves iodine-poor. A few parts of Switzerland which were not glaciated (i.e. Jura) did not have iodine deficient populations. Other places in the world had different geology and this different levels of natural iodine.
- VintageCool 3y agoThe article referenced mentions of goitre in Switzerland from Victor Hugo in 1839, Mark Twain in 1880, a medical survey in 1883, and Roman authors like Vitrivius and Pliny the Elder. It also mentioned that the iodine idea had been going around for a hundred years before the activities of the heroes of our story. Iodine had not been seen as a successful cure before because excess iodine causes a horrible condition. The key difference here was that Hunziker proposed regular use in minute quantities, and then Bayard tested the hypothesis with careful measurements and convincing evidence.
- the_mitsuhiko 3y agoGoethe wrote in 1779 about his travels to Switzerland: “Die scheußlichen Kröpfe haben mich ganz und gar üblen Humors gemacht (“The horrible goiters have given me a very bad sense of humour”). Definitely plenty of earlier historic evidence.
- gpvos 3y agoWhat makes you think it wasn't? The article doesn't claim so.
- nyokodo 3y ago> How come that the disease wasn't widespread earlier? The article makes reference to the Madonna on the Albrecht Dürer’s Dresden Altarpiece having an obvious goiter. That was produced in the late 15th to early 16th century. That’s evidence from the article that the problem was so common then that it was depicted in sacred art.
- kergonath 3y agoIt was. Cretinism was one of the manifestations of iodine deficiency. The trope of crétin des Alpes (lit. cretin from the Alps) existed for a reason. The manifestation was goitres and stunted development, with people who seemingly stopped growing up around 14. Pretty much the story’s subject. It was a public health problem before iodised salt. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_iodine_deficiency_syndrome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_iodine_deficiency...
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- srott 3y agoIn Slovakia, another landlocked country with lack of natural iodine from rainfall or diet, dementia became part of the culture. 30% (!!!) of population suffered from dementia. Iodizing salt raised IQ by 10 point every 10~ years but the damage is irreparable…
- k__ 3y agoIn Slovakia dementia is on place 2 of the most common death causes. In Slovenia it's on place 19. Crazy. Oh, and here in Germany it's on place 6?! Wouldn't have guessed!
- ufo 3y agoIt was widespread but has always been particularly worse in inland mountainous regions. To this day, efforts remain to eliminate iodine deficiency worldwide. Maps with goiter prevalence can be found on the WHO's website: https://www.who.int/teams/nutrition-and-food-safety/databases/vitamin-and-mineral-nutrition-information-system/search-for-maps https://www.who.int/teams/nutrition-and-food-safety/database...