Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/501

Rh owing to their stunted bodies and vacant minds, are even more astonishing than those described for myxœdema; for in cretins, not only do the œdema and other general symptoms disappear, but the dwarf begins to grow, and the idiot to show signs of intelligence. One patient who, at the beginning of treatment, was sixteen and a half years old and only thirty-three and a half inches in height, and in whom no growth had occurred in fourteen years, grew four and three quarters inches in six months;

another, sixteen and a half years old and twenty-nine and a half inches tall at the beginning of treatment, increased six and a half inches in height in six months. Under treatment the teeth begin to grow, and the facial expression and the whole appearance of the patient are radically changed. The patients soon become more intelligent and appreciative of their surroundings, and many begin to talk and to understand what is said to them. How striking may be the improvement in the general appearance is shown by Figs. 3 and 4, which are reproductions of photographs of a little patient treated by Dr. J. C. Carson, superintendent of the Syracuse Institution for Feeble-minded Children.

That the results will be permanent, and that these idiotic children will become, under the influence of the thyroid treatment, intelligent men and women, it is as yet impossible to say.