Iodine in high potencies has several times before done magnificent work for me in the treatment of enlargement of the thyroid gland. I have also found that small doses of Thyroidin, in Boericke & Tafels 3x. or 6x., or even the 30x., has given excellent results in the tachycardia so prominent and annoying in goitre.
While these few cases are suggestive only, I feel justified in the belief that we have in our list of remedies the most valuable aids in the treatment of goitre known to medical science. Nor should we omit mention of the striking results that can sometimes be obtained from thyroid feeding, so called, in cases of the hypothyroid form, though my experience in this field has been but limited.
I recall a striking case reported at a meeting of the Massachusetts Homoeopathical Medical Society many years ago by no less excellent a Hahnemannian than Dr. Maurice Worcester Turner, in which comparatively small doses of the gland brought about apparently striking results. No doubt Dr. Turner supplemented this organotherapy with appropriately indicated potencies.
Then again, it was but two or three years ago that my brother, Dr. G.F. Woodbury, showed me a case of hypothyroidism, that had erroneously been diagnosed as pernicious anaemia, that disappeared miraculously, as it were, by the use of substantial doses of the extract of the whole gland.
I regret the paucity of real therapeutic pabulum in this paper, but the few suggestions here given may lead others to recall experiences of vaster clinical value in goitre and its treatment.
For an excellent survey of goitre indications, the resume by Dr. Margaret Tyler, in the July number of Homoeopathy, my very profitably be consulted. The paper is entitled, Some of the Drugs Useful in Goitre; and the remedies with their comprehensive indications are: Iodium, Spongia, Sepia, Bromium, Lachesis, Apis, Carboneum sulph., Sulphur, Calcarea, Natrum mur., Kali iod., Tuberculinum, Drosera, Aurum, Aurum iod., Lycopodium, Conium, Natrum carb., Carbo animalis, Silica, Magnesia carb., Zincum, Lapis albus, Crotalus cascavella, Mercurius cyanatus, Lueticum. There is also an appended note from the British Medical Journal, January 30, 1937, listing calcium, boron, silica, tellurium, organic acids, aminos and cyanides, as among the chemical substances capable of causing goitre in animals. BOSTON, MASS.
Benjamin Collins Woodbury was born August 13, 1882, at Patten, Maine. He was the son of Dr. Benjamin Collins, a homeopathic physician, and Matidle Albina (Knowles). He attended Patten Academy and received his M.D. from Boston University Medical School in 1906. Following graduation Dr. Woodbury began his practice in Lewiston and Winthrop, Maine, and in 1907 moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he practiced for the next nine years. Dr. Woodbury married Miss Gertrude Fancis O'Neill of Boston at Eliot, Maine on June 18, 1915.
In March, 1919, Dr. Woodbury left the Islands and located in San Francisco where he practiced for two years and then returned to the East and established a practice in Boston. He was a trustee and a member of the staff of the Hahnemann Hospital, Boston, and in 1947 was elected president if the International Hahnemann Institute, Washington, D.C. He also gave many lectures on homeopathy at Boston University and at postgraduate sessions of the American foundation of Homeopathy.
Dr. Woodbury died on January 22, 1948, in Boston at the age of 65.
The doctor was the author of "Materia Medica for Nurses", published in 1922 and of many articles in medical journals in England, India, and the United States. Dr. Woodbury was also a writer of plays and poetry.