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The dietetic habits of a person, for instance, are known to have an influence upon the glands of internal secretion. Meat-eating produces a greater call upon the thyroid than any other form of food. In time this ought to produce a degree of hyperthyroidism in the carniverous populations.
Also a train of symptoms similar to those evoked by an oversecretion of the thyroid may be mobilized by the taking of too much iodine. Great sorrow, great joy, a sudden severe jolt to the nervous equilibrium, sexual excitement, an overwhelming anger or grief may leave in their wake a permanent hyperthyroidism. The symptoms are the reverse of cretinism and myxedema.
In hyperthyroidism at first the blood pressure may be lowered on account of the increased physiologic secretion of the thyroid gland. Later the blood pressure may be raised by stimulation of the suprarenals, or it may become raised from the irritated and stimulated heart becoming hypertrophied.
The arrest of development in cretinous children is due to some deficiency of thyroid secretion, and is counteracted by the administration of thyroid extract. The physiological text-books, however, say nothing of precocity of development in children as a result of hyperthyroidism. This, however, is undoubtedly what occurs in the case of tadpoles.
It may generally be stated that a rapid heart is noted, and a pulse above 120 generally prostrates, at least temporarily, a patient who is otherwise well, provided the cause is anything but hyperthyroidism.
Auricular fibrillation may occur in hearts which are suffering from valvular lesions, especially mitral stenosis, and may occur in syphilitic hearts, in various sclerotic conditions of the heart, and in hyperthyroidism. Though disputed, it seems probable that fibrillation may be caused by the excessive use of tea, coffee and tobacco.
But it has, besides the energizing effect, certain formative and nervous influences equally marvelous. As illustrations, there are the cases of thyroid deprivation in human beings, cretinism and myxedema, as well as those in which it is believed there occurs an excess of the thyroid secretion in the blood and tissues, the condition of hyperthyroidism.
Alternating states of mania and depression are caused in some instances by extreme hyperthyroidism. Actual insanity need not be the only manifestation. By far the greater number of mental disturbances due to aberrations of the internal secretions never see an asylum or a doctor.
A frequent cause of irregular heart action in women, more especially of increased rapidity, is hyperthyroidism. There may be an arrhythmia due to some nervous stimulation, probably through the pneumogastric, so that the pulse varies abnormally during respiration, being accelerated during inspiration and retarded during expiration more than is normally found in adults.
Now to consider the effects of an excess of it, the condition called hyperthyroidism, as the insufficiency of it is labelled subthyroidism. Too much thyroxin can be introduced into the system of a normal individual, or even a cretin by the simple administration of too large doses or over too long a time.
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