What is the best treatment for hypothyroidism?
About 100 years ago, in 1891 to be exact, the British physician George Murray presented information on a patient with severe hypothyroidism who was successfully treated with injections of sheep thyroid extract. This was the dawn of a new era, in which patients with hypothyroidism no longer suffered needlessly from severe and incapacitating symptoms, or even occasionally died of their disease. Following Dr. Murray’s report, others attempted giving the thyroid extract orally, either raw, with bread and butter (a thyroid sandwich), or even “lightly fried.” By 1898, Sir William Osler, Chief of Medicine at the newly built Johns Hopkins Hospital and possibly the most famous physician in America, wrote: “That we can restore to life the hopeless victims of myxedema is a triumph of experimental medicine…The results, as a rule are most astounding-unparalleled by anything in the whole range of curative measures.” In the early part of the 20th century, chemists figured out how to take minced anima
