Endocrine Abstracts

The documentation of goiter as a swollen neck is well known in the history before its medical description. Artists depicted what they saw in humans, the swollen human neck was the norm in many areas with endemic goiter in old Egypt, Greece, South America, and mountainous areas in central Italy and Switzerland. Sculptures from the ancient civilizations clearly demonstrated endemic goiters and cretinism in areas of environmental iodine deficiency. The engraved stones in old Egypt, and Andes monuments as well as Greek coins and sculptures were some great examples of showing goiter in the human body. This trend continued when painting became Europe’s major source of artistic expression. There are many famous examples in art over many centuries such as the painting " The Madonna with Child" by Cranach, " Judith and Her Maidservant" by Gentileschi, as well as artwork by van der Weyden, Raphael, Botticelli, del Sarto, da Vinci, and di Pepo. This depiction of a large neck became more common during the Renaissance and Baroque periods due to the movement of realistic drawings of humans and continued through the 18^th and 19^th centuries. People with ‘Swollen throats’ were described by historians and explorers of some Italian and Swiss Alpes. Water and air were often blamed for this. In literature, Shakespeare wrote a very good description of severe endemic goiter, referring to it both anatomically (portrayal of the throat) and epidemiologically (frequency of the disorder in mountainous regions) in The Tempest: ‘When we were boys Who would believe that there were mountaineers Dew-lapp’d like bulls, whose throats had hanging at ’em Wallets of flesh? or that there were such men Whose heads stood in their breasts?’ The severe endemic disease that caused humans to have swollen necks, cognitive impairment, mental retardation, and short stature in mountainous areas was described historically in Roman civilization and then was coined as " Cretinism" in Swiss-French literature before it was described medically due to endemic iodine deficiency.