Does the pituitary body compensate for thyroid insufficiency?

Abstract

Exactly one year ago we submitted to this society the results of some experiments performed on sheep with a view to throw light on the question of the vicarious relationship between the thyroid and pituitary glands. Herring and others had found histological appearances in the pituitary of thyreodectomized animals which suggested a compensatory hypertrophy in that gland, and our object was to determine whether iodine appears in the pituitary of animals from which the thyroid gland has been removed.

The operation of total thyroid extirpation was performed on ten sheep, and the pituitaries removed at death were found to contain no iodine, but we felt at the time that our results were not conclusive, and for three reasons—first, five of our sheep died early (six to thirty-two days) from a parasitic infection quite unassociated with the operation; second, the available amount of dried pituitary from the ten sheep (1.02 gram) was only sufficient for a single analysis, and third, we had no sure evidence that iodine was being ingested in the food.