Enlarged thyroids are said to have been known in China in about 2700 BC and the Chinese seem to have used burnt sponge and seaweed for its treatment since 1600 BC.
In 1170 AD, Roger of Palermo prescribed ashes of sponges and seaweed as a conservative treatment of goiter. However, he recommended surgical removal of the gland if this was deemed necessary.
It was not until 1475 that Wang Hei anatomically described the thyroid gland and recommended that the treatment of goiters should be dried thyroid. Some fifty years later, Paracelsus attributed goiters to mineral impurities in the water. Finally, in 1656, Thomas Wharton named it the thyroid gland, meaning shield due to its shape, as it resembled the shields commonly used in Ancient Greece. In this time, the main function of the thyroid gland was to lubricate the trachea. It was also believed to have a cosmetic function in women. In the early 1800s, the thyroid was thought to be a vascular shunt to divert the blood flow from the brain.
In 1811, Paris discovered iodine in the burnt ashes of seaweed and the idea that this was the active ingredient in the treatments that were prescribed for goiters was developed. Ten years later, Prout was the first to recommend iodine in the treatment of goiters.
In 1884, thyroidectomies were successfully performed for the treatment of toxic goiter. In Europe, Theodore Kocher (1841-1917), a Swiss surgeon, performed over 2,000 thyroidectomies with a reported mortality rate of 5%, while in the United States, Charles Horace Mayo became an authority on thyroid surgery. In 1891, Murray obtained a good clinical response in patients with hypothyroidism by injecting them with thyroid extracts. Shortly afterward, Howitz, Mackenzie, and Fox independently found that thyroid extracts were effective when administered orally.
The results of experimental thyroidectomies to elucidate the exact functions of the thyroid gland were misinterpreted because investigators also inadvertently removed the parathyroid glands. Gley, in 1891, was able to differentiate the functions of the thyroid from those of the parathyroid glands. In 1895, Magnus-Levy established the effect of the thyroid on the metabolic rate.
In 1914, Edward Calvin Kendall isolated thyroxine, which is the active hormone of the thyroid gland. A decade later, in 1926, Harington defined the chemical formula of thyroxine, and a year later synthesized the hormone. Meticulous studies, however, revealed that the calorigenic effect of synthetic thyroxine was less than that of thyroid extracts. The enigma was not resolved until 25 years later, when triiodothyronine (T3) was isolated and synthesized in the early 1950s. The definition of the exact role of the thyroid gland in calcium metabolism had to wait for the discovery of calcitonin in 1961.
By the 1920s, thyroid surgery was commonplace and the great American surgeon William Halstead referred to the operation of thyroidectomy as a “feat which today can be accomplished by any competent operator without danger of mishap”.
Reference
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/433848
http://www.endocrinesurgeon.co.uk/index.php/the-history-of-the-thyroid-gland
http://www.hormones.gr/115/article/article.html
