Michelangelo's Devine Goitre

[PR4NOW]

This is a curious, but interesting, bit of thyroid history. It has been said that Michelangelo was the first to draw the thyroid although he did not understand its function. PR

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...

[shaws Administrator]

I enjoyed reading this historic account very much. Thanks.

[helvella Administrator]

Interesting. So many thoughts flow from it...

If, as in Shakespeare, mountain men tend to have goitres, then surely anyone from even higher up would have one?

Michelangelo having a goitre rather suggests that his low iodine intake did not impair his intellectual functioning. Why not? Did the goitre compensate for low intake somehow?

Michelangelo would have been one very bright spark to have understood the thyroid. I have yet to be convinced that anyone does now or ever has understood it.

I have sometimes been known to think of, and refer to, thyroid hormone as "the god hormone". Michelangelo beat me to it.

Rod