The photo - a traditional wooden toy XIX century from the Alps.
Do not you think that the toy man that something was wrong?
No?
Look closely at the throat swelling at the site, these three bloated bubble - his throat.
Horrified - 4 more pictures and letters continue ...
What you see - it was common in the Alps More 100 years ago. Lack of iodine in water and food the inhabitants of the Alps led to a mass disease of the thyroid gland (hypothyroidism), as well as cretinism. In Austria, Germany and Switzerland, there were entire villages populated only mentally retarded cretins - adults, children, old people ...
The most difficult situation was in the Swiss canton of Valle - 90% of the population were current with bloated goiter, typesetters soldiers in the army even did not go to some of the village - there lived only nerds. The reasons were all unknown, speculated about the "bad water", "stagnant air in the valleys" and so on.
Kretinka with bloated goiter, near Bern, 1935
By XVI century accidentally discovered that the disease helps the powder of burnt sea sponges, but it was expensive and not available to all. In the XIX century, first made the assumption that the culprit - a lack of iodine.
Alpine nerds
This year we will be celebrating one hundred years of scientific discovery that saved the Alps - in January 1910, the Austrian psychiatrist Julius Wagner-Hauregg scientifically proven that the cause of the Alpine giperioza is the lack of iodine in the diet, and in 1922 released the first Austrian saltworks iodized salt - Alps They were rescued.
Kretinka with goiter, 1820
Today decided to think of the Alps as a pastoral idyll with houses peaked, Jodl and pretty hats with feathers. The reality is different - there is still life 100 years ago was very difficult, hungry, cold, and so on.
P.S. By the way, now I read with a younger "Alpine fairy-tale" that was given to the home reading. Many of them begin with an introduction: "One family was starving ...".
Nobel Prize winner Julius Wagner-Jauregg
via nazdarru
Source: