Author: Guy E. Abraham
Date: Dec. 2005
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It is self-evident that the essential element iodine is important for normal functions of the whole human body, not just the thyroid gland. However, due to thyroid fixation, the essential element iodine is mentioned in textbooks of medicine and of the subspecialties, only in connection with the thyroid gland and the most severe deficiencies of this nutrient: extreme stupidity (cretinism), iodine-deficiency induced goiter and hypothyroidism. Many physicians would be surprised to learn that more than a hundred years ago, iodine was called "The Universal Medicine," and was used in several clinical conditions. Nobel Laureate Albert Szent Gyorgyi, (1) the physician who discovered Vitamin C in 1928, commented:
"When I was a medical student, iodine in the form of KI was the universal medicine. Nobody knew what it did, but it did something and did something good. We students used to sum up the situation in this little rhyme:
If ye don't know where, what, and why
Prescribe ye then K and I.
Our medical predecessors,... were keen observers and the universal application of iodide might have been not without foundation."
