History

“Can the thyroid gland, when in a state of
enlargement, be removed with a reasonable hope
of saving the patient? Experience emphatically
answers NO…If a surgeon should be so foolhardy
as to undertake it…every stroke of his knife will be
followed by a torrent of blood, and lucky will it be
for him if his victim lives long enough to enable him
to finish his horrid butchery. No honest and
sensible surgeon would ever engage in it!”

Samuel David Gross, 1866