Hakaru Hashimoto is the name behind the disease known to all of us as Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis.1 However, it is not well known that it was at the relatively young age of 31 years, that Hashimoto described the hitherto unknown disease in Archiv Fur Klinishe Chirurgie, the German journal of clinical surgery. The description, titled “Notes of lymphomatous in the thyroid gland (Struma Lymphomatosa)”, was about 30 pages long, and had five figures. Hashimoto chose to study an odd goitre- that was different from other types of thyroid swellings usually noted. He described the disease, used thyroidectomy specimens to further his findings- and even followed up the patients to study the clinical condition. His descriptions of the lymphomatous thyroid swellings probably laid the foundations of the distinction of this autoimmune thyroid disease, from the hard goitre that resulted due to Riedl’s Thyroiditis. Today, Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, or autoimmune thyroid disease, is among the commonest thyroid diseases worldwide.2-4
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