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The Science Is Unsettling: Radiation Therapy for ‘Enlarged Thymus’

In 1848, fifteen-year-old Hannah Greener of Newcastle, United Kingdom died minutes after being administered chloroform anesthetic for the removal of a toenail. As increasing reports of ‘sudden deaths’ during surgeries would make headlines and appear in medical journals throughout the late 19th century, this became a springboard to search for a ’cause’–other than chloroform.

While chloroform gathered some criticism, numerous commissions investigated chloroform for 50 years, and the results were always “inconclusive”. The medical community instead looked for a pathological cause–a physiological defect in children to explain their sudden death.

The Cause of Chloroform-Induced Sudden Death was Found: Status Thymico Lymphaticus, or Enlarged Thymus

Alas in 1889, A. Paltauf of Vienna proposed that the cause for these “sudden deaths” was the result of an ‘enlarged thymus’ that could cause suffocation or strangulation at a moment’s notice–in young, healthy people. He coined this condition: status thymico lymphaticus. It was immediately widely accepted.

Each time a young person would die suddenly, especially during medical procedures, like the son of German Professor Paul Langerhans who died instantly after taking Diphtheria antitoxin in 1896: the answer would be status lymphaticus.

This, we now know, was a gigantic mistake. Because our early anatomical knowledge came from dissecting bodies of the poor, or bodies left unclaimed at the hospital — science only looked at shrunken and atrophied thymuses of the chronically stressed, impoverished and unloved/abandoned–and they mistook the atrophied thymuses of the poor, for the normal, healthy, larger thymus in a child.

The thymus is an organ of the immune system that is naturally large in infancy (as it’s making T cells protecting the body against infection) that shrinks naturally around puberty, called thymic involution. The thymus can also shrink temporarily due to extreme stress, like infections or malnutrition.

Status thymico lymphaticus would be the explanation for “sudden death” that exonerated clinicians, surgeons, anaesthetists and pathologists for the next 60 years. However, the consequences would be disastrous.

Treatments for Status Lymphaticus

Doctors began treating infants and children for this “condition”. Surgery came first, but removing the ‘enlarged thymus’ had a fatality rate of about 33%, or 1 in 3 patients. This operation was performed on completely healthy children who had nothing wrong with them.

In 1907, the first child was treated with X-ray for status lymphaticus. It was a “success” and irradiation treatment became the treatment of choice. Every textbook of the period recommended this therapy, and it was suggested that all newborn babies should be irradiated as a prophylactic measure.

In 1925, Dr. C. Winfield Perkins wrote: “Many of the sudden deaths occurring during chloroform and ether anaesthesia have proved to be due to status lymphaticus.”

From the 1910s to the late 1950s, tens of thousands of infants around the world were treated with high doses of cancer-causing ionizing radiation for ‘enlarged thymus’. X-ray therapy became the standard protocol for a wide range of childhood ailments, including noisy breathing, cough, runny nose, wheezing in the chest, birth marks, moles, tonsillitis, asthma, ear infections, ringworm and cystic acne.

Irradiation therapy would take place in hospitals, at doctors offices, and even at school clinics. It would be decades before they realized they were causing cancer.

A child undergoing an x-ray at University Children’s Hospital, Vienna, 1921.

 

A radiotherapy room for ringworm.

A typical treatment consisted of high dose x-ray exposures for several hours, twice a week, for many months. Treatments would begin as early as birth. Infants were exposed to a wide range of radiation doses: some as high as 1,400 rads, which is the highest amount of sublethal radiation possible.

Thymic irradiation also became a standard protocol for all infants who needed surgery for any reason. In 1932 the pathologist William Boyd wrote:

“The situation has come to such a pass that the surgeon who does not have the child with a wide shadow treated by irradiation before the administration of an anaesthetic may be held liable for malpractice if the child dies while under anaesthesia.

It would take decades for concerns about the safety of radiation therapy to be taken seriously. In 1949, two American doctors reported the case of a 5-year-old child whose thymus was irradiated soon after birth. The child developed cancer on the thyroid at the very point where the X-rays entered its body.

At Massachusetts General Hospital, doctors treated 5,000 children with X-rays for enlarged thymus, giving them 200-400 rads, which is equivalent to the peak radiation level recorded inside Fukushima plant, or the level of radiation used as criterion for relocating residents after the Chernobyl accident.

67,000 children in Maryland underwent nasal radium treatments in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.

A study looking at 2,809 children treated with X-rays for thymic enlargement in an upstate New York County between 1926 and 1957 found that the treated children had a high incidence of tumors, particularly leukemia and thyroid neoplasms.

Another study looking at 2,657 infants in Rochester, New York who received thymic irradiation found that they had 7 times the cancer as their sibling controls.

Women exposed to this irradiation treatment as infants for enlarged thymus had 3 times the rate of breast cancer, and a 5-fold increase in thyroid cancer.

——

By 1965, medical journals no longer included the condition known as status lymphaticus.

Clinical use of chloroform ceased in 1976, the same year the US Environmental Protection Agency listed it as a carcinogen.

Every generation is failed by the next generation’s science.

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12 thoughts on “The Science Is Unsettling: Radiation Therapy for ‘Enlarged Thymus’

  1. Thank you so much for your article on radiation of children in the ’40’s’. I am the only “known” survivor of the radiation for preventing the so called “Crib deaths”in 1945, administered in the Gruno Clinic in Phoenix AZ by Dr Running, a Pediatrician.His purpose was to kill the Thymus because it was enlarged, which it was only doing it’s job. I was a perfectly healthy, strong 2 year old and not a crib baby. My life has been a maze of sickness and allergic reactions to most everything in life, that have made my life very difficult to say the least!I was so pleased to see the article you have on the radiation babies. I now have something to show my doctors to help them understand who I am and the why’s of it all.
    I understand that 60% of the radiated children died of complications, the other 40% died of thyroid cancer. I have been called a “walking miracle” by some doctors because I survived and lived anyway. Which somedays I find difficult to accept. I have learned to take charge of my own health and stay away from ‘medical’ doctors. I take natural supplements and herbs from God’s green earth. Thank you so much for all the life saving information you publish here.

    1. I received these Thymus “treatments” at 3 weeks old in NJ. My mother conveniently did not recall the name of the pediatrician, and exactly where it was administered. My thymus was thought to be too large and needed to be shrunk. What was found later was that I had congenital heart disease, but that’s another story! I have always been VERY conscious of my nutrition and have taken good care of myself despite the damage done to my immune system due to the Thymus destruction. However at age 69 I developed breast cancer in both breasts. No genetic cause – I had testing done & it was negative. It is being strongly suggested that I have radiation after my surgery. I am totally afraid that I have reached my saturation point with radiation. Not only from the Thymus “shrinking” but other scans, X rays etc I have had through out my life – much more than the average person. So I am in a quandary.
      Please see
      https://csn.cancer.org/discussion/193218/radiation-as-a-child-for-enlarged-thymus
      There ARE still some of us left here to tell the story.

      1. I am one that had 6 treatments at 6 mo. Nothing but health issues, immune related, my whole life; age 66. Sad.

        1. I am so sorry Sheri that this happened to you. Did your mother tell you that you had it done, or how do you know that you had it? It’s so tragic what has been done to infants so small without the slightest idea whether it was safe or not. Thank you so much for sharing, and I hope you can connect with others.

      2. Just saw your letter. I too had thymus irradiation in infancy…six weeks old. I do live in NJ and had the treatments there. 1945. I have had similar life situation. Hair fell out at age of two, ulcerative colitis at 16, Hashimotos thyroid disease at 40, breast cancer at 62. Will include my email if you would like to compare notes. Have met a few others with similar problems along the way. I do know what hospital and doctor did the procedure. becky7213@aol.com..subject should be thymus irradiation. c. foe

  2. I was not radiated for thymus, but for a strawberry birthmark as an infant in 1962.
    I’ve suffered from thyroid issues for years, and last week, was notified of an abnormal mammogram requiring followup.
    My mother always said “the Dr told me it was like extra sunshine.” It obliterated a growing hemangioma. I highly doubt it was comparable to “sunshine.”

  3. I too was radiated in 1953 as a normal procedure for Thymic Hyperplasia” My father a leading thoracic surgeon told me over 30 years ago that I would end up with MG (myasthenia gravis. Not only was crib death related to this unfortunate turn of events, as standard practive anesthesiologist were leary of the masses seen in Roentograms, and immediately would radiate (Standard Practices).I am now 69 y/o have gMG, and the neurologists were surprised 3 years ago when I had my MG Crisis, that as they were looking of CHF, and other age related complications. They were unaware of the radiation era and its consequences.

  4. My husband had radiation treatments in 1952 he was around 6 months and again in October 1952 two more treatments. I can hardly read the old reports as it is faded. Looks like he got 400 rad but not sure. Did not help him as a child as he had frequent er visits for respiratory issues. He has multiple nodules in his lungs at present and has sob on exertion. We see a lung Dr on the 15 th of this month. So far his thyroid gland has been alright.so right now just trying to figure out why they would have radiated a small child. The reading has been interesting.

  5. I had radiation treatments in the early 1950s on my left ear and neck for what was said to be hearing loss after a tonsilectomy when I was 4 years old. We lived in Maryland and I went to Johns Hopkins for six treatments. So far I have had damage to my eardrum and surrounding areas, chronic ear infections, tooth malformation, thyroid disease and each side of my thyroid removed at different times with cancerous nodules. I have a stricture in my throat and troubling swallowing. Also, a hiatal hernia with GERD. Most of the doctors I see have never heard of this treatment and it is frustrating to try to explain it to them. I am now 73 and have throat issues constantly and respiratory issues. I think the medical profession would like to forget they used this treatment for frivilous problems. I would like to find a of other who have had this treatment.

    1. I am so sorry for what you have gone through, and that doctors today continue to pretend this medical treatment did not take place, when it was standard and unscientific medical care for decades. Try replying to some of the others in the comment section to connect.

  6. Mom told me I had a growing mole on my left chest, over breast but right of shoulder, that was radiated when I was an infant. Born in April, 1951, now almost 72, I’ve suffered many illnesses since childhood. 1960s to present depression, bipolar, anxiety, endometriosis, MVP/SVT, hypothyroidism with goiter, precancerous breast (both), precancerous colon polps, fibromyalgia, OA, osteoporosis, leg vascular issue, scoliosis, etc.
    Still have small scar where mole was. I was treated in the Schenectady, NY area where I was born.

  7. I had the radiation treatment for an enlarged Thymus Gland in 1946 in New Jersey. I will fast forward to 2022. After having Thyroid nodules monitored for at least 40 years, I discovered that I had hyperparathyroidism. I became aware of the consequences of the radiation treatment on my Thymus Gland to my thyroid in my 20’s. I had parathyroidectomy in October 2022 . I had 5 parathyroid glands (4 is normal, the 5th had nothing to do with the treatment) but having a growth on all of them did. I also had a nodule on my thyroid that needed to be removed, that left me with half of my thyroid. The surgeon attributes all of this to my radiation treatment. I am now dealing with hypocalcemia and lots of allergies, particularly to medications.

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