In 1882, Reverdin stated before the Medical Society of Geneva that signs like those of myxoedema had been observed in some cases of removal of the thyroid gland on account of disease (goître). In April 1883, Kocher of Berne read a paper on this subject, before the Congress of German Surgeons; but he attributed this myxoedema after removal of the gland (cachexia strumipriva) not directly to the loss of thyroid-tissue, but rather to some sort of interference with free respiration, due to operation. On 23rd November, Sir Felix Semon brought the subject again before the Clinical Society; and on 14th December 1883, the Society appointed a Committee of Investigation to study the whole question. Their report, 215 pages long, with tabulated records of 119 cases of myxoedema, was published in 1888. It is a monument of good work, historical, clinical, pathological, chemical, and experimental. Twenty years ago, the purpose of the thyroid gland was unknown: a few experiments had been made on it, by Sir Astley Cooper and others, and had failed; and Claude Bernard, in his _Physiologie Opératoire_ (published in 1879, soon after his death), makes it clear that nothing was known in his time about it. He is emphasising the fact that anatomy cannot make the discoveries of physiology:-- "The descriptive anatomy, and the microscopic characters, of the thyroid gland, the facts about its blood-vessels and its lymphatics--are not all these as well known in the thyroid gland as in other organs? Is not the same thing true of the thymus gland, and the suprarenal capsules? _Yet we know absolutely nothing about the functions of these organs--we have not so much as an idea what use and importance they may possess--because experiments have told us nothing about them_; and anatomy, left to itself, is absolutely silent on the subject." Therefore, in 1882-83, things stood at this point--that the removal of a diseased thyroid gland had been followed, in some cases, by a train of symptoms such as Sir William Gull had recorded in 1873. Would the same symptoms follow removal of the healthy gland? The answer was given by Sir Victor Horsley's experiments, begun in 1884. He was able, by removal of the gland, to produce in monkeys a chronic myxoedema, a cretinoid state, the facsimile of the disease in man: the same symptoms, course, tissue-changes, the same physical and mental hebetude, the same alterations of the excretions, the temperature, and the voice. It was now past doubt that myxoedema was due to want of thyroid-tissue, and to that alone; and that "cachexia strumipriva" was due to the loss, by operation, of such remnants of the gland as had not been rendered useless by disease.