Status thymico-lymphaticus

Abstract

Summary Sudden death in children resolves itself as a problem into many components. There is, of course, no one cause and in a series of well over 500 autopsies in children dying suddenly, the thymus problem is a secondary one. Strangely, however, enlargement of the thymus gland, lymphatism, hypo-adrenalism, and similar related conditions have been displaced even from secondary positions of importance as causes of disease and death and thrown into disrepute by articles in the medical literature which are based more on precedent and fashion than upon observation. The now popular attitude that there is no such thing as Status Thymical Lymphaticus can be quickly dissipated by autopsy studies in any Coroner's Office where children are studied and the widespread belief that an enlarged thymus in itself will not cause asphyxia by tracheal and auricular compression and distortion, can be disproved at necropsy wherever studies are done on cases of sudden death in children. On the other hand, when once accepted, Status Thymical Lymphaticus and related terms become far too easy to use. Instead of being reserved for specific cases to which they properly apply, such diagnoses are generically used to explain many sudden deaths in children, where there is no other obvious cause. It may be that such diagnostic abuses have in the main been responsible for the disrepute of the thymic status. We now feel that an orderly necropsy proceedings will segregate the various causes of asphyxia in infants which is by far the commonest cause of sudden death under the age of 2 years and that such studies will, in their natural evolution, re-establish the relationship of enlarged thymus glands, lymphatism, adrenal hypoplasia, and such conditions either isolated or related as veritable and tenable direct and sole causes of death.