The life and work of dr. Hakaru Hashimoto

Abstract

Hashimoto's thyroiditis (HT), a common thyroid disease, is now recognized as an autoimmune thyroid disorder. However, little is known about its discoverer, the man who first described this disease. He presented four patients with a chronic thyroid disorder, which he termed as struma lymphomatosa, characterized by diffuse lymphocytic infiltration with germinal centers, parenchymal atrophy and eosinophilic changes in some thyroid follicular cells. Dr. Hakaru Hashimoto was born in 1881 in Japan. Once he finished his studies, he started his training at the Surgery Department of Fukuoka Medical College. Professor Miyake, the head of the department, trained Dr. Hashimoto in the technique of assessing excised thyroid glands microscopically. In 1912, he published a paper, Zur Kenntnis der lymphomatösen Veränderung der Schilddrüse (Struma lymphomatosa) in 'Archiv für klinische Chirurgie', Berlin, 1912:97:219-248. Some years later, he studied pathology under the instruction of prof. Eduard Kaufmann in Göttingen. Hashimoto's struma lymphomatosa was then ignored and forgotten until 1931, when Mr. Allen Graham of Cleveland reported struma lymphomatosa and insisted that Mr. Hashimoto had first discovered the disease and wanted to name it after him - Hashimoto's thyroiditis (HT).