First parathyroid surgeon: Sir John Bland-Sutton and the parathyroids

Felix Mandl from Vienna has long been acclaimed as having carried out the first parathyroidectomy for primary hyperparathyroidism in 1925. He was not, however, the first surgeon to have seen the parathyroid glands, either at surgery or in the pathology laboratory. There is evidence that the first intentional removal of a parathyroid tumour was probably carried out at the Middlesex Hospital, London, UK, by Sir John Bland-Sutton at least a decade earlier. Indeed, Sir John Bland-Sutton appeared to have been very much aware of the parathyroid gland and the pathology associated with it for many years, even before this first parathyroid operation. He described a post-mortem specimen of a parathyroid tumour in 1886; he surgically removed a parathyroid cyst in 1909; and then carried out an intentional parathyroidectomy for a parathyroid tumour some time before 1917.