The glandulae parathyroideae of Ivar Sandström. Contributions from two continents

The parathyroid glands, the last major organ to be recognized in man, were discovered in 1880 by Ivar Sandström, a Swedish medical student. Initially, the discovery attracted little attention; later, with the uncovering of the relationship of the glands to severe bone disease, interest quickened. In the early 1900's, Jacob Erdheim demonstrated that the four parathyroid glands were enlarged in osteomalacia and in rickets; he concluded correctly that this was a compensatory phenomenon. Subsequently, occasional cases of bone disease (von Recklinghausen's disease of bone) were encountered in which only a single gland was enlarged. In 1915, Friedrich Schlaugenhaufer suggested that enlargement of a single parathyroid gland might be the cause of the bone disease, not its result. The first parathyroidectomy for von Recklinghausen's disease of bone was performed by Felix Mandl in 1925 in Vienna. Subsequently, the parathyroid glands were shown to be affected by a number of primary pathological processes-neoplasia (adenoma and carcinoma) and hyperplasia (wasserhelle-cell and chief-cell types)-that resulted in overactivity and required surgical removal of one or more of them.