Introduction — Historical Background

The changes that have taken place in recent decades in the interpretation of the function, pathology, and imaging of the thymus exceed those in respect of any other organ. The radical nature of these developments is witnessed even within the clinical field, where the sudden infant death syndrome used to be interpreted as “thymic death” (mors thymica: Waldbott 1934; Finkelstein 1938; Werne 1942; Werne and Garrow 1947; Rabson 1949; Husler 1959). Furthermore, relationships were also suggested between goiter and the thymus (Dutoit 1913) and between the goiter heart and the thymic heart (Feer 1923). “Status thymico-lymphaticus” became a routine descriptive term employed by every pediatrician [it was introduced in 1903 by Hochsinger and was subsequently used by Paltauf (1919), Boyd (1927), Greenwood and Woods (1927), Cooperstock (1930), Finkelstein (1938), and Mitchell-Nelson (1945)] and also entered the radiologic literature (Hotz 1928). This concept, like that of “status thymicus,” introduced by Escherich (1909) and Paltauf (1919), even led to the use of radiotherapy (Birk and Schall 1932). So-called stridor thymicus was also the subject of controversy for a long time (Hochsinger 1904; see Sect. 7.4.3.2).