In Europe, hyperthyroidism is often called Basedow’s disease, after Karl Adolph van Basedow, the German physician who described the condition contemporaneously with Dr. Robert Graves. In my research on toxic stress, I had come across some data describing the high number of cases of hyperthyroidism among refugees from Nazi prison camps. In fact, the term kriegs-Basedow (kriegs means “war,” so kriegs-Basedow is “hyperthyroidism of war”) was coined following the observation of an increased incidence of hyperthyroidism during major wars. Trinity
