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In 1919 Stoland and Kinney (1) published a brief statement concerning the relation of external temperature to the toxicity of administered thyroid. They found that rats kept at 32°C. and receiving 0.2 gin. of desiccated thyroid daily, lived an average of 7.3 days; others at 25°C. lived an average of 22 days, while a third group kept at 180C. lived more than 32 days. A survey of the literature reveals no other reports specifically concerned with this question, although the more general problem of the relation of the environmental temperature to the structure and activity of the thyroid has been the subject of several investigations (2-9).The present work is partly the outgrowth of the observation by one of us (10) that rats are much more resistant to thyroid and thyroxine in cool than in warm weather. It is improbable that this simple and obvious relationship has not been frequently observed by experimental workers, and certainly in clinical practice; yet it is remarkable that even in the more authoritative and comprehensive discussions of the physiology, pharmacology and therapeutics of the thyroid hormone, little or no mention is made of the importance of environmental temperature in relation to its tolerance and toxicity. For this reason the present report seems to be justified. MethodsThe rats used in this work were from a pure inbred Wistar strain reared in the laboratory under very favorable conditions. Special attention was given to the

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