[History of the anatomy and surgery of the thyroid gland].

The submitted historically oriented paper reviews anatomical and surgical prerequisites for the development of thyroid surgery. Operations which up to the middle of the last century were associated with an extremely high lethality and were considered heroic and unjustified, changed due to new findings and procedures into standard operations performed in some thyroid diseases. Despite this, indications for operation and views on some surgical procedures are even in contemporary medicine highly controversial.