Switzerland was the laboratory that turned a chemical intuition into a global public health victory. Thanks to three visionary doctors, the country was the first to introduce the iodination of table salt, a practice that helped defeat the scourge of cretinism in the Alps. Switzerland is a global icon of precision, innovation, luxury and prosperity. In the not-so-distant past, however, it was known for representing an emblematic case of human suffering. In the 19th century, when tourism was just beginning to blossom in the idyllic Alpine valleys, the geographer Elisée Reclus, in 1875-76, described the people who lived there as follows: “Alongside these valiant mountaineers – broad of chest and keen of gaze – who ascend the rocky heights with unwavering stride, there heave themselves forward wretched masses of living flesh, the cretins burdened with their pendulous goitres.” The quotation, which the French historian Antoine de Baecque gives in his book Histoire du crétinisme des ...
