The Swiss Medical Breakthrough That Cured The 'Cretins Of The Alps'

(MENAFN- Swissinfo) 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. This content was published on March 28, 2026 - 11:00 11 minutes

A member of the Swiss Abroad editorial team, I mainly write about Switzerland's most peculiar features and stories. After completing my master's degree in Asian Studies in Geneva (with a detour at Tokyo University and Kyoto University), I worked on the newsdesk at RSI, occasionally collaborating with Presence Switzerland during the Expo in South Korea and Milan. I have been working for SWI swissinfo since 2016.

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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 Alpes (history of cretinism in the Alps), is just one of countless accounts, above all Diderot and D'Alembert's encyclopaedia (see box), of the scourge of cretinism that struck these regions.

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