Coindet is usually regarded as the first to administer iodine in cases of goitre, with beneficial results. It had previously been prepared from seaweed by B. Courtois in 1812 (Ann. Chim. (Paris), 1813, 88, 304-10), and both Ampère and Humphry Davy were interested in it. W. Prout, however, in his Chemistry, meteorology, etc., London, 1834, p. 113, claimed that he had recommended it to John Elliotson, who had used it in 1819 at St. Thomas’s Hospital. There is an English translation of his paper in Lond. med. Phys. J., 1820, 44, 486-89.