David Marine was a Cleveland physician who conducted a large clinical trial on iodine supplementation for the prevention of goiter that led to the fortification of salt with the mineral in the United States. Marine persuaded the Akron, Ohio, school board to let him administer iodine, then thought to be poisonous, to more than a thousand schoolgirls for two-and-one half years beginning in 1917. By the time the trial ended in 1922, more than a quarter of the students in the control group had developed a goiter, while less than one percent of the iodine-supplemented girls did. Fortification of salt with iodine began in 1924.
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