In some it is considerably knarled and creased as in the aged, and in
others swollen, hard and resistant. The hair becomes shaggy and rough,
losing all luster, and tends to grow irregularly and fall out. The
temperature becomes subnormal and an anemia supervenes. There is a
distinct reduction in the resistance to infections and intoxications.

Cretinism in the human is a condition in which the burning taper we
call Life flickers and smoulders and smokes. Thirty years ago it
was an example of the most hopeless idiocy. Whole populations were
afflicted with it. But neither man of science, nor bigot-fanatic,
assured by the Divine Confidence of its meaning as a visitation,
believed it could be modified an iota. Today, that inept word "cure"
may be applied to our power of attack upon it, provided it is
permitted to attack early enough. Modification, in the direction of
the most surprising betterment, is the miracle that has been wrought.

The history of a cretin runs somewhat as follows: A baby is born,
which in all appearances seems normal. Perhaps the nose is a trifle
squatter than even the average new-born's flat nose. There may also be
abnormal sleepiness, greater even than that of the normal baby in the
first month or two in that there is no spontaneous awakening from
the coma for food. But in most cases this is put down to normal
variability, or maybe to that limbo of all a baby's troubles:
weakness. After some months, it is noticed that the infant is failing
to grow at the normal rate, either physically or mentally. Examination
at this time reveals a curious thickening of the dental ridges. Then
the tongue takes the centre of the scene, by becoming unusually thick
and prominent, to the point of projecting beyond the mouth at all
times, and interfering with breathing, when the infant is in a
recumbent position.

More and more of the characteristics of the affection turn up. The
queer, repulsive, pitiful face of the cretins, which makes them all
seem brothers or twins, shapes itself. A yellowish, white or waxy
pallor; rough, dry, scaly, bloated skin; swollen, often wrinkled brow;
watery eyes, often almost concealed by the thickened eyelids; the
depressed pug nose with its wide, thick nostrils; large, erect ears;
the wobbly, drooling tongue, sticking out at one, yet not in derision;
the hair thin, and like tow in texture rather than human; eyebrows
and eyelashes are scant, and often absent; the nails short, thin and
brittle; the teeth, very late in coming, may be represented by a few
sharp points, irregular, decaying quickly, sometimes not succeeded at
all by those of the second dentition.

Whatever growth occurs is irregular and disproportionate. The trunk,
though small compared with the head, appears massive against the
background of the diminutive extremities. The back is somewhat humped,
arching at the waist-line, while the abdomen protrudes like a balloon,
with a hernia, often, at the navel. The extremities are short, bowed,
cold, and livid, covered with rolls of the infiltrated skin, rolls
which cannot be smoothed out. Hands and feet are broad, pudgy, and
floppy, the fingers stiff, square and spade-like, the toes spread
apart, like a duck's, by the solid skin. Above the collar bones there
are frequently great pads of fat which sometimes encircle the narrow
bull neck.

The mental state varies with the degree of deprivation of the internal
secretion of the thyroid. In the worst cases it is repulsively
vegetable. Even the intelligence common to the higher animals is
wanting. The cretins of the "human plant" kind, as they have been
nicknamed, will not recognize mother or father or any person about
them, or even a person from an object, and manifest no interest in
anything or anybody, not even toys. Hunger and thirst they manifest by
grunts and inarticulate sounds, or by screaming. They neither smile,
cough, nor laugh, but sit like sphinxes, breathing, but not reacting.

There are, of course, all grades and varieties. There are those who
recognize parents and familiar faces, and exhibit some evidence of
affection for them, acquire a limited vocabulary, and then cease, no
progress possible even with the alphabet. They attain the size and age
of two or three years and there stop altogether, as if a permanent
brake were applied to the wheels of their growth. Some higher types
may even come to speak connected sentences, and exhibit a certain
mild spontaneity, though stupid and slow and abnormally deliberate,
resembling the acquired form of thyroid deprivation or insufficiency,
for which Ord invented the name myxedema.

I have filled in with some detail this thumbnail sketch of thyroid
deprivation as it occurs in infancy to illustrate how wide a sweep the
gland's lariat embraces. Skin, hair, bones, muscle and fat, brain and
intelligence, growth and development, are modified precisely as the
size and shape of certain crystals are modified by the presence or
absence of ingredients in an apparently homogeneous solution. A
fertilized ovum, in which the predecessor of the thyroid gland is
present, that is to say, in which there is the seed and soil for its
sprouting, looks the same as one without that formative material. Yet,
when the time comes for the internal secretion of the thyroid to put
in its oar in the metabolic game, its presence or absence makes all
the difference in the world to the individual.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, when the concentration of
phosphorus in the brain was established as significant, the cry for
the emphasis of that fact was--without phosphorus no thought is
possible. We can much more relevantly declare that without thyroid,
no thought, no growth, no distinctive humanity or even animality is
possible. For the epigram about phosphorus was bombast, since it can
be declaimed with equal truth that without oxygen, without carbon,
without nitrogen, without any of the food elements that go to make
up the chemical composition of brain matter, no thought is possible.
Indeed, if one were set upon the indictment of a single chemical
element as the begetter of consciousness, the prisoner at the bar
would have to be copper. There is more copper in the brain by a
considerable degree than in any other organ of the body. Which perhaps
will be exceedingly regretted by the patrons of the aristocracy of the
soul who would have it as an emanation of a deposit in the brain of
silver at least, if not gold. They are like the old lady who would
never permit herself to be cured of her ailments except by gold plated
pills. Copper, however, is not necessary to intelligence. Without
thyroid there can be no complexity of thought, no learning, no
education, no habit-formation, no responsive energy for situations,
as well as no physical unfolding of faculty and function, and no
reproduction of kind, with no sign of adolescence at the expected age,
and no exhibition of sex tendencies thereafter.

EFFECTS OF FEEDING THYROID

How subtly the internal secretion affects every phase and aspect of
child as well as adult, by doing something to the speed of activities
in their cells, is told straightway by the effects of it when eaten
or introduced into the skin or blood of various people. A cretin,
idiotic, dwarfish, deformed, hopeless, an incessantly prodding burden
of sorrow to the mother, who looks upon the masterpiece she had
labored to bring forth, and beholds a terrible gargoyle, becomes
transformed when fed thyroid.

In a few days the cretin will get warmer, and require much less
wrapping and bed-clothing. With the improvement in circulation, the
color becomes better and the extremities lose their coldness. In a
week or so, irritability and resentment at disturbance appear. He will
begin to recognize and know his parents, smile and play. There is
a gradual return to the normal of the facial appearance, and a
resumption of growth. All kinds of marvelous growth effects occur.
Twenty teeth may be cut in six months. Coarse, rough dry, shaggy hair
becomes fine, silken, long and curly. The skin becomes soft, moist and
roseate. Inches in height may be added every month. Bright, active,
even talkative, are the descriptive terms an observer would apply
after a few months. A complete remaking of body and soul is apparently
affected.

Yet, should the administration of the thyroid cease, an almost
immediate reversion to the original vegetative condition is
inevitable. After a few days, reactiveness slows down, the child will
speak only when spoken to, will sit quietly in a chair all day and
act semi-anesthetized. Gradually hair and skin return to the previous
cold-blooded animal state, and the whole picture of the cretin is in
full bloom. Supplying the internal secretion of the gland promptly
repeats the transformation.

One wonders what is to be the ultimate fate of these reformed cretins.
Since the tale of the opening of life to them, once considered
hopeless idiots, is scarce a generation old, we have no data, as
yet, as to the character of their children or grandchildren, their
adventures and vicissitudes, in short, their life history. Those of
whom we have any record are normal and healthy school children or
workers, alive to the interests of childhood or their occupation
and social circles. No one outside their family knows that they are
cretins, and the most acute observer would be hard put to it to
suspect. What a theme for the reflections upon appearances the eminent
Victorians loved!

There are possibilities the imagination may envisage. One may suppose
such a cretin, with all his other ductless glands intact, grown
successfully to manhood under careful medical guidance. No one but
himself is aware of his affliction, outside of his medical advisers.
Luck aids him to rise in the world, or perhaps he has been born with
a spoon of the precious metals in his mouth. Adolescence, love and
marriage dance their sequence. Our hero of course keeps his dread
secret to himself. Whether such an omission of confidence would
entitle his wife to a divorce is something courts will be called upon
to decide sooner or later. But, without anticipating, the honeymoon
involves a trip to the South Seas. A storm and a wreck throws them
alone on an island, tropical, easy to live on, and rescue in the
course of a few months certain. The man, to his horror, discovers that
he has saved of his medicaments only a pill box containing half a
dozen of thyroid tablets, his requirement being one a day. He sees
them go day by day. Finally they are all gone. He feels his faculties
slipping hour by hour. Shall he tell her? Indecision grips him, and he
delays until the day when his consciousness sinks to the point where
his mind no longer grasps his problem. The wife must endure the
spectacle of the enchantment of her husband, and his change from
gallant lover to dull animal ogre. A new version of Beauty and the
Beast!

Cretinism as one manifestation of a soul without thyroid or without
enough thyroid is not all. The first great successes with thyroid were
achieved in adults, particularly adult women, exhibiting a peculiar
obesity, coldness, loss of hair and teeth and a remarkable lassitude
and torpor that might be summed up as a chronic drowsiness, like a
saturation of the blood with some narcotic drug. Or there may be a
melancholia, or a lack of ability to seize the finer points of a
mental process, or an argument treated in the abstract. Children
are said to be lazy, slow or dull. They experience an irritating
difficulty in understanding questions and expressing their wants and
desires, and so are declared to be vicious, or stupid.

All these are grades of the degeneration which Ord, the Englishman,
named myxedema. At its worst it is a sort of bloating and drying of
the body and the mind. Then there is infantilism, which is helped by
the giving of thyroid extract. It differs from the ordinary cretinism
in that, while one is reminded of the latter by the physical stunting
and the other stigmata, there is a certain amount of intelligence
which enables the individual to hold his own while he is a child. He
becomes a grown-up baby: at twenty prefers the company of children of
ten, and passes under the evil influence of designing so-called normal
persons. So dominated he will lie, steal, start fires, commit almost
any crime, with no inherent flair for criminality, but because of a
lack of independent judgment and inability to resist suggestion, and
a desire to please friends. He is simply an overgrown child who still
loves to play with toys, laughs and cries, becomes angry or afraid,
unreasonably and ridiculously, and yells for mamma when thwarted or
scared.

So much for what happens when there is not sufficient of the thyroid
secretion in the blood and tissues. Now to consider the effects of
an excess of it, the condition called hyperthyroidism, as the
insufficiency of it is labelled subthyroidism. Too much thyroxin can
be introduced into the system of a normal individual, or even a cretin
by the simple administration of too large doses or over too long
a time. Also a train of symptoms similar to those evoked by an
oversecretion of the thyroid may be mobilized by the taking of too
much iodine. Great sorrow, great joy, a sudden severe jolt to the
nervous equilibrium, sexual excitement, an overwhelming anger or grief
may leave in their wake a permanent hyperthyroidism. The symptoms are
the reverse of cretinism and myxedema. There is an over-excitability
of the nerves in place of sluggishness, and an over-reactivity of the
whole organism to its environment. The heart's action is too fast, and
under the slightest stimulus gets faster to the point of obtruding
itself into the conscious mind as a palpitation. Instead of the
lowered temperature and coldness of the cretin, there is a heightened
temperature, one or two degrees above the normal, and a feeling of
heat. The individual has a high warm color, does not sleep well,
becomes or remains thin no matter how much he or she eats, is
abnormally susceptible sexually, may suffer from a definite insomnia,
is emotional, and perspires freely. Alert, neurotic or high-strung,
magnetic, and imaginative are some of the descriptive adjectives
applicable. The eyes are bright and prominent, large and beautiful,
when they have not reached the stage entitled "pop-eyed." Or they may
even become so protuberant and bulging as to develop the expression of
one staring aghast at some ineffable horror. The latter is the feature
of only the severest types, when there is an associated goitre, the
combination designated as exopthalmic goitre.

There are, too, individuals in whom hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism
are mixed, or rather alternate. At one time they present the phenomena
of the one, at another of the other. They are the people who complain
of the cyclic quality of their moods and purposes. Their mood will
be a heaven of exaltation and exhilaration, and then descend into a
slough of despond from which they feel themselves inextricable. They
are always talking about the ups and downs of their mental states.
Headache and languor and fatigability, dry skin and lack of appetite
for food or exertion on one day or for one week, give way on the next
day, or for the next week, to an energetic gayety, and sweaty, flushed
skin, a prominent appetite for food and every sort of activity. Driven
to be forever on the go, for one period, in the next they feel like
lying down most of the day, with no inclination for any life whatever.
The stage of depression may go as far as a melancholia, the stage of
stimulation as far as mania. They may simulate manic-depressive or
cyclic insanity. Something restrains them, and holds them bound as in
a vise in the one cycle. And then they are driven on beyond themselves
by some invisible whip in the next.

THYROID AS DIFFERENTIATOR

Besides the action of the thyroid as energizer, lubricator, and growth
catalyzer, it has a remarkable power as a differentiator of tissues.
It determines the embryonic etchings of the different organs which in
their totality comprise the unique individual. Every multicellular
animal must first have existed as a single cell, the impregnated ovum.
With the body and personality of the ovum, the creature is one and
continuous, literally something the single cell has made of itself by
sub-dividing and differentiating. In the process, the cell mass often
goes through stages which stand out as individualities in themselves,
that appear on the surface absolutely unrelated. So the caterpillar
and the butterfly, to the naïve child, seem as far apart as worm and
bird. In the case of the frog, the tadpole as a first sketch seems
completely an impossible and wild absurdity. Yet we know that there is
an orderly progression of events, a propagation of cells, a forward
going arrangement of chemical reactions, that results in expansion and
intricate complication of the organism. Just what the forces at work
in this most mysterious of all natural processes are, has been an
intellectual mystery that the best minds of the race have attempted
to get rid of with words like pangenesis (Darwin). Words of Black
(Mediterranean or Greek and Latin) origin, as Allen Upward has named
them, always cover a multitude of ignorances. The glands of internal
secretion, here, as in so many other dark places, provide the open
sesame to certain long closed doors of biology. They offer themselves
to us as the first definitely tangible agents which are known to keep
the process of growth going, and undoubtedly initiate the marvelous
unfolding of tissues and functions, organs and faculties summed up as
development or differentiation.

Thus by the direct feeding of thyroid at particular points in the
differentiating history most curious effects have been elicited. If
the gland is made part of the nutriment, the bathing environment, of
the tadpole, a hastening of its metamorphosis is attained. The tadpole
lives not out its day as a tadpole, but precociously turns into a
frog. But such a frog! It is a miniature frog, a dwarf frog, a frog
seen by looking through the wrong end of the telescope, a frog not
magnified, but micrified. Frogs have been so created the size of
flies. There has occurred a splitting of the two reactions which
ordinarily go hand in hand: the reaction of growth which is just brute
increase of total mass or weight and volume, and the reaction of
differentiation which is the finer process. The picture is a frog, but
a frog the size of a tadpole, a frog which has missed its childhood,
adolescence and youth, skipping over these transition stages into the
adult age, as a pigmy.

It is all as if a baby were suddenly to grow a beard and moustache,
evolve and shed teeth, and acquire the manner of an earnest citizen,
and yet retain the height and weight of a baby. That the spectacle
of such a superbaby is not quite the most fantastic of all
improbabilities is shown by the condition of progeria, first recorded
by the Briton, Hastings Guilford. A queer spectacle in which a child
incontinently grows old without having lived--in the course of a few
weeks or months. You look upon him and see senility on a small scale,
but with all its peculiarities: wrinkled skin, apathy, gray hair and
all the rest of it. All we can say about it is that it is probably due
to a paralysis of all the glands of internal secretion, a removal
of their influence upon the cells. Contrariwise to the feeding of
thyroid, removal of the thyroid of tadpoles will prevent their
development into frogs. If iodine is then fed to them, say mixed with
flour, normal metamorphosis will occur. If Body is the tool chest
which we carry about with us, as Samuel Butler said, then to the
thyroid belongs the name of tool-maker.

Another function of thyroid that must be taken into consideration is
what has been spoken of as its antitoxic function--in plainer English,
its power to prevent poisoning, or to increase resistance against
poisons, including the bacteria and other living agents which
cause the infectious diseases. Each molecule of food, ingested for
assimilation into our substance, accumulates a history of wanderings
and pilgrimages, attachments and transformations beside which the
gross trampings of a Marco Polo become the rambling steps of a
seven-league booted giant. In the course of its peregrinations, it
becomes a potential poison, potential because it is never allowed to
grow in concentration to the danger point. The thyroid plays its rôle
of protector like all the internal secretory machines. In an animal
deprived of a thyroid the feeding of meat shortens life--a single
sample of how it works to guard against intoxication from within. The
feeding of thyroid will also raise the ability of the cells to stand
poisons introduced from without--intoxications of all sorts. Alcohol
and morphine will affect in much smaller doses the subthyroid person
than the normal or the hyperthyroid. As regards the infections, which
directly or indirectly kill most of us, the injection of thyroid will
increase the content in the blood of the protective antibodies which
preserve us, temporarily at any rate, against malignant invaders. The
opsonins, for example, those substances which butter the bacteria so
that the appetite of the white cells for them is properly roused, are
mobilized by thyroid feeding or injection. Other substances in the
blood which destroy and dissolve bacteria are also increased. The
thyroid probably performs these functions by sending its secretion
to the cells directly responsible for the immunity reactions, and
stimulating them to activity.

A sketch of the thyroid like the foregoing shows it as the wondrous
controller of vitality and growth, and indefatigable protector against
intoxicants and injuries. When it is sufficiently active, life is
worth while; when it is defective, life is a difficult threatening
blackness. That would make it out as the gland of glands. It is
tremendously important, without a doubt, in normal everyday life. But
no more so than the other members of the cast. The position of star it
may claim, but in vain. The other glands of internal secretion to
be sketched will each, when the marvels of its business in the
cell-corporation are considered, present itself as candidate for the
honors of the president. Justice should give fair credit to all
the organs which fabricate the reagents of individuality, and the
regulators of personality.

THE PITUITARY

In the human skull, the pituitary is a lump of tissue about the size
of a pea lying at the base of the brain, a short distance behind the
root of the nose. It is of a grayish-yellow color, unpretentious and
insignificant enough in appearance, and so long neglected by the
scientists who boast their immunity to the glamor of the spectacular.
Guesses at its nature date back to Aristotle.

Like most of its colleagues among the glands of internal secretion,
it is really two glands in one, two glands with but a single name. At
least it consists of two different parts, distinct in their origin,
history, function and secretions, but juxtaposed and fused into what
is apparently a homogeneous entity. They are conveniently spoken of as
the anterior gland and the posterior gland.

In the embryo, the anterior gland is derived by a proliferation of
cells from the mouth area. The posterior gland represents an outgrowth
of the oldest part of the nervous system. When it is traced back along
the tree of the vertebrate species, it is found to be present in all
of them. An ancient invention, its precursor has been identified in
worms and molluscs and even among the starfish. "The pituitary
is practically the same, from myxine to man." A trusted veteran,
therefore, among the internal secretory organs, its importance can be
surmised.

To understand the story of the pituitary, variously acquired bits of
information concerning it have been assembled and fitted together like
the fragments of a picture puzzle, as Cushing has so well put it. Here
and there pieces stick out, obviously out of place. The relations of
some of them to one another or to the whole design are not at all
clear. Parts appear to have been irrevocably lost, or not yet to have
turned up. Chance bystanders will select odd figures and articulate
them into a new harmony. Yet out of the jumble of fragments, a fairly
respectable insight has been gained in less than a half century.

The pituitary is cradled in a niche at the base of the skull which,
because of its form, is known as the Sella Turcica or Turkish saddle.
So situated, an operative approach to it is overwhelmingly difficult.
On the other hand, X-ray studies are favored. "Nature's darling
treasure" it might be called, since there has been provided a skull
within the skull to shelter it.

Under the most highly magnifying lenses of the microscope, three kinds
of cells have been distinguished. The anterior gland is a collection
of solid columns of cells, surrounded by blood spaces into which their
secretion is undoubtedly directly poured. A gelatinous material,
presumed to be the internal secretion of the gland, has, in fact, been
observed emerging from the cells into the blood spaces. The posterior
lobe, or gland, consists of secreting cells producing a glassy
substance which finds its way into the spinal fluid that bathes the
nervous system. The spinal fluid itself is a secretion of another
gland at the base of the brain, the choroid. Nerves and internal
secretion are associated here with a closeness symbolic of their
general relations.

From each portion of the gland (to stick to the accepted nomenclature
of speaking of the two glands as one) an active substance has been
isolated. Robertson, an American chemist, separated from the anterior
lobe a substance soluble in the fat solvents, like ether and gasoline,
which he christened tethelin. But P.E. Smith has shown that the active
material is soluble neither in boiling water nor in boiling alcohol,
the typical fat solvent. A number of facts favor the idea of the
anterior lobe cells as stimulants of growth of bone and connecting
and supporting tissues generally. From the posterior lobe, pituitrin,
believed its internal secretion, has been obtained in solution.

Pituitrin is a substance of many marvelous functions. In general, it
controls the _tone_ of the tissues, of involuntary or smooth muscle
fibres of the blood vessels and the contractile organs of the body
like the intestines, the bladder and uterus. When injected, it will
slowly raise the blood pressure and keep it raised for some time, and
will increase the flow of urine from the kidneys and of milk from the
breasts. It will also cause an intense continued contraction of the
bladder and the uterus. It is also said to control the salt content of
the blood upon which its electrical conductivity and other properties
depend. Normally, there is a certain fixed ratio of the salts in the
blood, which keeps them like the ratio in sea-water. Again, we have
an example of the curious atavism of the internal secretions. The
thyroid, remember, keeps the iodine concentration of the blood like
that of the ocean, our original habitat. Pituitrin likewise does its
part to maintain our internal environment as near as possible to what
was once the surrounding medium. A substance somewhat similar has been
found in the skin glands of toads.

The extraordinarily well protected position of the pituitary, its
persistence throughout life, and its abundant blood supply, emphasize
its vital importance. No other gland of internal secretion can
adequately substitute for it. Complete expiration means death, in two
or three days, with a peculiar lethargy, unsteadiness of gait and loss
of appetite, emaciation, and a fall of temperature, so that the
animal becomes cold-blooded, its temperature the same as that of the
atmosphere it occupies. If only part of the anterior lobe is taken
away, there occurs a remarkable degeneration of the individual. The
degeneration is not a mucinous infiltration of the skin and the
internal organs which occurs with thyroid deprivation, but a fatty
degeneration, with a tendency to inversion of sex. A singular
somnolence, a dry skin, loss of hair, a dull mentality, sometimes
epilepsy, and a noticeable craving for and tolerance of sweets appear.
These are but a few of the observations obtained in experimental
sub-pituitarism, that is, underaction or insufficient secretion of the
pituitary, produced by removing part of the anterior gland.

If such an experimental sub-pituitarism is started in infancy, for
instance in puppies, there is a cessation, or marked hindering and
slowing of growth. That is, dwarfs are artificially created. Apropos,
pathologists have shown that in several true human dwarfs the gland
is rudimentary or inadequate. All of which goes hand in hand with the
evidence that the skeleton stands directly under the domination of the
pituitary.

REGULATOR OF ORGANIC RHYTHMS

There are certain other singular by-effects of the gland in its
relation to the periodic phenomena of the organism like hibernation,
sleep, and the critical sex epochs of both sexes. In hibernation, or
winter sleep, the animal in cold weather passes into a cataleptic
state in which it continues to breathe, more deeply but more slowly
than when awake, but shows no other signs of consciousness or life.
A lowered blood pressure and a marked insensitivity to painful and
emotional stimuli go with it. There is a preliminary storage of starch
in the liver, and of fat throughout the fat depots of the body. These
are so like what happens after part of the pituitary is removed, that
a comparison of the two becomes inevitable. Common to both conditions
is a drop in the rate of tissue combustion or metabolism, which can
be relieved by injection of an extract of the pituitary, a rise of
temperature occuring simultaneously. Moreover, examination of the
glands of internal secretion of hibernating species, like the
woodchuck, during the period of hibernation, shows changes in all of
them, but most marked in the pituitary, the shrunken cells staining
as if they too were asleep, or in a resting stage. The characteristic
alive qualities of these cells return, without relation to food
or climate, when the animal comes to in the spring, at the vernal
equinox. Hibernation may, perhaps, be put down to a seasonal wave of
inactivity of the pituitary gland.

Now winter sleep may be looked upon as an exaggeration of ordinary
night sleep, the latter differing from the former only in its brevity.
In the natural sleep of non-hibernating species there occurs, too,
a fall in temperature. Moreover, they all, even man, have a certain
capacity for winter sleep, as the experiences of travellers and
explorers in the arctic regions indicate. In certain parts of Russia,
where there is a scarcity of food during the winter months, the
peasants pass weeks at a time in a somnolent state, arousing once a
day for a scant meal. Just as the sex glands influence the body and
mind profoundly with a certain cyclic periodicity of activity and
inactivity (rut, heat, menstrual period and so on), which has been
demonstrated to have a very close functional relationship with the
pituitary, so sleep and hibernation will bear interpretation as
products of a temporary dormancy of the same gland. We have, then,
to set up in the place of Morpheus and Apollo, the new gods of the
internal secretion of a chemical-making bit of the brain, as an
explanation of the rhythms of sleep and wakefulness.

There are individuals who go about outside of hospital walls,
quasi-normally, who are semi-hibernators or partial hibernators, and
who are really in a state of subpituitarism. They are people who may
have something wrong or inferior with their pituitary, but not to the
extent of interference with their daily life. They go about with their
type stamped upon them for the seeing eye. The classical type is
obese, with fat distributed everywhere, but more so in the lower
abdomen and the lower extremities. They are slow and dull, and
sexually inactive, often impotent. They are sometimes tall, but most
often dwarfish, and may be subject to epileptic seizures. They recall
the picture of what happens to young dogs partially deprived of the
pituitary. Dickens delivered a perfect likeness of an extreme degree
of the condition in the Fat Boy of the "Pickwick Papers," whose
employment with Mr. Wardle consisted in alternate sleeping and eating.

WHEN THE PITUITARY OVERACTS

All grades of overaction of the pituitary exist. Then its peculiar
power to act as a stimulant to the growth of bone and the soft
supporting and connecting tissues like tendons and ligaments comes
into play. If the overaction or excess of secretion begins in
childhood or adolescence, that is, before puberty, there results a
great elongation of the bones, so that a giant is the consequence. Now
giants have always appealed to the imagination of the little man, and
have had all kinds of wonderful abilities ascribed to them by him. The
giants and ogres of folk-lore and fairy tales are favored with the
most extraordinary mental advantages. Direct and analytic acquaintance
with the giants of our own day, as well as a probing of their conduct
in the past, has shown that normal giants--persons of exceptional size
free from physical or mental deformities--are rare. There are people
with _hyper_-pituitarism who exhibit the highest mental powers. In
them is an increased activity of the posterior lobe in association
with enlargement and hyperfunction of the anterior, overgrowth is not
so marked, and the individual is lean and mentally acute. But the
ordinary giant is one in whom there is degeneration of the pituitary
after too much action of the anterior and too little of the posterior
glands. A tumor or disease process in the gland is most often
responsible.

If the overaction of the anterior happens after puberty, when the
long bones have set, and can not grow longer, a peculiar diffuse
enlargement of the individual occurs, especially of his hands and feet
and head. The nose, ears, lips and eyes get larger and coarser.
As these people are rather big and tall to begin with, the effect
produced is that of a heavy-jawed, burly, bulking person, with bushy
overhanging eyebrows, and an aggressive manner. For there is, too,
something distinctive about their mentality which has been as often
portrayed as those of the pathologic giant. Rabelais' most famous
character, Gargantua, belongs to the group. We recruit more
drum-majors than prime ministers from among these people. They
often suffer much from torturing boring headaches, and a consequent
despondency and feeling of hopelessness which colors gray the entire
spiritual spectrum. Up to a certain point these sufferers have a
remarkable alertness and capacity. When conscious of the malady, they
often meet it with a doggedly courageous optimism, which is another
characteristic, although women occasionally commit suicide.

In both the semi-hibernators who remind one of cattle, and in the
giant or acromegalic types who remind one of the anthropoid ape, there
develops a distinct diminution of sexual life. An abnormal process in
the anterior gland, whether of oversecretion or of undersecretion,
may interfere with the proper functioning of the posterior gland, the
secretion of which is tonic not only to the brain cells, but also to
the sex cells. Thus, young animals deprived of the pituitary will not,
if male, grow spermatozoa, nor ripe ova in the female. Moreover, the
feeding of pituitary increases sexual activity. In the case of hens,
this has been demonstrated to be about thirty per cent by a pretty
experiment. At a time of the year when eggs diminish, six hundred
and fifty-five hens laid two hundred and seventy-three eggs upon an
ordinary diet. When pituitary was added to their food for four days,
the number of eggs rose to three hundred and fifty-two, an increase of
seventy-nine. In addition, the fertility of the chicks born of these
eggs was augmented, especially if both parents had been fed on
pituitary. There are other aspects of the relation of the pituitary to
sex, which will be treated in another chapter.

THE BONY CRADLE OF THE PITUITARY

Always, in attempting to understand the pituitary, it is necessary to
remember that it is tightly packed in the bony cradle, the Turkish
Saddle or Sella Turcica. Should some stimulus, local, or in the blood,
arouse the gland to growth, a good deal will depend upon whether it
has room to grow in, or it will make room by eroding the bone. With
space for the formation of a large anterior and posterior pituitary
gland, there will be created the long, lean individual, with a
tendency to high blood pressure and sexual trends, great mental
activity, initiative, irritability and endurance. An outstanding trait
of these favorites of fortune is that they remain thin no matter how
much food they consume, and they have the best of appetites. They
often are subject to severe headaches because of intermittent swelling
of the gland against the bone of its container.

If the bony container is or becomes too small for its contents, it
is interesting that along with the other signs of pituitary
insufficiency, such as undersize, obesity, and asymmetry, there
developes conspicuous moral and intellectual inferiority. The
unfortunates suffer from compulsions and obsessions and lack
inhibitions. They are the pathological liars with little or no
initiative or conscience--amoral, not merely theoretically, but
instinctively and unconsciously, with all the certitude and perfection
of the unconscious accomplishment.

THYROID AND PITUITARY

The thyroid and the pituitary have often been compared. The anterior
gland and the thyroid arise from almost the same spot in the embryonic
oesophagus, the thyroid being an outgrowth in front, the anterior
pituitary an outgrowth behind of the same soil. They both control
growth marvelously, also the differentiation, the mass and intricacy
of the tissues. But they differ in the site of their control. The
thyroid bears more directly upon the inner and outer coverings of the
body, the skin, the skin glands and the hair, the mucous membranes,
and the irritability and the preparedness for response of the nerves.
The pituitary acts more upon the framework of the body, the skeleton
and the mechanical supports and movers. Bone and ligament, muscle
and tendon seem to be within its immediate sway. The secretion or
secretions of the pituitary diffuse directly into the fluid bathing
the nervous system, supplying beneficent stimulants and aiding in the
abstraction of harmful waste. So while the thyroid raises the energy
level of the brain, and the whole nervous system, as a byproduct of
its general awakening effect upon all the cells of the body, the
pituitary probably stimulates the brain cells more directly, perhaps
in the manner of caffeine or cocaine.

The difference between the thyroid and the pituitary might be put this
way: that while the thyroid increases energy evolution and so makes
available a greater supply of crude energy, by speeding up cellular
processes, the pituitary assists in energy transformation, in energy
expenditure and conversion, especially of the brain, and of the sexual
system. In short, the thyroid facilitates energy production, the
pituitary its consumption. The pituitary appears therefore as the
gland of continued effort. Hence fatigability, an inability to
maintain effort, is one of the prominent complaints when there is
destruction or an insufficiency of it for one reason or another. As
such, it contrasts with the glands of emergency effort, known as the
adrenals.

THE ADRENAL GLANDS, THE GONADS, AND THYMUS

Like the pituitary, each adrenal gland is a double gland, that is,
consists of two distinct portions, united together, one might say, by
the accident of birth. It would be confusing, however, to speak of
each as two glands, because there are, as a matter of fact, two
separate adrenal glands, one in the right side of the abdomen, and the
other in the left. Each gland is composite, or duplex. How the two
parts came to be united is a long story, interesting but too long to
be recounted here. In fishes they are apart and independent.

Each adrenal is a cocked hat shaped affair, astride the kidneys,
easily recognized because of its yellowish fatty color. Indeed, for
centuries the glands were not given a separate status as organs, but
were passed up as part of the fat ensheathing the kidney. In childhood
and youth, in common with the other glands, they are relatively larger
and more prominent than in the adult. Also, at every age, the amount
of blood passing through them is very large compared to their size.
Their tremendous importance in the body economy accounts for their
being so favored.

The two parts of which each gland is composed, are known as the cortex
or outer portion (literally the bark) and the medulla or inner portion
(literally the core). No clean-cut boundary sharply delimits the two,
as strands and peninsulas of tissue of one portion penetrate the
other. In the history of their development in the species and the
individual, and in their chemistry and function, a sharp difference
contrasts them.

In the embryo, the cortex is derived from the same patch that gives
rise to the sex organs, the ovaries in the female, and the testes in
the male, described as the germinal epithelium. How intimately the
two sets of glands are connected is neatly pointed by this fact of a
common ancestor. All vertebrates possess adrenal glands. In the lowest
of the vertebrates, Petromyzon, the two parts are distinct, the cells
of the cortex-to-be are situated in the walls of the kidney blood
vessels, projecting as peninsulas in the blood stream, the blood
sweeping over and past them. The medulla-to-be consists of cells
accompanying the vegetative nerves. Among reptiles, the two become
adjacent for the first time, and among birds one part occupies the
meshes of the other. The size of the cortex varies directly with the
sexuality and the pugnacity of the animal. The charging buffalo, for
example, owns a strikingly wide adrenal cortex. The fleeing rabbit,
on the other hand, is conspicuous for a narrow strip of cortex in its
adrenal. Human beings possess a cortex larger than that of any other
animal.

No definite chemical substance has as yet been isolated from the
cortex. That remains a problem for the investigator of the future. But
certain observations, especially concerning the relation between
the development and behaviour of the so-called secondary sex
characteristics, those qualities of skin, hair and fat distribution,
physical configuration and mental attitudes, which distinguish the
sexes, and the condition of the gland, indicate clearly that an
internal secretion will be isolated, and that it will in its activity
furnish certain predictable features.

Three different layers of cells, arranged in strings, that
interpenetrate to form a network directly bathed by blood, that breaks
in upon them from _open_ blood vessels, compose the cortex. Most
remarkable is this method of blood supply for it is exceedingly common
among the invertebrates and rare among the vertebrates.

In certain disturbances of these glands, especially when there are
tumors, which supply a massive dose of the secretion to the blood
presumably, peculiar sex phenomena and general developmental anomalies
and irregularities are produced. If the disease be present in the
fetus, taking hold before birth, and so brought into the world with
the child, there evolves the condition of pseudo-hermaphroditism. The
individual, if a female, presents to a greater or less extent the
external habits and character of the other sex. So that she is
actually taken for a man, although the primary sex organs are ovaries,
often not discovered to be such except when examined after an
operation or death. How closely such an occurrence touches upon the
problems of sex inversion and perversion comes at once to mind.

If the process involving the adrenal cortex attacks it after birth,
the symmetrical correspondence and harmony of the primary sex organs
and the secondary sex characters are not affected. But there follows
a curious hastening of the ripening of body and mind summed up in the
word puberty, a precocious puberty, with the most startling effects.
A little girl of 2, 3, or 4 years of age perhaps will come to exhibit
the growth and appearance of a girl of 14. She begins to menstruate,
her breasts swell, she shoots up in height and weight, sprouts the
hair distribution of the adult, and the mentality of the adolescent,
restless, acquiring, doubting, emerge. A tot bewitched into puberty!
A boy of six or seven may suddenly, in the course of a few weeks or
months, become a little man, robust, rather short and stocky, but
moustached, with the muscular strength and sexual powers of a man and
thinking as a man. It is all as if into some fermentable medium or
solution a little yeast were dropped that changed the quiet calm of
its surface into a bubbling, effervescing revolution. It suggests at
once that maturation, the transformation of the child into the man or
woman, must be due to the pouring into the blood and the body fluids
of some substance which acts like the yeast in the fermentable
solution. The adrenal cortex is one source of the maturity-producing
internal secretions.

If trouble in the adrenal cortex starts after puberty, phenomena of
the same type, but of a different order, exhibit themselves. A woman,
say in the thirties, becomes thus afflicted. Slowly or quickly her
body will be covered by an abundant growth of hair, more or less of a
beard and moustache appear upon the face, her voice will become deep
and penetrating, her muscles will harden, and she will show a capacity
for hard physical labor. Sexually she appears to be made over,
masculinity now predominates in her make-up. Virilism is the name by
which the French in particular have popularized the knowledge of the
condition. Virilists have to shave or be shaved regularly and are not
bothered in the least by the cares, responsibilities, jealousies and
anxieties of personal beauty, for the change in their spirituality
makes them immune to the preoccupations of the feminine. The cause of
such a transformation in a previously entirely normal woman has been
found to be a tumor of the adrenal cortex.

But not only is sexuality, and the conduct of the secondary sex
characters, connected with the adventures of the adrenal cortex. The
development of the master tissues of the body, the brain, the pride
and darling of evolution, is in some subtle way correlated with
it. The adrenal cortex contains more of the phosphorus-containing
substances of the general nature of those found in the central nervous
system than any other gland or non-nervous tissues in the body. During
human intrauterine life the adrenal glands are large and conspicuous,
in the first half of the second month being twice as large as the
kidneys. Most of this relatively huge size, which happens in the human
alone, and not in other animals, is due to enlargement of the cortex.
Should this preponderance of the cortex over the medullary portion not
occur in the human, that is, if the proportions remain like those of
other animals, the brain fails to develop properly, or an entirely
brainless monster is generated. The human brain, therefore, probably
owes its superiority over the animal brain, to the adrenal cortex, in
development anyhow. The growth of the brain cells, their number and
complexity is thus controlled by the adrenal cortex.

Besides its action upon the sex cells and the brain cells, the
internal secretion of the adrenal cortex acts upon the pigment cells
of the skin, blunting their sensitiveness to light. In degeneration
of the interior of the gland, which destroys the medulla, but not the
cortex, the color of the skin is left unmodified. If, however, the
cortex is invaded, as happens most often in the classical tuberculosis
of the adrenals which drew the attention of the Englishman Addison
to them, then a darkening of the skin, which may go on to a negroid
bronzing, follows. That means an increased sensitiveness of the
pigment cells of the skin to light. Skin color control may therefore
be looked upon as an adrenal cortex function.

So much is known about the adrenal cortex. Upon the medulla, the
interior gland of the gland, there has been lavished an amount of
attention beside which the cortex is to be classed as a neglected
wall-flower. Nearly everything that possibly could be determined
about an internal secretion has in its case been settled or plausibly
guessed at. The cells manufacturing the secretion, its exact chemistry
and function, its action upon the blood, the liver and spleen, the
heart and lungs, the brain and nervous system, have been minutely
investigated, studied and charted. Its source in the food, its fate in
the body, its place in the history of the individual and the species,
its importance as a weapon in the struggle for existence, and the
survival of the fittest have been made the subject of an astonishing
number of researches, considering the short period of scarce three
decades that intensive science has centered its barrage upon it.

In the first place, the medulla contains numerous nerve cells,
belonging to the vegetative, also called the sympathetic nervous
system. But these nerve cells are merely minor notes of the symphony.
The motif is settled by a majority of large, granular cells, which
stain a distinctive yellowish-brown when the gland is fixed in a
solution of bichromate of potash. All chromium salts, in fact, stain
the therefore labelled chromaffin cells. The characteristic staining
power appears to be dependent upon, or correlated with, the presence
of the internal secretion of the medulla of the adrenal, adrenalin.
For the content of adrenalin, as calculated chemically, and the
depth of stain as seen under the microscope, rise and fall together.
Chromaffin reaction and adrenalin content go together. The poisonous
skin glands of the toad have been found to give a marked chromaffin
reaction, and to contain a large amount of adrenalin. Other masses
of cells in the human body, especially along the course of the
sympathetic nervous system, have been shown to give the reaction and
to contain adrenalin.

The erratic Brown-Séquard pounded and hammered away for more than
thirty years on the importance to life of the adrenal glands, since
death occurred so quickly after their removal. But it was not until
Schaefer, the Scotch physiologist, (who has done more than any other
living man to stimulate study of the internal secretions) found that
an extract of them, when injected into a vein, produced a remarkable
though temporary rise of the blood pressure, that a real enthusiasm
for its investigation was generated. As the upshot, a number of other
significant properties besides the first of blood-pressure raising,
have been put down to its credit. Chemical tests demonstrated that
it originated in the medulla. The exact amount of it present in the
medulla, in the blood issuing from the adrenals and in the circulation
in general have been determined. The concentration in the blood is
about one part in twenty million, while there is about a hundred
thousand times as much stored in the gland as reserve. In infections
and intoxications, after muscular exertion, and with profound
emotions, there is a decrease of it in the gland and an increase in
the blood. Pain and excitement, especially fear and rage, will bring
about its discharge from the gland. With its entry into the blood,
there is a tremendous heightening of the tone, a _tensing_, of the
nervous system. The nerve cells become more sensitive to stimuli,
more sugar is poured into the blood from the liver, more red blood
corpuscles are squeezed into the circulation from the blood lakes of
the liver and spleen. There is a redistribution of the whole blood
mass, a good deal of it being withdrawn from the internal viscera, and
hurried to the skeleton muscles and the brain. The heart beats more
strongly, the eye sees more clearly, the ear hears more distinctly,
and the breathing is more rapid. The temperature rises, the hair of
the head and the body becomes erect, the skin gets moist and greasy.
It will help a fatigued muscle to regain its normal tone. In short, it
has a reinforcing action upon the nutritive properties of the blood,
the tone of the muscles, and the activity of the brain and the
vegetative nerves.

Chemists set themselves the task of discovering just what was the
substance possessed of such extraordinary and hitherto unimagined
properties. The pure adrenalin was isolated, capable of evoking all
the reactions of the impure adrenal extract mixtures. The final
triumph was the preparation of it artificially in the laboratory,
its synthesis. When a substance can be synthesized in the chemist's
laboratory, it means that its composition has become thoroughly
understood. Here at last was an example of those mysterious internal
secretions, the existence of which had indeed been postulated and
proven, but which had never actually been inspected by the eye of
mortal man. To have it in a test-tube, indeed to possess it in large
quantities in bottles, to be able to manipulate and examine it without
fear of the co-action of admixed impurities, to see it with the eye,
and to taste it with the tongue, was truly a marvel. The miracle
aroused at once scores of researches.

THE GLAND OF COMBAT AND FIGHT

Considering its effects, one is reminded at once of the similarity
to the expression of a primitive emotion like anger or fear. So, by
turning a relation upside down, it was argued that if artificial
adrenalin could produce all these effects of an emotion like fear, the
emotion itself should produce an increase of the natural adrenalin in
the blood. This was found to be the case. Cannon of Harvard has built
up an entire theory of the adrenal as the gland of emergencies upon
the basis of these effects. In the facing of crises the adrenal
functions as the gland of combat. And indeed, as I have mentioned,
the more combative and pugnacious an animal, the more adrenal it has,
while the timid and meek and weak have less.

The Glands of Combat, the glands of emergency energy, the glands
of preparedness,--such are the adrenal glands when viewed from the
adrenalin standpoint. A picture of its activity in the evolutionary
scheme of struggle and survival is something like the following:
meeting an enemy, the animal is put in danger. It must fight or flee
for its life. In either case, certain conditions must be fulfilled, if
the body of the animal endangered is to be saved. To prevent injury to
itself, and to do as much injury as possible to the foe--that becomes
its immediate urge and necessity. Of the two animals, if in one the
heart should begin to beat more strongly, the blood pressure to rise,
the blood to flow more rapidly through the attacking instruments, the
muscles, the teeth and claws, the brain and its eyes, while the other
animal experiences none of these, the former will be the victor in
fight or flight. Adrenalin may be looked upon as the invention for the
mobilization at a moment's notice, or as we say, after generations of
use, by instinct, of all these visceral and blood advantages in the
struggle of combat or flight.

The nature of instinct, in its relation to the glands of internal
secretion, is a problem for another chapter. But we may note that the
James-Lange theory of an emotion regards it as a consciousness of the
very changes in the organism adrenalin causes. Since adrenalin is the
starter of the whole process, and since McDougal has defined emotion
as the feeling aspect of an instinct, just as an instinct may
be defined as the motor aspect of an emotion, the adrenals as
emotion-genetic, and instinct-genetic, play a part in the most
profound processes of the subconscious and unconscious.

THE MECHANISM OF FEAR

We may therefore visualize a mechanism of fear. An instant excess of
adrenalin occurs in the blood of, say, a cat when it is alarmed by the
sight of a dog. In that cat, at the image of its hereditary enemy,
certain brain cells vibrate. A nerve tract, in use as the line for
that particular message in a hundred thousand generations of cats,
whirrs its yell to the medulla of the adrenal gland. Through the tiny,
solitary veins of the glands, an infinitesimal quantity of the reserve
adrenalin responds. And with what an effect! The blood, that primary
medium of life, the precious fluid that is everything, must all, or
nearly all, be sent to the firing line, the battle trenches, the
brain and muscles, now or never. So the blood is drafted from the
non-essential industries--from the skin where it serves normally to
regulate the heat of the body--from the digestive organs, the stomach
and intestine, which must forsooth stop now, since if the organism
will die, their last effort of digestion has been done--from the liver
and spleen, great chemical factories in normal times, but now of no
moment. Besides, should they be wounded, it is better they should
be bloodless, and so run the least chance of bleeding to death, or
getting infected, for the more tissue there is around, the greater the
danger of infection. So, like the skin, the liver which usually holds
in its great lakes and vessels about a quarter of all the blood in
the body, is almost drained and blanched. At the same time, its great
storehouses of sugar open their sluices and pour into the blood,
increasing its sugar content by about a third because the combustion
of sugar is the easiest way of getting energy free in the cells, sugar
being the most quickly burned up of all the foods, and so the great
food of the muscles and the heart. The poisons of fatigue, acid
products of the contraction of muscles, are antagonized and
neutralized by substances formed in the course of the oxidation of the
sugar. Adrenalin, too, is directly fatigue antagonist. It causes the
blood to clot faster than under ordinary circumstances. It erects the
hair of the animal, and dilates the pupils of the eyes. There is an
increase of the apparent size, all of which are to intimidate the
enemy, like an Indian's painting of his face blue and green. It
also--but what else does it not do?

The story of adrenalin would have delighted the heart of Samuel
Butler. His "Note Books," opulent as they are, would have been the
richer in pages and pages with his comments on it. Contending as he
did with the pompous, dogmatic mechanism worship of the new scientific
clique of his time on the one hand, and the superstitions of the old
theological caste on the other, he had to fight the hardest kind of
guerrilla warfare in defense of the Purpose of Life. Adrenalin, that
weapon of a gland tracing its ancestry back to the begetter of the
brain itself, for brain and adrenal gland both have evolved from the
small nerve ganglia of the invertebrates, would have backed up to the
hilt his argument, which he had to elaborate on the indirect grounds
of analogy and induction. Essential for defense, and for protection,--
an organ in which everything necessary for the stratagems of retreat,
or the offensives of attack, are supplied ad libitum, while everything
non-essential or detrimental to the matter of the moment is inhibited,
arrested and suppressed--no more perfect sample of the design with
which Life is drenched could be imagined by the most closeted of
passionate idealists.

FAILURE OF THE ADRENALS

As the gland of acute stress and strain, the adrenals in modern life
are called upon to function more heavily and frequently than in the
past. As a matter of fact, the life of the beast of jungle and field,
as well as of savage and barbarian, is just as full of emergencies and
shocks as that of the average city man or woman. In the case of the
latter, however, inhibitions, education, and the conditions of modern
living, improper food, sedentary indoor confinement, and universal
rack and noise, have undoubtedly made greater and greater demands upon
the adrenal glands. Chemical quantitative studies have shown that by
repeated stimulation, the adrenal glands may be exhausted of their
reserve supply of secretion, which returns only insufficiently if not
enough time is given for recuperation. There results a condition of
temporary or chronic adrenal insufficiency, supposedly an insufficient
functioning of the gland as a whole. In persons so afflicted there
appears a fatigability, a sensitiveness to cold, cold hands and feet,
which are sometimes mottled bluish-red, a loss of appetite and zest in
life, and a mental instability characterized by an indecision, and a
tendency to worry, a weepishness upon the slightest provocation.

A certain number of the temporary breakdowns or nervous prostrations,
which seem to be growing more common or fashionable, may be sometimes
traced to such a deficiency of normal response to the needs of
everyday conflict by the adrenal gland. In some, mental and physical
elasticity are totally lost, and even the slightest exertion in
either field often causes so much weariness and exhaustion as to be
prohibited. Depression and even melancholia are associated with the
fear of not being able to accomplish good work hitherto easy and
enjoyed. Sometimes they are obsessed with the thought that they have
lost their nerve completely, and so dread to commit themselves in even
the most trivial of situations. The vacillating frame of mind is so
distressing at times as to arouse thoughts of suicide. When these
symptoms concur in the type of personality whom I shall describe
as the unstable adrenal-centered individual, there is evidence for
explaining the process as the effect of an insufficiency of secretion
by the adrenal gland.

Shock, collapse, heart failure and sudden death following abnormal
emotion, like an attack of rage, or the terrors of a railroad
accident, or bad news, or excessive exertion like running a long race
or climbing a high mountain when in poor general health, as the phrase
goes, or in the terminal stages of infections like epidemic influenza
or Asiatic cholera, have been put down to an acute insufficiency of
the adrenal gland. A lowered temperature, blood pressure, and blood
vessel tone, exhibited in tests of the response of the skin to
stroking, are present in all of these and point the same moral.

In the second half of the 19th century, an American physician, Beard,
described Neurasthenia, a general disturbance of the body and mind,
not properly classifiable as a disease, but serious enough to
incapacitate or at least greatly limit the sufferer. The neurasthenic
is to be recognized by the fact that the most painstaking objective
examination of his organs reveals nothing the matter with them. Yet,
according to his complaint, everything is the matter with him. He
cannot sleep when he lies down, he cannot keep awake when he stands
up. He cannot concentrate, but still he is pitifully worried about his
life. The slightest irritant causes him to go off the handle. As
he works himself up into his hysterical state as a reaction to a
disagreeable person or problem, irregular blotches may appear on
his face and neck. Generally, his hands and feet are clammy and
perspiring, his face is abnormally flushed or pallid, the eyes are
worried or starey, unwonted wandering sensations involving now this
area of the body, or now that obsess him. As the blood pressure is
too low for the age, the circulation is nearly always inadequate and
palpitation of the heart is a frequent complaint. So frequent, that
attention is often centered upon the heart, a diagnosis of heart
disease is made, and the unfortunate is doomed for life--to brood
over horrible possibilities. The brooding over themselves and their
troubles is one of the distinctive features of the whole complex.
Neurasthenia may masquerade as any organic disease. An individual with
a soil for a neurasthenic reaction to life will become neurasthenic
when confronted by any stone wall, including a serious ailment within
himself.

Beard's Neurasthenia leaped at once into the limelight. It was seized
upon and applauded in Europe as a good new name for an old condition,
observed particularly in Americans abroad to rest from the fatigues of
the get-rich-quick games of industrial speculators. In fact, the name
of the American Disease was given to it. Various theories about the
effects of climate, sunlight per square inch and unit of time, oxygen
content of the air, and so on, were offered up upon the altar of
scientific explanation. Sir Arbuthnot Lane, famous protagonist of
Lane's intestinal kink, said that all Americans were neurasthenic.
Neurasthenia became one of the most popular of diagnoses, and remains
so today.

Neurasthenia, regarded as a reaction of people to the stress and
strain of life, has without a doubt increased. The most casual of
observers will tell you that the generation of the Great War is a
neurasthenic generation. It takes its pleasures too intensely,
its pains too seriously, its troubles too flippantly. But what is
neurasthenia? Beard himself regarded it as a chronic fatigue and loss
of tone of the nervous system, a literal interpretation of his term.
That the conception, as far as it goes, is valid is proved by the fact
that it is the neurasthenics who furnish the majority of the clientele
of the cults, the Christian Scientists, the osteopaths and the
chiropractors, and who are the subjects of the faith and miracle
cures, like those of Lourdes. That is because their particular
disease, or what appears to them to be their very own disease--and
they certainly cherish their ailments--is but an expression of, a
compensation for, indeed a consolation for, the underlying feelings of
insufficiency or inferiority. Were there no moral code, were there
no social system, nor the consequent inculcated conscience to be
responsible to, there would be no such disguising symptom as
the disease which preoccupies the consciousness. The feeling of
insufficiency would be there, and would be recognized as in itself
the disease. To the physiologist and the psychologist, the feeling of
insufficiency is the disease, no matter how spectacular the overlaying
phenomena--a cripple on crutches or a man blind and speechless. Shell
shock is now acknowledged to belong to this group.

Now one of the outstanding effects of disease of the adrenal glands is
the feelings of muscular and mental inefficiency. And as a matter
of fact, a good number of observations conspire for the idea that a
certain number of neurasthenics are suffering from insufficiency of
the adrenal gland. The chronic state of the acute phenomenon, known as
the nervous breakdown, really represents in them a breakdown of the
reserves of the adrenals, and an elimination of their factor
of safety. In the light of that conception, the great American
disease--dementia americana--is seen to be adrenal disease--and the
American life to be the adrenal life, often making too great demands
upon that life, and so breaking down with it.

ADRENAL EXCESS

The converse of adrenal insufficiency, that of adrenal excess, also
exists. In certain types of the middle-aged, a high blood pressure,
accompanied by a great capacity for work, has been shown to be
associated with hypertrophy of the cortex. In women, there is a
degree of masculinity, as the adrenal in women makes for masculinity,
neutralising more or less the specifically feminine influences of
the internal secretions of the ovary. Such women possess a vigor and
energy above the normal, and command responsible positions in society,
not only among their own sex, but also among men. They are the ones
who, in the present overturn of the traditional sex relationships,
will become the professional politicians, bankers, captains of
industry, and directors of affairs in general.

THE GONADS

(_Sexual, Puberty or Interstitial Glands_)

The gonads is the name applied to the generative or reproductive
glands considered collectively. In the male, they are the testes; in
the female, the ovaries. They are, therefore, sometimes called the
sexual glands. As they possess definite canals for the removal of
their gross secretion, the specific reproductive cells, ova or
spermatozoa, to a surface of the body, they are first of all glands of
external secretion. But they have been also found to hold secretory
cells not concerned with the making of the reproductive corpuscles,
but, as all the evidence indicates, with the manufacture of an
internal secretion. These interstitial cells form the interstitial
gland. A classic example of a gland of internal secretion lodged in
the interstices of a gland of external secretion is thus furnished by
the gonads.

ORIGIN OF SEX TRAITS

The history of sex goes back far in the scheme of life. The
immortality of the ameba was at one time one of the indisputables of
biology. Then some observations were made which threw doubt upon a
long accepted fact, now declared a dogma. Lately, opinion has veered
back to immortality. But in the case of a close relative of the ameba,
the one-celled animal known as the paramecium, union with another
paramecium, true conjugation, has been proved necessary to prevent
death sooner or later. Sex here appears in its most primitive form, on
the basis of exchange of necessary materials, between individuals to
prevent death, their own having been, so to speak, worn out, in the
course of metabolism.

Specifically different sexes come later, when mortality is a universal
fate, as a means of rebirth and escape from death. Then the sexes
develop their latest function, most prominent among the younger
vertebrates, of acting as nature's most potent method of variation and
differentiation. In the pursuit of the different, nature has exalted
sex, and the intensity of the sex life. As far as the preservation of
a species is concerned, and the reproduction of the individual, the
asexual methods, budding, for example, would have done well enough.
But when it comes to enacting a different individual apart from the
effects of environment, sex stands out as the favored method of Life.

The development of the sexes and the sexual life brought a new element
of conflict into the living world. Before the advent of the sexes the
conflict was essentially for the means of existence, food alone. But
with the sexual life came a conflict for sex pleasure, a competition
among members of the same species for the same individual as their sex
partners. The result was the introduction of a factor in evolution
which Darwin examined so closely in the "Descent of Man."

The sex conflict has been the cause for the origin and the survival
of certain physical and mental traits, helpful in sex attraction, sex
combat, the growth of the embryo, and the nutrition and safety of the
young of a species,--in short, the whole process of sexual selection.
The proportions of the skeleton, the distribution of hair and fat, the
construction of organs of attack and defense, the color of the skin,
the cyclic processes of preparation for impregnation, the oestrus or
heat period in animals, the menstrual period in the human being, the
psychic reactions to danger and combat have all been thus determined.
That man is bearded while woman is not,--that woman has potentially
functional breasts while man has not,--the aggressive pugnacity of
man contrasted with the more passive timidity of woman, have all been
evolved in the sex struggle, surviving because most effective in that
struggle. These so-called secondary sexual characteristics are an
expression of the influence of the internal secretion of the gonads,
or the interstitial glands. Some call them puberty glands, because
their ripening initiates puberty.

We know that these interstitial glands, to stick to that name, (rather
than to the name of the puberty glands, since they serve not only
to induce puberty but to maintain maturity) are the actual primary
dictators of the process by which male and female are distinguished,
if not created. Castration was probably the first surgical operation
carried out for experimental purposes, suggested no doubt by a
curiosity concerning its effects. Trepanning of the skull, the
geologic record indicates, was done even by the cave man. But as an
experimental operation, castration seems to hold the primary position
in the annals of surgery.

Its effects noted, the satisfaction of one of the lower human
instincts, jealousy, popularised it. From the days of Semiramis,
eunuchs have been commonplace figures of the East, their function
definite: to guard the harems of the powerful. The age of Abdul Hamid
witnessed no diminution of the barbaric tortures by which children are
prepared for the profession. It is to the credit of England that in
its dominions in the Orient the practice has been abolished. But it
goes on even today. According to the best authorities, four out of
five of these victims at the auto-da-fe of a vicious human instinct
die immediately or soon after from exhaustion due to pain and
infection. Not all of the ancient nations countenanced the brutal
horror. The Hebrews placarded castration an unpardonable sin, making
it a sin to castrate even animals. Nor was any man so mutilated
permitted to worship in the house of the Lord (Deuteronomy xxiii, 11).
Yet we have evidence that the latter Jewish kings employed foreign
eunuchs in their harems, who often held the most important positions
as ministers of the court.

Besides the eunuchs, another group of people have presented material
for the study of the interstitial glands. These are the Skoptzi of
Russia and the Lipowaner of Roumania. Among them castration is a
religious ritual. Mankind has always been most brutal to itself in the
name of the ideal. These sects were founded because in the eighteenth
century an antipode of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young discovered this
passage in Matthew xix, 12.

"For there are some eunuchs which were so born from their mother's
womb, and there are some eunuchs which were made eunuchs of men: and
there be eunuchs _which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom
of heaven's sake_. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it."

He decided that he was inspired to spread the gospel of castration. A
sect was founded who thought that surgery was the easiest way to enter
the gates of Paradise, and they multiplied and fructified. The sect
exists today, and some of the most interesting studies of the internal
secretion of the interstitial glands have been made among them.

Related to acquired eunuchism is the condition of eunuchoidism, the
eunuchs which were so born from their mother's womb. Baron Larey, the
great surgeon of Napoleon's armies, was their first painter. He was
the only altruist Bonaparte said he had ever met in his life. He
portrayed a group of soldiers with peculiarly high-pitched voices,
smooth and hairless skins, and atrophied generative organs. A somewhat
similar picture is evolved in certain types of insufficiency of
the pituitary gland. Features of the picture are exhibited with
disturbances of the other internal secretory glands also, like the
thymus.

But a host of experiments and data prove the interstitial glands to be
the direct controllers of elementary sexuality and the specific sex
traits of male and female. Beginning with Berthold back in the first
half of the nineteenth century, who studied the fowl, a number of
observations have been made on the effects of excision, translocation
and transplantation of these glands.

The results of the experiments and observations can be summed up as
follows: if the male individual is castrated before puberty, that is,
before the advent of the sexual life, secondary sex qualities do not
develop. In males, the generative organs do not grow, hair on the face
does not appear, hair elsewhere on the body remains generally scanty,
the voice continues as high-pitched as the child's, there is more
or less muscle weakness, obesity, and mental sluggishness. In other
words, we have an effeminate man, technically a eunuch. In the
castrated female, the pelvis does not grow to the normal feminine
size, the breasts do not swell as they should, more or less hair comes
out on the face, the voice is low-pitched, and tends to be rather
husky, the legs are longer, and again, the mentality is dulled. That
is, a masculine sort of woman is produced.

In short, the castrated male takes on a feminine type, and the
castrated female, a male type. In either case there is also an
infantilism, a retention of the infantile mental traits, a lack of
development of the adult mental attitudes and reactions. Now, if
in the castrated male is transplanted an ovary, the positive
characteristics of the female are evoked, such as enlarged mammary
glands, and a tendency to secretion of milk. Experiments have also
been reported in which a uterus was also placed in such an animal,
with a means of entry, and pregnancy followed. If in the castrated
female a testicle is planted, the masculine traits become much more
marked and striking. A direct exchange of the male and female
rôles can thus be achieved. Castration after puberty cannot modify
profoundly structures like the skeleton which are already completed.
Yet it may unquestionably bring about definite retrogressive changes
in the secondary sex characters: reduction or loss of virility,
diminution of facial and body hair, and a general presenility or
hastening of senility.

How remarkably these interstitial cells influence the entire structure
and vitality of the organism is indicated by these facts. How much
they have to do with sexual impulses, sexual excitement, and sexual
desire, what the Freudians have popularized as the libido, and how
subtly they act upon the coming and duration of adolescence and
maturity, as well as sexual precocity and peversions, we shall
consider in a later chapter. But it is enough now to remember that
these interstitial glands are the primary dictators of the genital
sense and flair of the individual. In any attempt at measurement of
men and women, the quality and quantity of the internal secretion
of the interstitial cells must be respected as a fundamental
consideration. The womanly woman and the manly man, those ideals of
the Victorians, which crumbled before the attack of the Ibsenites,
Strindbergians and Shavians in the nineties, but which must be
recognized as quite valid biologically, are the masterpieces of these
interstitial cells when in their perfection. They are such solely
because of the right concentration in the blood of the substances
manufactured not only by these cells, but by all the glands of
internal secretion. For it cannot be repeated and emphasized too often
that the interstitial cells of the sex glands are most sensitive to
all kinds of other influences, and, in particular, the other internal
secretory organs. They may indeed be watched as an index scale or
barometer of the general tone of the whole internal secretion system.
Sex variations offer a variety of clues to variations, disturbances,
predominances and abnormalities in all the components of the ductless
gland association.

To take a single instance, the development of the long bones is
dependent upon the handling of food lime by the body. Eunuchs and
eunuchoids, that is, individuals with insufficient internal secretion
of the interstitial cells, have longer bones and more fragile bones
than the normal. Vice versa, those with an excess of the secretion
have shorter and thicker bones. The earlier the onset of menstruation,
which means puberty, the shorter the extremities, as the action of the
internal secretion of the ovaries closes the story of the growth of
the long bones.

The ovaries are a most important factor in the regulation of the power
of the organism to keep lime in the bones. If they over-secrete in an
excess which cannot be taken care of by the other glands of internal
secretion, the body loses lime, a softening and curving of the bones
occurs, and the most horrible deformities and tortures for the
sufferer. Taking out the ovaries has cured some of the afflicted.
Administration of the antagonizing gland extracts has helped others.
An Italian, Bossi, in 1907, used adrenal gland curatively. More
recently, a British student of the subject, Blair Bell, was given the
direction of the treatment, at long range, of a number of cases in
India, the land of chronic pregnancy with insufficient food, and
consequent oversecretion of the ovaries, with the typical softening of
the bones. At his suggestion pituitary was used successfully.

Some of the glands of internal secretion act as accelerators to the
sex glands. Others act as retarding antagonists. Among the most
important of the latter is

THE THYMUS

The thymus is the gland which dominates childhood. It appears to do so
by inhibiting the activity of the testes or ovaries. Castration causes
a persistent growth and retarded atrophy of the thymus. Removal of the
thymus hastens the development of the gonads.

Situated in the chest, astride the windpipe, it descends and covers
over the upper portion of the heart, overlapping the great vessels
at the base of the heart. It is a brownish red mass, which when cut
presents the spongy effect of a sweetbread. The more intimate view
of detail revealed by the higher powers of the microscope shows
conglomerations of the white cells of the blood known as lymphocytes.
But scattered through the substance of the gland, between these
lymphocytes, like the interstitial cells of the sex glands placed
between the sex cells, are peculiarly staining cells in whorls.
Of which there are many more in the thymus of embryonic and early
postnatal life, known after their discoverer as Hassal's Corpuscles.
They are believed by some to elaborate the specific internal secretion
of the thymus. Present in all vertebrates, there seems to be more of
it in the carnivora than in the herbivora, like the thyroid.

Concerning the exact function of the thymus, we are a good deal at
sea. The latest opinion about the results of extirpation even in young
and growing animals is that they are nil. Yet there is a certain
justification for proclaiming the thymus the gland of childhood, the
gland which keeps children childish and sometimes makes children out
of grown-ups. There is a quantity of data for that proposition. In
the first place, the curve of rise of growth of the gland seems to
coincide with the period of childhood, the curve of its decline with
the period of adolescence and the rise of the sex glands. In the
past, it was accepted, that with puberty the thymus atrophied and
was replaced by some sort of fatty tissue. Nowadays, it is held that
secretion cells persist throughout life. When the extent of this
persistence is too great, the gland being from five to ten times as
large as the normal, a number of other features become prominent to
make the extraordinary individual, the status lymphaticus, who amid
the hazards of life will react in an extraordinary way. He will be
taken up in the consideration of internal secretion personalities.

Then there are the varied and remarkable phenomena of thymus
enlargement and hyperactivity in childhood itself. When an enlarged
thymus is present in an infant, the initiation of breathing in the
new-born, the introduction of the newcomer to the oxygen of the air,
may be an exceedingly prolonged, difficult, matter. Such a baby is
said to be born blue, and the breathing may be stridorous for days,
becoming normal for a time, to be followed later by spells of trouble
in breathing, breathlessness or breathlessness with blueness, and
threatened extinction. Sometimes these spells come out of a clear
sky in an apparently healthy child. That some poison, probably an
oversecretion of the thymus, is responsible is shown by the relief
obtainable by X-ray shrinkage of the gland, or the surgical removal of
a part of it.

Moreover, the gland is influenced by and influences the factors
of body weight and growth with an extreme readiness and lability.
Deficient general undernutrition leads to rapid decline in its weight.
Back in 1858, the pioneer student of the thymus, Friedleben, declared
that the size and condition of the thymus is an index to be the state
of nutrition of the body. Underfeeding for four weeks will reduce it
to one thirtieth the normal. It seems to act as a storage and reserve
organ, affording some protection against the limitation of growth by
lack of food material. In exhausting or wasting disease, the weight
of the gland sinks much more quickly than other glands. Scattered
instances have been reported of children growing, putting on inches in
height and expanding mentally, when thymus was fed to them, in whom
every other measure previously tried had failed. A French study of
over four hundred idiotic children with normal thyroids reported that
over three fourths had no thymus at all. Everything points to the most
direct and close relation between the gland and nutrition and growth,
but with nothing tangibly definite like our knowledge of the thyroid
and the pituitary.

There is evidence that the thymus is involved in the health and
efficiency of muscle cells and muscularity. Certain tumors of the
thymus, presumably destructive of the gland substance proper, and
thus cutting off its secretion, are accompanied by a singular muscle
weakness and atrophy of the muscle cells, entirely out of proportion
to the general damage suffered by the other cells of the body when
affected by the poison of a malignant growth. Also, the thymus has
been discovered diseased in certain mysterious progressive muscular
wastings. A remarkable fatigability of muscles, which appears after
the slightest exertion, is a feature. The feeding of thymus has caused
muscle cramps which apparently depends upon an increased excitability
of the muscle nerve endings.

Feeding of thymus to some of the lower creatures of the animal kingdom
will completely hold up differentiation. Take the unfolding of the
specialized tissues and organs which transform the tadpole into the
frog and the chrysalis into the butterfly. A tadpole kept supplied
with enough thymus in a nutrient medium will swell into an
extraordinary giant tadpole, but will not change into a frog.
Recently, this experiment has been contradicted. Yet this effect
corresponds to the conception of its importance in childhood as a
retardant of precocity, physical and mental. Clinical observations
emphasize that in childhood it is the chief brake upon the other
glands of internal secretion which would hasten development and
differentiation, checking them perhaps for a given time and so
profoundly influencing growth.

THE PINEAL

The pineal is another gland which has been credited with similar
abilities and a like holding-the-reins-tight-in-childhood function
among the cells. Like the thymus, it has been supposed one of the
distinctive organs of childhood and to die with it. Generations of
anatomists solemnly asserted, repeating each other's mistakes with the
aplomb of the historians who declare that history repeats itself, that
the pineal body was a useless, wastefully space consuming vestige of a
once important structure. That was the view in that century of grandly
inaccurate assertions, the nineteenth. Not that they relegated it with
that statement to the limbo of the dull and the uninteresting. Quite
the contrary. They conferred upon it a distinguished romance and
mystery by identifying it as the last heir and vestigial remnant of
a third eye, situated in the back of the head, which may still be
observed in certain reptiles. Imagine it! Somewhere, stuck away in a
cranny of the floor of your head and mine, is this descendant of an
organ that once sparkled and shone, wept and glared, took in the stars
and hawks and eagles, and now is condemned to eternal darkness and an
ineffectual sandiness. Today, we have not discarded that view of its
history, but we know a little more regarding its composition and
function.

What and where is the romantic object? It is a cone-shaped bit of
tissue hidden away at the base of the brain in a tiny cave behind
and above its larger colleague, the pituitary. Microscopic scrutiny
reveals that it is made up in part of nerve cells containing a pigment
similar to that present in the cells of the retina, thus clinching the
argument for its ancient function as an eye. But the outstanding and
specifically glandular cells are large secreting affairs, which too
reach back to the tidewater days of our vertebrate ancestors, when
Eurypterus and other Crustaceans were engrossed with the fundamental
problems of brain versus belly. Besides these, there are the singular
masses upon which has been fastened the unnecessarily opprobious
epithet of brain sand. These, noted and commented upon from the
earliest times, consist of collections of crystals of lime salts,
sometimes small, lying about in discrete irregular masses, and
sometimes grouped into larger mulberry-like concretions, varying
much in size. These brain sand particles have become of practical
importance in the detection of pineal disease because they, like all
lime salts, will stop the X-rays, and so can be photographed.

For a long time, indeed up to scarcely more than a few decades or so
ago, the pineal was believed to have no present function at all, or at
least no ascertainable or accessible duty in the body economy. That
it might perhaps be, in a sense, a gland of internal secretion was
a despised theory. Then a classic case, the most extraordinary and
curiosity-piquing sort of case, with symptoms involving the pineal
gland, in a boy, was reported by the German neurologist, Von Hochwart.
That boy provoked a little army of researches. He came to the clinic
complaining about his eyes and other troubles which pointed pretty
definitely to a brain tumor as the diagnosis to pigeon-hole him.
Nothing extraordinary about him in that respect. But the story told by
his parents was quite extraordinary, even to the jaded palate of the
clinic professor and his assistants. They said that he was a little
over five years old, a statement conclusively proved correct at his
death. Up to the time at which his illness began, he had been quite
normal in size, intelligence and interests. But with the onset of his
misfortune, he had begun to grow, and rapidly until now he looked
and corresponded in all measurements to a normal boy of twelve or
thirteen. Hair developed all over his skin, most prominently and
abundantly in the typically hairy places of adults. His voice became
low-pitched, and most remarkable of all, his sexuality and mentality
precocious. He became capable of true sexual life and is said to have
asked many questions about the fate and condition of the soul after
death. On one occasion he remarked reflectively: "It is odd how much
better I feel when I let other children play with my toys than when I
play with them myself." Other statements attributed to him imply the
most astounding maturity of thought and mental process. Headaches
finally came, and he died about four weeks later. The cause of the
whole bizarre tragedy was found to be a tumor of the pineal gland.

As has happened before in medical history, no sooner was the one
prodigy reported, than a score of others of the same ilk sprang into
the limelight. Cases of precocious genital development, especially,
some of them occurring as early as the second year of life, were
linked with them. It is an interesting point to be noted that in
these, as in those started by an overaction of the adrenal cortex, it
is premature masculinity that is stimulated. The adrenal cortex must
be classed as a gland of masculinity. The pineal possibly acts as a
brake upon the adrenal cortex.

Very soon after the report of Von Hochwart's prodigy appeared, an
experimental research on the pineal was begun in New York. The pineal
glands of a number of young bullocks were obtained and used for
feeding, to see whether an overaction of the internal secretion
could be produced. Guinea pigs, kittens and rabbits were used. The
experiments covered about two years in time. Of a dozen small
kittens, the subjects outgrew the controls rapidly in activity, size,
intelligence, and resistance to intercurrent disease. Of ten small
rabbits, the controls weighed about a third less than the subjects,
which were strikingly clean, active, fat and salacious.

Feeding of the gland was then extended to a particular class of
defective children, children with well-shaped heads, normal eyes,
symmetrically functioning limbs, excellent digestion, strong muscles
and generally, normal, sometimes rapid growth. It is to them,
particularly when mental normality has progressed up to the eighth,
tenth or twelfth year and stopped, that the term "moron" has been
applied. They have been a hopeless lot, belonging to the limbo of the
incurables. Moreover, they, emphatically the physically normal ones,
differ from one another enormously in the extent to which mental
operations are possible. As all transitions and degrees exist, no
definite classification and subdivision of them has been made. Yet
ever since the cretin, once looked upon as an eternally damned
defective, was transformed by thyroid feeding into an apparently
normal being, there has been no dearth of effort to find the right
kind of internal secretion to fit their desperate situations, but in
vain. In defectives with definitely, organically damaged brains,
no result of course was to be expected. In those of any class over
fifteen, no response has been elicited by feeding pineal gland. In the
others the results have been contradictory.

A set of observations have related the pineal to muscle function,
inviting comparison of it with the thymus. There is a singular muscle
shrinking and deforming disease, known as progressive muscular
dystrophy, hitherto a complete and unsolved mystery. Newer studies
of the pineal in this disease during life by means of the X-ray have
shown it calcified, that is, buried in lime salts, which signifies put
out of business. Recently thus another hint as to its function has
been ferreted out.

The tadpole as a reagent to test out the growth effects of different
glands of internal secretion has also been employed for the pineal.
Ten-day-old tadpoles fed on pineal present a marked translucency of
the skin due to a retraction of the skin pigment cells. Now without a
doubt a number of as yet unknown growth and metabolic effects follow
exposure of the body to the complete gamut of light rays. The
interesting suggestion follows that the pineal influences the body by
varying the degree of light ray reaction.

The pineal, the ghost of a once important third eye at the back of
our heads, still harks back in its function to a regulation of our
susceptibility to light, and its effect upon sex and brain. So it
becomes one of the significant regulators of development, with an
indirect hastening or retardation of puberty and maturity according
as it works in excess, or too indolently. It appears thus the blood
brother of the adrenal cortex which also influences the skin pigment
and so susceptibility of the organism to light, brain growth and sex
ripening. It is interesting that Descartes, in 1628, considered the
pineal the seat of the soul.

THE PARATHYROIDS

Sometimes imbedded within the substance of the thyroid in the neck,
sometimes placed directly behind it upon the windpipe, are four tiny
glands, each about the size of a wheat seed, the parathyroids. For
long they were swamped in the nearness of their great neighbor, and
considered merely a variable part of it. There are some who contend
that even today. But it has been proven that they are separate,
individual glands, with a structure and function of their own, and a
definite importance to the body economy.

On the animal family tree they appear early, contemporaneously with
the thyroids. In the embryo they develop from about the same sites.
And very often they look very much alike under the microscope,
especially when the cells are in certain quiescent stage of secretion.
Yet they are wholly independent in nature, activity and business.

First experimenters upon the effects of removal of the thyroid were
confused by contradictory findings with different animals because in
some they would take out the parathyroids at the same time without
knowing it, and in others they would not. That possibility suggested,
more careful dissectors accomplished the job of extirpating the
thyroid while leaving the parathyroids intact and vice versa. In
consequence some definite information about the parathyroids is
available, even though their internal secretion has never been
isolated, or its existence established as more than an inference.

When the parathyroids are removed, an astounding increase in the
excitability of the nerves follow. It is as if the animal were
thoroughly poisoned with strychnine. The slightest stimulus will make
him jump, or throw him into a spasm. When the excitability of the
nerves is measured by an electrical instrument it is found augmented
by from five hundred to one thousand per cent. The reflexes, those
automatic responses of brain and spinal cord to certain stimuli and
situations, become enormously sensitive, so that merely letting the
light into a darkened room will make the subject of the experiment go
into a series of convulsions.

On the chemical side, an explanation for these nervous phenomena has
been advanced. Lime in the blood and cells appears to be necessary in
a number of ways. In the making of bone and teeth, in the coagulation
of the blood, in the keeping of fluid within the blood vessels, and
in maintaining the tone of the nerves, it plays a major rôle. Now the
parathyroids, among all the glands of internal secretion, seem to act
as the prime regulators of the amount of lime held within the blood
and cells. For when the parathyroids have been completely and
aseptically excised, without injuring any other organ, immediately the
body begins to lose lime. Something has gone out of it that helped
it to bind lime, and without that essential something, the internal
secretion presumably of the parathyroids, the lime departs. As
a conspicuous consequence the teeth fail to develop properly,
particularly as to their enamel, for which lime is an essential
constituent. Hair is lost, there is a general wasting, the nails get
brittle, and the bones soften, and the animal dies. Supplying lime
directly, particularly by direct injection into the blood, will
relieve the symptoms.

In man, a condition of nervous over-excitability has been described
as tetany. It occurs most often in the young, the pregnant, or in
vomiting after operations. All sorts of tests have related the malady
to the phenomena succeeding parathyroid deprivation, and they are now
looked upon as aspects of it. Individuals have been reported suffering
from an insufficiency of the internal secretion of parathyroids,
with a sudden extreme depression, nervousness and restlessness, an
inability to sleep or sit still, and a tremulous handwriting. Such
reports round out the evidence for the importance of the parathyroids
in an understanding of the factors which control growth, especially
as regards lime utilization, for without lime properly handled no
building of cells is possible. Also the parathyroids are necessary to
a steadiness of muscle and nerve.

THE PANCREAS

The business of the parathyroids concerns the keeping of lime in the
body. Another gland, the pancreas or sweetbreads, this time within the
abdomen, a close neighbor of the solar plexus, alias the abdominal
brain, is occupied with holding and hoarding sugar in the body,
particularly in the liver, the great sugar warehouse. This matter
of retaining sugar and controlling its output is one of the utmost
significance for growth and metabolism, the resistance to infections,
the response to emergency situations, and in general to the
mobilization of energy for physical and mental purposes. For without
sugar sufficiently at hand for the cells, no muscle work or nerve
work, the essentials of the struggle for existence, are possible.

The pancreas is an organ with both an internal and external secretion.
The external secretion, long known, evolved by the major portion of
the gland, is poured into the small intestine to play the star in
digestion. Scattered here and there among the definitely glandular
cell groups creating the external secretion are smaller collections of
cells, called the islets of Langerhans, which have been demonstrated
to elaborate the internal secretion. There are about a million of
these islands in each gland. The hormone has been called insuline.
Unlike most of the glands with a double secretion in which the
internal is absolutely independent, and so to speak, unconscious of
the external, these two of the pancreas are often disturbed together,
perhaps because trouble easily hits them both together.

Quite the most well-known disease due to disturbed internal secretory
function of the pancreas is diabetes. An enormous amount of work has
been spent upon the various aspects of it as a mystery. Hundreds of
papers in a dozen languages upon the subject are in existence. In a
nutshell, they have established pretty well that diabetes is a disease
in which there is an excess of sugar in the blood and urine because of
an insufficient amount of the secretion of the islands of Langerhans
in the pancreas. Removal of the pancreas makes the body, essentially
the liver, unable to retain sugar, as well as unable to burn up sugar
for energy. The situation is comparable to a locomotive with its coal
bins leaking, and the coal itself acting as if made of slate or some
equally uncombustible or only partially combustible material.

The control of sugar mobilization from the liver, where it is stored
as glycogen or animal starch, is divided between the pancreas and
the adrenals, the pancreas acting as the brake, the adrenals as the
accelerator of the mechanism. Adrenal and pancreas are therefore
direct antagonists, the pans of the scale which represents sugar
equilibrium in the organism. Diabetes may be regarded as a disturbance
of the adrenal-pancreas balance, assisted by events which produce
adrenal overwork like great or prolonged emotion, or by strain of the
pancreas, effected by over-eating for example.

There are other minor glands of internal secretions. But those
considered are by far the most important and the most recently
explored. In a summary, one would classify them as follows:

   _Name        Secretion            Function_
  1. Thyroid       Thyroxin          Gland of energy production
                                     Controller of growth
                                       of specialized organs
                                       and tissues--brain
                                       and sex

  2. Pituitary--                     Gland of energy consumption
                                       and utilization--continued
                                       effort
       anterior    Unknown           Growth of skeleton and
                                       supporting tissues
       posterior   Pituitrin         Nerve cell and involuntary
                                       muscle cell, brain and sex tone

  3. Adrenals                        The Gland of Combat
       cortex      Unknown            a. Brain growth--tone
                                         development of
                                         sex glands
       medulla     Adrenalin          b. Energy for emergency
                                         situations

  4. Pineal        Unknown            a. Brain and sex development
                                      b. Adolescence and puberty
                                      c. Light and maturity

  5. Thymus        Unknown            Gland of Childhood

  6. Interstitial  Testes in male     Glands of secondary
       glands of   Ovaries in female   Sex traits

  7. Parathyroids  Unknown            a. Controllers of lime
                                         metabolism
                                      b. Excitability of
                                         muscle and nerve

  8. Pancreas      Insuline           Controller of sugar
                                         metabolism

CHAPTER IV

THE GLANDS AS AN INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATE

Now in considering each gland of internal secretion as a separate
entity, and labelling it with certain properties and actions, we of
course commit the usual sin of the intellect: the sin of abstraction
and isolation of its material. This crime of analysis the intellect
commits every day in the search for truth. Before its dissection, it
seems to have to dip the elusive article in a fixative, and bottle it
in a vacuum.

Yet nothing in reality is more of a changing flux than the body in all
of its parts and tissues and organs. And of all these, the glands of
internal secretion stand out as the most susceptible to change. Made
to react to stimuli of offense and defense, instantaneously responsive
to situations involving energy exchanges and protective reflexes,
they are never for any minute the same or alone. They never function
separately. Each influences the other in a communicating chain. Let
one be disturbed, and all the others will feel the impact of the
disturbance and vibrate with it.

Any break in the somatic or psychic equilibrium, a blow or an
infection, or a startling thing seen, or a worrisome thought felt,
will start a process going. This will only wind up when every gland
has been somehow touched, and a final equilibrium reestablished. The
thyroid, maybe, was first excited, and then in turn the adrenals, with
a boomerang reinforcing effect upon the thyroid, and at the same time
a stimulating effect upon the pituitary. Each gland is thus influenced
and influencing, agent and reagent in the complex adjustments of the
organism.

ENDOCRINE CO-OPERATIONS

The body-mind is a perfect corporation. Not quite perfect, for
continually there arise little insurgencies, inadequacies and
frictions to which in time it will succumb. Yet, in the efficiency of
its co-operations, and in the co-ordination of the needs and supplies
of producer, middle man, and consumer, there is no one of the great
organizations of the captains of industry which can for a moment
approach it.

Of this corporation the glands of internal secretion are the
directors. But the huge corporation, not to topple over with its own
unwieldy size, must be composed of smaller units, each within itself
a corporation, and governed by a directorate. There are, in the
corporation-organism, different departments and bureaus, subdivisions
of function, which constitute the smaller corporations within the
larger corporation. These subsidiary companies have their own glands
of internal secretion as their directors.

Thus, the growth of the brain is presided over by the adrenal cortex,
the thyroid, the thymus and the pituitary. They determine the size of
the brain, the number of its cells, the complexity of its convolutions
and the speed of its chemistry, which means the speed of thought and
memory and imagination. As its directorate, therefore, they may be
entitled. The disturbance of one of them means the disturbance of all
of them, and a consequent deleterious effect upon the brain. Now take
the burning up of sugar in the organism, the great material source
of energy, which is controlled by the pancreas, the adrenals and
the liver, the thyroid and the pituitary. Together they form the
directorate of sugar metabolism. But, as is evident from a glance at
the membership of the growth directorate, and comparing it with the
directorate of sugar metabolism, there are some members who are
present on both boards. An infection, an illness, an ailment, an
exaltation or intoxication of such members will produce reverberations
in both directorates. A disturbance of sugar metabolism might then
cause a disturbance of growth. The advantages and disadvantages
are before us of having, in the glands of internal secretion, an
interlocking directorate, rulers over all the varied and manifold
activities of the organism.

Behind the body, and behind the mind is this board of governors.
Indeed, from the administrative and legislative points of view, the
body-mind may be said to be governed by the House of Glands. It is the
invisible committee behind the throne. Upon the throne is what? Man,
the most baffling of complexities. Man who is not a mind, but owns a
mind--Man who is not a body, but possesses a body, just as he might
have a motor car, a fortune or a calamity. Back of all his daily
activities, behind the life of body-mind is the mysterious unique
individuality, the Ego, the Psyche or the Soul. Lately, a competitor
with these ancient and honorable terms has come upon the scene as the
Subconscious. In that darkened No Man's Land is determined a man's
destiny. The endocrine association stands out as at least the most
important physical determinant of the states and processes of the
subconscious.

ANTAGONISMS AND CO-OPERATIONS

As within a corporation there are factions and cliques, influences
that always work together, and forces that are always pulling in
opposite directions, so within the interlocking directorate of the
ductless glands there are antagonisms and inhibitions, co-operations
and compensations. One gland will assist the action of another's
secretion with its own, or will in turn be stimulated to secrete by
it. Another will throw out its secretion in order to neutralize the
effects produced. Or its own activity will be depressed or completely
inhibited by it. Thus the pituitary arouses the interstitial glands
and vice versa, whereas the pancreas and the thyroid are mutually
inhibitory. Indeed, whole systems of glands may work in unison, or be
pitted against each other in certain situations, especially when
the organism is subjected to conflicting impulses with the clash
of opposing instincts, like fear and anger. In general there is
reciprocity and team work among the internal secretions.

A certain minimum amount of each must be present if life is to
continue along the normal lines. Whether there is to be an excess
of any one secretion above this minimum, or a deficiency below it,
decides the fate of the individual. If there is deficiency of one, the
other members of the directorate attempt to make up for what has been
lost, and to carry on its work by an extra effort, to substitute. Or,
released from the discipline of the deficient member, or the necessity
for antagonizing it, they may be released from its stimulus to
secrete, and produce less of their own specific secretion. A general
reaction all along the line will accompany overaction, oversecretion,
of one gland. Due to consequent stimulations and depressions of
other glands, some may be excited by the event to overwork--some to
assist--others, to act as antidote for--the excess secretion, while
still others, relieved of a burden, do not have to supply as much of
their quota under the circumstances and so shut down, or limit their
output.

It is important to get clearly in mind these subtle inter-reactions of
the different ductless glands. They may be antagonistic in their end
effects because of the opposed functions of the nerves or organs
stimulated. There are inhibitions and restraints produced when a gland
will send out its secretions to stop another gland secreting. There
are compensations resulting when because of insufficiency of a gland,
others will endeavour, by manufacturing more of their own secretion,
to compensate for the loss. There are mutual co-operations,
partnerships, when a gland will oversecrete to assist another, or in
response to another which is also oversecreting. There are losses
of balance, so that when one gland ceases secreting, another will
simultaneously or soon after. Normal secretion, oversecretion or
undersecretion are thus adjusted, but leave a train of after effects.

So with loss or insufficiency of the thyroid, there may be pituitary
overgrowth, because the pituitary may act as vicar for the thyroid.
The thyroid and thymus are antagonistic, for the thyroid hastens
differentiation, puberty and the coming of sexual maturity, while the
thymus delays and retards them and prolongs the period of childhood.
The thyroid and the pancreas are antagonists, for when the thyroid
has been excised, the pancreas appear no longer necessary to act as a
break upon the mechanism of sugar liberation into the blood from
the liver. The thyroid stimulates the interstitial glands, for
menstruation and pregnancy are impossible with no thyroid or an
insufficient thyroid. Removal of the pituitary makes the thymus shrink
because the restraining influence of the latter is no longer needed.
But there is an enlargement of the thyroid to compensate. In castrates
there is an increase in the size and number of the cells of the
anterior pituitary, again a compensation or substitution effect. The
pituitary and the adrenal cortex are mutually assistant, alike in
their influence upon the tone of the brain and sex cells.

THE KINETIC SYSTEM

So there are combinations of glands to assist or restrain others, or
to control a body function, or to determine the domination or abeyance
of an instinct. One such has been named the kinetic system because it
comes into play in situations which demand prompt adaptation without
hesitancy, and a consequent immediate transformation of static or
stored energy into kinetic or active energy. According to this
conception the brain, the adrenals, the liver, the thyroid and the
muscles together constitute a machine very much like an automobile.
The self-starter of the machine is the brain, with storage battery
(composed of stored past memories) and ignition combined. The thing
seen without, or the idea felt within, act as the initial sparks,
while the adrenals, as the carburetors, permit the freer flow of fuel,
sugar, from the liver. The thyroid works as the accelerator, the
original impulse finally landing upon muscles keyed up and supplied
with food to meet the situation, be it that of removing a poison,
removing an aggressor (attack) or removing the individual himself
(running away). When one is exhausted by exertion and emotion, injury,
intoxication or infection, it is these members of the kinetic system,
the brain, the adrenals, thyroid and liver, which are exhausted.
Exhaustion diminishes when the activity of the brain is diminished by
anesthetics, and cured when it is abolished by sleep.

If the adrenal gland may be called the Gland of Emergency energy, the
Kinetic System is entitled to the name of Council of Emergency Defense
for the organism. The Kinetic Drive is the name that has been given to
the whole system at work. It is one of the best examples we have of
inter-glandular co-operations and reactions in reply to the threat of
danger or the hint of pleasure.

THE CHECK AND DRIVE SYSTEM

Another instance of the complexity of these inter-glandular reactions
is furnished by the thyroid and the adrenals. The thyroid and the
adrenals are mutually stimulating--when the thyroid oversecretes, the
adrenal dittos, and vice versa. Yet they have directly opposed effects
upon the economy--because they act upon antagonistic portions of
the involuntary or vegetative nervous system, the system which is
independent of the will. Before proceeding further, it is worth while
sketching this division of the nervous system.

In the construction of a motor car from the point of view of absolute
control of it at every moment, the first thought of the mechanic is an
adequate _brake_ and an efficient _regulator_ of speed, instruments
antagonistic, but necessary to work simultaneously or alternately.
The involuntary or vegetative nervous system is built upon the same
principle. It supplies every organ in the body beyond the control of
the will (that is to say, the brain) with two sets of filaments which
have opposing functions. One group of filaments in general increases
or activates the function of the organ to which it is distributed. The
other group of filaments, when tingling, inhibits or prohibits that
function. They are like the two buttons on the wall which regulate
the supply of electricity to incandescent bulbs, one switching on the
current, the other switching it off. It has been agreed to call the
stimulative or activating portion the autonomic or drive system. To
its antagonist has been left the older name of the sympathetic or
check system. It is because they do not both act upon these two
components of the vegetative nervous system, but only upon one, that
the thyroid and adrenal though in themselves complementary, come to
exert opposite effects. For the internal secretion of the thyroid has
a selective affinity for the autonomic or activating system, while
that of the adrenals has a selective affinity for the sympathetic or
inhibiting system.

In the stomach, for instance, extracts of the adrenal glands have been
proved to intensify the function of the sympathetic or check system
in different degrees, so that there is a lessening of the amount and
acidity of the gastric fluid. On the other hand, thyroid extracts will
intensify the action of the autonomic or drive system, so that the
amount and acidity of the digestive juice is increased.

The stomach cell may, therefore, be regarded as a test-reagent for
the different internal secretions, as they affect the check and drive
systems.

These constitute an automatic device for regulating the activities of
every organ. Three factors enter into the mechanism. One is the amount
of the circulating internal secretions. Another is the organic and
functional integrity of the nerve filaments comprising the check and
drive systems. The third consists of the number and vitality and
limitations of the terminal receiving cells acted upon by the nerve
filaments, which in their turn have been acted upon by the internal
secretions. Upon every organ, including the mind, through the brain, a
stimulus from without or within will act according to its ability to
influence one or others of these factors.

Normally, the check and drive systems are properly balanced. But under
stress and strain the balance is upset. Indeed, the Kinetic Drive may
be defined as a mechanism contrived in the course of evolution as the
normal, healthy mode for meeting stress and strain. The Kinetic chain
of organs, brain, adrenals, liver, thyroid and muscles, began working
together in desperate situations for their possessor ages ago.
Successful in helping him to survive, they have survived as a
functional unit.

It was probably evolved in the Post-Tertiary Era, about twenty million
years ago, when the coming of the carnivores introduced direct
body-to-body conflicts, and their concomitants, a quick and versatile
nervous system. During the Tertiary epoch the earth basked in the heat
of a tropical sun nearly everywhere on its surface. The luxuriant
vegetation of the torrid zone flourished and swarmed, for the
temperature all over was what it is today at the equator. Gigantic
vegetarians were the animals, creatures like the dinosaurs, enormous,
gargoylean monsters, of an incredible size and strength, but clumsy
and grotesque, with small brains and little intelligence. For what
need was there for brain and intelligence when food lay about so
abundantly at hand for them to gorge themselves. As there was no
competition for food, there were no enemies.

Then as the earth evolved and grew cooler, vegetation failed, the
ancestors of the present carnivora appeared, the fathers of the
wolf and tiger, light, lithe and pugnacious, with senses acute and
ferocious weapons of attack, who set out to destroy everybody. They
destroyed pretty nearly all of the huge leaf-eating species, and only
the more plastic and smaller ones, who were more keen-sensed and
swift-footed (of whom the deer and antelope, horse and ox are the
descendants), escaped. The smallest either took to the air to become
the bat, or, like the forerunners of the squirrel and ape, took to the
trees.

It was the coming of the carnivores, therefore, that accelerated the
development of brain matter, and started the process which created
man. But in the millions and millions of years of conflicts, instincts
grew into being that sank deep into bone and marrow. The most
fundamental reflexes, those immediate responses to irritation or
danger, were laid down, and among them the drive and check system.
When the animal had decided to fight its enemy or was forced to fight,
or determined to prey, then was the time for the drive system to do
its utmost to speed up everything that would help in the fight, while
the check system came into play to hinder whatever would interfere or
burden in the fray. First the drive mechanism must have been hit upon,
and then the value of the check devices must have been found in fear
and flight, and especially in hiding and simulation of death, when
even breathing had to be inhibited. Until finally there developed, for
everyday use, a complete check and drive nerve machinery for every
organ, to be used according to the exigencies of the moment, with the
thyroid as the primary stimulant and controller of the drive system
and the adrenal as the primary dictator over the check system.

THE HARMONY OF THE HORMONES

All the glands, in fact, work in unison, with a distribution of the
balance of power that diplomatists might envy. In the co-ordinating
synchronism, the vegetative nervous system plays the part of an agent
that acts as well as is acted upon. The chemical interaction of the
internal secretions is not the only way in which they influence each
other. For, as the case of the thyroid and the adrenal so well shows,
secretions which, when directly interacting, are mutually reinforcing,
when affecting nerves, may become clashing opponents.

The Kinetic Chain is about as good a case as there is of the glands of
internal secretion co-operating. The Check and Drive systems, with the
adrenals and thyroid opposed, are one of the best instances of their
antagonisms. Besides, there are a number of other relationships
between them that might be cited. They all bear with more or less
pressure, positive or negative, upon the sex glands which will be
considered in its place. If one wished to consider all the glands in
their pro and anti relations, a separate volume would be required.

THE VEGETATIVE APPARATUS

The combination of the internal secretions and the vegetative system
has been spoken of as the vegetative or autonomic apparatus. The
vegetative apparatus is the oldest part of the nervous system.
And some acquaintance with its constitution is necessary to any
understanding of the possibilities of control of human nature.

For modern thought does not regard the brain as the organ of mind at
all, but as one unit of a complex synthesis, of which mind is the
product, and the vegetative apparatus is the major component. That
involves the blasting of the last current superstition of the
traditional psychology, the dogma that the brain is the exclusive seat
of mind.

That an animal is a vast concourse of cells is one of the accepted
fundamentals of biology. What is not so generally taken into
consideration is that the assemblage is formed by the agglutinations
of millions of years, and that it is hence composed of parts of
different ages and pedigrees, some exceedingly ancient and hoary, some
middle-aged, and some relatively new and recent. In the invertebrates,
who date further back in the history of the planet than any
vertebrate, the nervous system consists of discrete patches of nerve
cells, the ganglions composing the ganglionic system of which the
vegetative or autonomic nervous system of man is the direct descendant
and representative. The brain and central nervous system are
definitely later acquisitions, imposed upon the original stratum of
the check and drive machine.

The primitive chassis of the mechanism, so to speak, is the so-called
vegetative nervous system. Grouped with that system are the primeval
breathing, feeding and reproducing inventions, the viscera boxed up
in the chest and abdomen. The third partner is the glands of internal
secretion, which act upon the viscera both directly and indirectly
through the check and drive effect upon the vegetative nerves.
The glands are like tuning keys, by which certain strings in the
instrument may be tightened, so that its vibratory activity is
increased, or they may be loosened, the vibrations decreased, the
activity lessened. Tuning up the motors is a constant process in the
organism. Finally, there are the large nerve masses at the base of the
brain known as the basal ganglia, which contain the nerve centers for
the co-ordination of the other three. All these together constitute
the oldest family of the corporate organism. Beside them, the brain
and the face and the prehensile organs are mere parvenus.

THE OLDEST PART OF THE MIND

Granted, then, that this vegetative apparatus is the most deeply
rooted core of our being. What warrant is there for the grandiloquence
of the phrase: the Oldest part of the Mind? There is, indeed, room for
rhetoric, even poetry, here. For all the evidence points to it as the
rightful occupant of the throne upon which Shelley placed his Brownie
as the Soul of the Soul. Or to put it in another way, we think and
feel primarily with the vegetative apparatus, with our muscles,
especially the involuntary, with our viscera, and particularly with
our internal secretions. Whenever there is thought and feeling, there
is movement, commotion, precedent and concomitant, among these. They
are the oldest seats of feeling, thought and will and continue to
function as such.

Just what evidence is there for this conception? In the first place,
there is the fascinating story of the origin of vertebrates from
invertebrates of the sea scorpion or spider type. Then there is a
whole group of data which demonstrate that the primitive wishes which
make up the content of a baby consciousness are determined, settled by
states of relaxation or tension in different segments or areas of the
vegetative apparatus. According to this, the brain enters as only one
of the characters in the play of consciousness. It is just the organ
of awareness by the organism of itself as an integer which must adjust
itself to the specific condition within the disturbed vegetative
apparatus. Consequently the brain emerges not as the master tissue,
but as merely the servant of the vegetative apparatus.

Consciousness is a circuit. Swinging around in it are the
wish-feelings generated by the vegetative dynamo. From each viscus,
from the stomach and intestine, from the kidneys and bladder, from
the liver and spleen, from the blood-vessels, from all the glands
of external and internal secretion, there flow along the vegetative
nerves, to and from the brain, energies of various qualities and
intensities. All the members of the vegetative apparatus are more or
less active, and so all our wishes are all more or less active. All
our working hours we are aware of hunger, satiety or indifference, of
a desire to empty the intestine or bladder, or of a lack of necessity
of doing so, of a state of tranquillity of the blood-vessels and sweat
glands, or of a perturbation of them, of a varying tensity of even the
muscles that are, as we say, under the control of the will, of the
state, in fact, of all the elements of the vegetative complex. The