The Glands Regulating Personality

olutionary story. Without some acquaintance with that story, the rough outline of their physical architecture, and the particular work they

HYROI

are bridged by a narrow isthmus of the same tissue. They remind one of the flaps of a purse opened up. The gland

with the ducts of the sexual organs. They are indeed accessory sexual organs, uterine glands, satellites of the sex process. From Petromyzon upward that relationship is lost, the thyroid migrates more an

hairy skin instead of a moist or mucus bearing, chitinous skin, the ownership of an internal bony skeleton and a large skull, and a complicated development of brain, are the diagnostic signs. Thyroid internal secretion has a very definite controlling relation to all of them: to skin, its hairiness, moisture and amount

rger and more compact among the amphibians and reptiles, but still remains quite small. Large and prominent among the birds and mammalia, it is largest and most prominent among the primates and man. It is hence permissible to think of the thyroid as a d

e other glands of internal secretion. In them all, we may suppose, Life, tired of inventing merely prehensile, destructive and reproductive organs

OF THE L

ander, with spotted skin, breathing by means of lungs, has long been known. Feeding the axolotl on thyroid gland produces the metamorphosis very quickly, even if the axolotl is kept in water. In the reptile house at the London Zoological Gardens full-grown examples of the common black axolotl and the pretty white variety ar

ECRETION OF

a single layer of cells enclosing a gelatinous material known as colloid, which stains deeply with acid dyes, comprise

tion of the gland was dependent upon the iodine content for its activity. Active extracts of the thyroid like thyreoglobulin and iodothyrin were proven to contain iodine, and to become inactive when the iodine was removed. Efforts to isolate the iodine containing active principle in pure form we

ified internal secretion of the thyroid because all the effects of the whole gland may be elicited with it. Thyroxin produces results with doses amazingly minute compared with t

roid in the body economy. One may sum it up by saying that the thyroid secretion is the great controller of th

sense (which is the fundamental sense), and the rate at which the chemical reactions go on that constitute the process of life, are dependent upon the thyroid. When the reactions go fast

ns at a greater velocity than a poor one. But the action of thyroid could really be simulated only by some substance that could be introduced into the best possible of gasoline mixtures, to increase its combustibility by a hundred per cent or more. For that is what thyroid will do to our food. Nor has it only this destructive or combustion

OF ENERGY

nergy pressure within the organism. It may be calculated by measuring the amount of carbon dioxide gas exhaled during a unit of time, and the number of calories of heat radiated by the skin simultaneously. A simplified device has lately rendered it practicable to make actual determinations by a few five-minute readings of the rate of oxygen absorption by the lungs. Plummer,

LIZATION

n described by the English physician Gull as a cretinoid state supervening in the adult life of woman, has an insufficient amount of thyroxin in her blood and tissues. She is clumsy and awkward and will stumble when endeavoring to walk upstairs. Any effort is almost paralyzed because the range of fluctuation of energy, the ability to mobilize energy, in turn dependent upon a

s, the level of energy production is bound to be low, and to remain low, and the modus of its mobilization slow and unwieldy. With thyroid is introduced the trick of catalysis, or the speeding up of the vital chemical reactions, through the agency of an intermediate which accelerates the process. It is par excellence the great catalyst of energy in the body. (A catalyst is an intermediary like the trace of water, which will bring about an explosion between dry oxygen and hydrogen that without it

maintaining the same amount of iodine in the blood as there is in sea water. Sea w

n as a pigment for carrying oxygen to the cells not in direct contact with the atmosphere, nutrients to take the place of the prey our marine ancestors gobbled up frankly and directly, and white cells t

odine. As a result, numerous cases of goitre occur. Iodine in the form of sodium iodide in small doses will act as a prophylactic. The amount of iodine in the blood is about one or two parts to ten millions, and th

thin the body is about three weeks. Again we have occasion to notice a protective device of the cells. Since the presence of thyroxin in the tissues determines the rate at which they burn themselves up, it is obvious that if there were no mechanism for retarding its action, and at need varying it, they really would set fire to themselves. That is to say, if the tissues held a maximu

the thyroid glands of beef, sheep and hogs all contain much less iodine than during the summer months. During the winter months, manifestly, more energy is required to maintain body temperature, hence the gland surrenders more of its secret

ut it has, besides the energizing effect, certain formative and nervous influences equally marvelous. As illustrations, there are the cases of thyroid deprivation in human bein

AS THYROID

symptoms witnessed. The animal fails to grow. The bones and cartilage, except of the skull, fail to develop. The abdomen projects and becomes large and flabby. The

ably 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 irreg

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

hat 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.

ed 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 th

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

ting. 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 anyth

ble 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 con

ely 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 s

od 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

OF FEEDI

ightway 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 proddi

in 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 fi

s 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 previou

heir 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 oc

cret 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

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 pr

nd 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 an

helming 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

able. 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 th

AS DIFFE

es in themselves, that appear on the surface absolutely unrelated. So the caterpillar and the butterfly, to the na?ve 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

ly 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

eer 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 remo

oison, potential because it is never allowed to grow in concentration to the danger point. The thyroid plays its r?le 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

ness. 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

PITU

hind the root of the nose. It is of a grayish-yellow color, unpretentious and insignificant enough in appearance, and so long neg

name. At least it consists of two different parts, distinct in their origin, history, function and secretions, but juxtaposed and

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

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 h

urkish saddle. So situated, an operative approach to it is overwhelmingly difficult. On the other hand, X-ray studies are f

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 wa

uble 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

he 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

f 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, w

of growth. That is, dwarfs are artificially created. Apropos, pathologists have shown that in several true human dwarfs the gland is rudimen

OF ORGAN

uli 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 interna

cate. 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 demons

. 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 b

PITUITARY

le 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

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

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-thre

RADLE OF T

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

ry, there developes conspicuous moral and intellectual inferiority. The unfortunates suffer from compulsions and obsessions and lack inhibitions. They are the pathological liars wit

AND PI

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 pituit

ransformation, 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 effor