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 stream of feeling which constitutes the undertow of consciousness originates outside of the brain altogether, and is composed of currents arising from viscera, muscles, blood-vessels and glands.
Now the component currents are of different sizes and positions and variable degrees of warmth. That is another way of saying that whether or not a current is to become the center of the stream, or to approach it, or whether it is to be hot, cold, or tepid, depends upon the degree of activity of the various parts of the vegetative apparatus. A convenient name for this is tonus. Tonus can be experimentally watched and measured. Thus hunger, the most primitive of the wish-feelings, has been found to be simultaneous with certain characteristic contractions of the stomach. Stop those contractions, and you stop the hunger. The contractions begin slowly and weakly, and no awareness of them occurs in the mind. As they grow stronger, consciousness becomes a sensation rather like an itch somewhere in the upper abdomen, and accompanied sometimes by a sense of general weakness. The vegetative activity going on as a current almost on the outside of the stream of feeling has swelled and warmed, and so forced itself, in a manner of speaking, into the center of the stream. Or if you will, the rest of the stream has to arrange itself around it as the center. A similar mechanism for the tonus of the other members of the vegetative system, and how they determine consciousness and behaviour is understandable. It has been shown that when the bladder tone and the intestinal tone are of a definitely measurable size, one has the desire to empty them. The same applies to the sex glands. The pressure within a viscus is dependent upon the ratio between the amount of contraction of the involuntary muscle in its walls, the external pressure, and the quantity of its distending contents, the internal pressure. The resultant quotient, the internal pressure divided by the external pressure, measures the intravisceral pressure. The primitive wish-feelings are the direct expressions of the various intravisceral pressures, or tones. The primitive soul is an awareness of the fused primitive wish-feelings of themselves as a whole, and of the struggle between them for recognition, isolation, and, as we say, satisfaction. This satisfaction consists in a degradation of the highest intravisceral pressure to a point at which some other intravisceral pressure becomes higher and therefore predominant.
PHYSICS OF THE WISH
Mind, consciousness, may then be portrayed as an ocean comprised of mobile current layers, complexes built up around the awareness of different intravisceral pressures. A shifting hierarchy of such pressures form the points of focusing of consciousness that result in conduct. Behaviour may be defined as the resultant of the organism's pressure against the environment's counter pressure until there is a sufficient reduction of the specifically exciting intravisceral pressure. Just as water flows to its own level, so will conduct flow to reduce intravisceral pressure to its own level. A physics of the soul comes into prospect, in which a mathematical analysis will state the process quantitatively in terms of some common unit of pressure.
Not only conduct, but also character, because it is past conduct repeated, associated, and fixed, will be so statable. For intravisceral tonus or pressure is not simply or only an acute or passing affair. There is for it a persistent or average figure, the so-called normal for it, below which or above which the acute situation will bring it. Character is a matter then of standards in the vegetative system. Character, indeed, is an alloy of the different standard intravisceral pressures of the organism, a fusion created by the resistance or counter pressure of the obstacles in the environment. Character, in short, is the grand intravisceral barometer of a personality.
Thus the comfortable, healthy, happy, well-balanced, progressive, constructive, virile personality is one in whom there is a continuously harmonious reduction of the intravisceral pressures in the environment called society. For in a gregarious creature, like man, fellow beings are the most powerful determinants of negative and positive vegetative pressures. Not so well rounded are other types existing because of inferiorities or excesses of the standard visceral tone. There is, for instance, the sexually cold type, comfortable by creating for itself an anaphrodisiac environment composed of pressures that can be fitted into its own. Or there may be an insufficiency of standard pressure in the alimentary tract, and we have the ascetic, mal-nourished, striving, uplifting type. Different types will be made by the permutations and combinations of factors that determine the intravisceral pressure and the environmental, i.e., social resistances or counter pressures.
INTERNAL SECRETIONS DETERMINANTS OF VEGETATIVE PRESSURES
Now of all the different factors which determine the tones, that is to say, the internal pressures, of the various parts of the vegetative apparatus (including all structures not controlled by the will in the term), the internal secretions or hormones are by far the most important. This significance is conferred upon them because it is by their activities primarily that these pressures are produced, regulated, lowered and heightened; in short, controlled. We have seen how the thyroid and adrenal hold the reins of the drive or check systems in the vegetative apparatus. Together with the other ductless glands, they decide the advance or halt, forward or retreat, tension or relaxation, charge and discharge, of the visceral—involuntary muscle—blood vessel combination which is at the core of life. Here again they emerge as the directorate.
Carlson, the Chicago physiologist, who probably knows more about being hungry than any other man on the planet, once demonstrated that the injection of an ounce or two of the blood, which means the internal secretion mixture, of a starving animal, into one not starving increased the signs of hunger and the accompanying hunger contractions of the stomach. There can be no doubt that hunger is the expression of a certain specific concentration of internal secretion or secretions in the blood. When the quantity, in the cycles of metabolism, becomes sufficiently great, it stimulates the stomach to contract in a way which augments the pressure within it to a point at which the feeling of hungriness, and the wish to satisfy it, or to get rid of it, becomes imperative, and the dominant of consciousness.
Without doubt the sexual cravings are likewise so determined. Sex libido is an expression of a certain concentration, a definite amount peculiar to the individual, of the substance manufactured by the interstitial cells, circulating in the blood. It arouses its effects probably by (1) increasing the amount of reproductive material in the sex glands in a direct chemically stimulating effect upon the germinative cells, and so raising the internal pressure within them, (2) stimulating the involuntary muscles within the walls and the canals of the sex glands, and so, by augmenting the tenseness of the muscles, elevating the total intravisceral pressure, (3) by a direct chemical and indirect nervous effect upon the brain, the muscles, the heart, as well as the other glands of internal secretion stimulating the organism as a whole. Though the isolation in pure form of the substance or substances involved has never been scientifically achieved, their inference is entirely justified. It is indeed the only comprehensible mechanism conceivable that will fit all the known facts about the matter. And even though the assertions of Brown-Séquard were only the exaggerations of a semi-charlatan, it is certain that some day in the near future the particular substance, that he claimed he had discovered, will be handed about in bottles for the inspection of the curious.
Besides thyroxin, adrenalin, and the libido-producing secretion of the interstitial cells, the substance produced by the paired glandlets, situated behind the thyroid, the parathyroids, have a profound influence upon the vegetative apparatus and the vegetative nervous system. These direct the lime exchanges within the cells of the organisms, including the nerve cells. It has been shown that lime is, relatively, a sedative to cells. It raises the threshold or strength of stimulus necessary to evoke a reaction. Removing the parathyroids means removing the lime barrier, for with their deficiency there is a change in, and then an escape, from the blood, of the lime, by way of the kidneys. The result is sometimes an enormous increase in the excitability of all the cells, and especially of the vegetative apparatus. What that means for the individual whose comfort depends upon a stability of the intravisceral tones and pressures may be readily imagined.
The pancreas likewise acts as a sedative to the vegetative apparatus. In particular, this applies to the sugar mechanism in the liver under the discipline of the check and drive organization. The adrenal and the pancreas are the direct antagonists in the struggle for control of sugar. Removal of the adrenals will cause a decrease in the amount of sugar in the blood, while removal of the pancreas will produce an increase. Excess of sugar in the blood may thus be concomitant with changes of character considered incorrigible.
In different locales of the vegetative apparatus, as indeed of the body in general, the directorate seems to be handed over to a committee of control, generally made up of two members working in opposing directions. Such a division of power in the general directorate is analogous to the small holding corporations which divide functions in, for example, the United States Steel Corporation. The relative ratios of tonus in these smaller internal secretion balances are of the utmost significance as causes of differences in the vegetative apparatus, which are the basis of differences in structure, power, and character between individuals.
THE GENERAL LAWS OF THE DIRECTORATE
Our knowledge of the glands of internal secretions as an interlocking directorate presiding over all the functions of the organism is still exceedingly meagre. As yet, we seem to be knocking at the portals of the chemistry of the imponderable. There are holes in the bronze doors, and we glimpse the unfathomable distances of unexplored regions. But we do see something, and we do glimpse a beginning. Already the outlines of a differential anatomy, and a different physiology and a differential psychology, which will explain to us the unique in the constitution, the temperament and character of an individual, emerge. It is worth while, before proceeding to the details, so valuable to a society which would become rational, to summarize the general principles emerging, expressing the directing powers of the ductless glands over the individual. They may be regarded as the present postulates of a new science of the whys and wherefores separating and setting apart, as so recognizably distinct, those peregrinating chemical mixtures: men and women.
1. The life of every individual, in every stage, is dominated largely by his glands of internal secretion. That is, they, as a complex internal messenger and director system, control organ and function, conduct and character. The orderliness of human life, in the sequential march of its episodes, crises, successes and failures, depends, to a large extent, upon their interactions with each other and with the environment.
2. One or several of the glands possesses a controlling or superior influence above that of the others in the physiology of the individual and so becomes the central gland of his life, its dominant, indeed, so far as it casts a deciding vote or veto, in its everyday existence and incidents as well as in its high points, the climaxes and emergencies.
3. These glandular preponderances are at the basis of personality, creating genius and dullard, weakling and giant, Cavalier and Puritan. All human traits may be analyzed in terms of them because they are expressions of them.
4. Specific types of personality may be directly associated with particular glandular prominences, so that we have the thyroid-centered types, the pituitary-centered types, the adrenal-centered types, etc. These are the classic Three, the prototypes in their purity most easily described and recognized.
5. Combinations of these, as well as of other glands—with joint predominance—occur and indeed form the majority of populations. The phenomena of varieties in species are thus explained.
6. Internal secretion traits are inherited, and variations in heredity are essentially the structural representation of the resultant of a parallelogram of forces exerted by each of the parental prepotent glands. If they are of the same type, they may reinforce each other: if not, inhibitions and compensations will come into play. Mendelian laws may apply.
7. The process of evolution, as the play of natural selection upon these variations, becomes comprehensible from a new standpoint.
8. Certain diseases, and disease tendencies, both acute and constitutional, as well as traits of temperament and character, and predetermined reactions to certain recurring situations in life, are rooted in the glandular soils that compose the stuff of the individual.
9. The subconscious, of which the vegetative apparatus is the physical basis, leads back to the internal secretions for the profoundest springs of its secrets. We shall see how and why.
10. Given the internal secretory composition, so to speak, of an individual—his endocrine formula—and so his intravisceral pressures, one may predict, within limits, his physical and psychic make-up, the general lines of his life, diseases, tastes, idiosyncrasies and habits.
11. Within limits, if the previous history of an individual is known, his physical appearance may be approximately described, and his future outlined.
12. Conversely, given the physical and psychic composition of an individual, and his past history, one may deduce the internal secretion type to which he belongs.
Examples:
A. One Thyroid-centered Type has
Bright eyes
Good clean teeth
Symmetrical features
Moist flushed skin
Temperamental attitude toward life
Tendency to heart, intestinal and nervous disease
B. One Pituitary-centered Type
Abnormally large or small size
Musical—acute sense of rhythm
Asymmetrical features
Tendency to cyclic or periodic diseases
C. One Adrenal-centered Type
Hairy
Dark
Masculinity marked
Tendency to diphtheria and hernia
These are some of the master types. They have their variants depending upon the influences of the other glands, especially the interstitial cells of the sex glands.
ANTE-NATAL DEVELOPMENT
In their ensemble, the glands of internal secretion wield a determining influence upon the development of the individual from his very inception. If his various powers may be conceived of as an orchestra, they may be said to conduct it from the very beginning of its movements, and to cease only with its termination. From the moment when the spermatozoon penetrates and fecundates the ovum, the fate of the future being is settled by their disposition. The seal of his destiny is soaked with their substance.
POST-NATAL DEVELOPMENT
Every particle of protoplasm, every granule of the impregnated ovum carries the representatives of the parental ductless glands. As a consequence, they transmit chemically, with no figure of speech involved, the peculiar familial, racial and national characters from progenitors to offspring. They confer upon the child a number of the properties commonly recognized as inherited. All those features which distinguish Caucasian from Mongolian, Scandinavian from Italian, Italian from Jew are determined by them.
In short, at every step of his life, in every relation and association, in every expression of the inner forces that control his being, the normal individual is influenced by his internal secretions. Let us now see how.
CHAPTER V
HOW THE GLANDS INFLUENCE THE NORMAL BODY
The origin of the remarkable differences between individuals that distinguish species, varieties and families, has long been one of the chief puzzles of biology. It may indeed be called the leading puzzle, which led Darwin on to the collection of the data that culminated in the "Origin of Species." The why of the Unique is the fundamental problem of those who would understand life.
An explanation is an attempt at a consistent and persistent, sometimes an obstinate clarity of mind. A vast number of observations gathered by laboratory experimentalists as well as by those naturalists of the abnormal, physicians in active practice, prove that the construction of the individual both during development before maturity, and maintenance during maturity, his constitution, in short, is directed by the endocrine glands. It is possible now to present an explanation of the individuality of the individual.
To assert that variation is responsible for the individual, that it is the mechanism which isolates him as a being like none other of his fellows, not even his parents, brothers, and sisters, is merely to beg the question. What is variation? The internal secretion theory of the process offers, for the first time, an explanation that is coherent and comprehensive, based upon concrete and detailed observations. It provides an adequate interpretation of the numberless hereditary gradations and transitions, blendings and mixtures. It suggests a control of heredity in the future.
THE PURE TYPES
In the pure types, only one gland, either by being present in great excess above the average, or by being pretty well below the average, comes to exercise the dominating influence upon the traits of the organism. As the strongest link in the chain, or as the weakest, it rules. The others must accommodate themselves to it. Among them as commanders of growth, development and normal function, it holds the balance of power. In every emergency it stands out by its strength or by its weakness. It thus creates its own type of man or woman, with attributes and characteristics peculiar to itself. These pure types, as we have seen, are mainly the thyroid, the pituitary, and the adrenal-centered.
Each with the signs peculiar to it can be identified among the faces that pass one in the street. And they differ so markedly among themselves that they provide a new and accurate means of classifying varieties among the races of the species: man. The thyroid type differs as much from the adrenal type as does a greyhound from a bull-dog. The greyhound has a certain size, form, character and capacity. The bull-dog has similar qualities which are yet quite different. Each is built for a particular career. Among human beings, the pure thyroid type is easily distinguished from the pure adrenal type, and both of these from the pure pituitary type. Each is stamped with a significant figure, height, skin, hair, temperament, ambition, social reactions and predisposition to certain diseases.
THE MIXED TYPES
Among the mixed types, the lines of distinction are less clear, and so they are more difficult to classify. The mixed types may be said to be hyphenated. In them, two or even three of the internal secretory glands conflict for predominance. The combined action makes for a resultant modification in the primary glandular markings and effects. A hyphenated classification thus becomes inevitable. Especially is this so if the two glands are mutually antagonistic and inhibitory. A compromise effect is then necessitated. Or an individual may be dominated by one gland at one period of his life and by another at a later period. One of the glands, the thyroid, for example, will show, by the traces it has left upon the earliest developing features, that it was in control at the very earliest dates of his history, while other signs will disclose the more recent influence of the adrenal or of the pituitary. The combination becomes classifiable as the thyroid-pituitary type, or as the thyroid-adrenal type.
That the external features as well as the chronic diseases of human beings are controlled by some common factor has long been suspected. Inquiries into morbid phenomena with a hereditary trend yielded information that has paved the way for the internal secretion theory. It has long been known that certain diseases effect only certain individuals of a definite constitution. Apoplexy, diabetes, arteriosclerosis, Bright's disease, are met with almost exclusively in what the older clinicians talked about as the apopleptic type. On the other hand, they said, anemias, tuberculosis, hemophilias, scrofulas occurred more among the lymphatic type. But they had no idea whatever of the true functional basis of the two different types. The truth as we of today view it is that these two types represent different textures of human beings, fabricated of different internal secretions. They are really two different breeds of the species Homo Sapiens. The materials being different, the color and feel of them is different, and the resistance to wear and tear is different.
ENDOCRINE ANALYSIS
The modes of classification glimpsed at are certainly exceedingly broad and sweeping. It is well enough to establish types and classes. But beneath them are sheltered the infinite possibilities of permutations and combinations, which explain the countless variety and complexity of form and function. Every individual born among the vertebrates, for example, must have a certain definite amount and percentage of pituitary gland, anterior and posterior, pineal, thyroid, parathyroid, thymus, adrenal, pancreas, interstitial and so on. Now if, to state it in terms of percentages, for the sake of argument, the pituitary is 25, the pineal 10, the thyroid 36, the parathyroids 15, the thymus 29, the adrenals 60, the pancreas 49, the interstitials 72 (the gland when acting maximally to be graded as 100), we see at once how different such an individual must be from one who has, say, pituitary 84, pineal 39, thyroid 26, parathyroid 42, adrenals 96, pancreas 22 and interstitials 89. One obtains at once from the contrasts of such figures some idea of the possibilities. As each point plus or minus must count to produce some difference in the individual, the results are manifest. Varying within the numerical limits imposed by genus, species, variety and family (which limits are probably responsible for the persistence of the particular genus, species, variety, or family) the individual becomes an individual because of the relative values of the percentages in his blood and tissues of these different internal secretions. We thus begin to gain an insight into the patterns according to which men, women and animals are woven.
We are, as yet, far from an exact endocrine analysis of the individual. But we know that the endocrines rule over growth and nutrition, a vast dominion which incorporates every organ and every tissue. By enhancing or retarding the nutritional changes, the growth of the organ or tissue is favored or restricted. The size and shape of an individual, as a whole, as well as of the specialized cell masses composing him, as hands and feet, the nose and ears, and so on, are therefore controlled by them. Whether an organism is to be tall or short, lean or corpulent, graceful or awkward, is decided by their interactions. These, like human covenants, vary with the different reactions of the parties to the contract. And so a great deal depends upon whether they work harmoniously or discordantly, and upon which does the most work and which the least.
Undersecretion and Oversecretion
It is when a gland, either in the course of development, or because of the influence of starvation, shock, injury, poisoning or infection, begins to undersecrete or oversecrete that its effects upon growth and nutrition become grossly manifest. A veritable transfiguration of the individual may occur, the black magic of which may perplex him for a lifetime. A man, made eunuchoid by an accident or by mumps, will observe in himself astonishing changes in his constitutional make-up, mentality and sexuality. He would be more astounded to learn that beneath the appearances, the changes, so alarming him, there are profound alterations in the rate at which he is taking in oxygen, burning up sugar, accumulating carbon dioxide and excreting waste byproducts through the kidneys, which are responsible for them.
The differences between the normal and abnormal are only a matter of degree. And so, to be sure, are differences between types. But it is hard to realize that the striking distinctions between the thyroid type and the pituitary, comparable, as said, to the differences between a greyhound and a bull-dog, are dependent solely upon quantitative variations in the general and local speeds of metabolism, among the cells.
DIVISION OF LABOR
Besides the antagonisms and co-operations between them, there are certain lines along which the glands, in their effects, specialize. The thyroid, for instance, is concerned specially with the regulation of the shape, form and finish of an organ. The pituitary shines at the periods of developmental crises, determining them and modifying them. It exerts the greatest influence upon the time of eruption of the teeth, both the temporary and the permanent, the onset of puberty, the recurrence of menstruation in women, and the time of occurrence of labor. The interstitial glands distribute the basis of the powers and limitations of masculinity and femininity. Abnormalities of these glands also affect the individual all along the line, in all of his aspects. So affected he may apparently change into a wholly different being. He may change in size, in the shape of his head, feet and hands, as well as in his habits, aptitudes and dispositions. So he may find it necessary to purchase an entirely different size of hat, more commodious clothes, and newly fitting gloves and shoes. At the same time, his family, relatives and friends, discover that the erstwhile generous, frank, neat and punctual and liked, has become stingy and suspicious and slovenly and hated. And all because a gland has begun to undersecrete or to oversecrete. The transformation will be slight or marked, depending entirely upon the extent of impairment, positive or negative, of the gland involved.
But it is not only in the shaping of the normal individual's architecture that the internal secretions dominate. Over that subtle something known in all languages as vitality, expressive of the intensity of feeling, thought and reactions in cells, they rule supreme. Gay vivacity and grim determination, the temperament of a Louis XIV, and the soul of a Cromwell, are the crystallizations of these chemical substances acting upon the brain.
INTERNAL SECRETION VARIETIES
There is no better way of illustrating the influence of the internal secretions upon the normal than the analysis of the variation of traits with variations in glandular predominances. The general build of an individual, his skeletal type, the proportion between the size of his arms and that of his legs, as well as that between his trunk and his lower extremities, whether he is to be tall, lanky and loutish, or short, squat and dumpy, are to be considered. Different facial types are the expressions of underlying endocrine differences. The head and skull offer a number of clues to the controlling secretions in the blood and tissues. Whether the forehead is to be broad or narrow, the distance between the eyes, the character of the eyebrows, the shape and size and appearance of the eyes themselves, the mould of the nose and jaws and the peculiarities of the teeth, are all so determined. The skin, in its color, texture, the quantity and distribution of its fatty and other constituents, eruptions and weather reactions, is influenced. Also the mucous membranes, the color and lustre and structure of the hair, as well as its general distribution and development, are hieroglyphics of the endocrine processes below the surface. Whether the muscles are massive or sparse, atrophied or hypertrophied, soft or hard, easily fatigable or not, bespeak conditions in the glandular chain. In short, we must regard the individual as an immensely complicated pattern of designs traced by the hormones as the primary etchers of his development. Though it must be admitted that the number of unknown and unsolved relations in the pattern are still enormously great, enough has been established to make possible a rough working analysis of the particular, unique organism placed before us for examination as Mr. Smith, Mrs. Jones, or Miss Smith-Jones.
WHAT IS THE NORMAL?
Anthropologists, from the beginning of anthropology, have battled in vain for a satisfactory inclusive definition, or, at least, description of the normal. With the introduction of the biometric method, the goal at last appeared within sight. A cocked hat curve expressing the distribution and range of the normal looks formidable. The attainable turned out a mirage, for the curves constructable by the measurement of traits of a population only proved the truth of the old axiom that all transitions and variations between extremes exist. The Problem of the Normal seemed more elusive than ever. And the best that could be done for the elucidation of its mystery, was to apply and observe the law of averages.
From the endocrine standpoint, the reason for this becomes clear. The biometric method concerned itself with externals, with, as it were, symptoms. Since these external signs are but manifestations of the inner chemical reactions, of which the internal secretions are the determining reagents, or factors, with permutations and combinations possible in all directions, the diversity and variability of each individual and his traits stands explained and understandable. The normal, as the perfect or nearly perfect balance of forces in the organism, at any given moment, emerges as a more definite and real concept than that which would abstract it from a curve of variations. Moreover, since the directive forces within the organism are pre-eminently the internal secretions, the normal becomes definable as their harmonious balancing or equilibrium, a state which tends not to undo (as the abnormal does) but to prolong itself.
The potential combinations and compensations, antagonisms and counteractions, attainable within the endocrine glands as an interlocking directorate, point the cause for the elusive quality of the normal. Tall men and short men, blonde women and dumpy women, lanky hatchet-faced people, stout moon-faced people, Falstaff and Queen Elizabeth, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, Disraeli and Walt Whitman, Caesar and Alexander, as well as Mr. Smith and Miss Jones come within the range of the normal. There are all kinds and conditions and sorts of men and women, and all kinds and sorts and conditions of the normal, because an incalculable number of harmonious relations and interactions between the endocrines are possible, and do actually occur. The standard of the normal must obviously not be a single standard, but a series of standards, depending upon which glands predominate, and how the others adapt themselves to its predominance. Adrenal-centered types, thyroid-centered types, pituitary-centered types, thymus-centered types, as well as hyphenated compounds of these, such as the pituitary-adrenal types, exist as normals. They can be conceived of as normal types because they exist as normal types.
THE SKELETAL TYPES
Now men, for as long as we have any knowledge of their thoughts and classifications and attitudes, have been accustomed to first think of one another, to classify and size one another as tall or short, slender or broad, thin or corpulent. The biological necessity, indeed, instinct of the one animal to relate the other animal to aggressive or harmless agencies in his surroundings, accounts for this. Relatively, of course, for all these modes of description imply offensive or defensive possibilities of the stimulus for the recorder in relation to himself. The interest in stature is fundamental, and has persisted in the most civilized, nations. The relationship of height and weight, as well as of length and breadth, to other physical traits, have formed the subject of scientific study. There is, for instance, the classification of Bean, who divided mankind generally into two types, those of a medium size, stocky long legs and arms, large hands and feet, short trunk, and face large in comparison to the head (the meso-onto-morphs) and those who were either tall and slender, or small and delicate, with the smaller face, eyes close together, long, high, narrow nose, and trunk longer as compared with the extremities (the hyper-onto-morphs). Bean showed, too, that the hypers (to use a short word to contrast with the mesos) were present to the extent of almost a hundred per cent in a series of tuberculosis, and about ninety per cent in a series of central nervous system disease. All of which is exceedingly interesting and suggestive, but throws no light upon the underlying mechanisms of statures.
STATURE AND GROWTH
Stature is essentially determined by the growth of the long bones. They are the pace-makers, and the muscles and soft tissues follow the pace they set. Now the primary determinant, catalyst or sensitizer of the growth of the long bones is the anterior pituitary. All statures should therefore be first scrutinized from the point of view of the pituitary. Individuals over six feet tall or under five feet five inches should be looked upon as having a pituitary trend. This pituitary trend may be primary, due to its own undergrowth or overgrowth, or it may be due to lack of inhibition from the sex glands such as occurs in eunuchs and eunuchoids, or excessive or premature inhibition from them as happens in certain salacious dwarfs.
The long bones grow at a point of junction between the bone proper and an overlying layer of gristle or cartilage, known as the zone of ossification. It is upon this zone of ossification that the various growth influences appear to focus and concentrate their efforts, among them the internal secretions. After growth has been finished, that is, after adolescence, these zones of ossification close, so that growth is no longer possible unless they become reactivated. Upon the zone of ossification must act the pituitary, and indirectly the thyroid, the interstitial cells, the thymus and the adrenals. Individuals oversized or undersized either belong to the pituitary type, or if hyphenated, have the pituitary as one of the dominants in their composition. The necessities of child-bearing determine a greater angle between trunk and lower extremities in the female. Underactivity of the pituitary, for instance, will prevent the development of the normal angle. The ratio in length of the upper limbs to the lower is a fairly constant relationship for each sex normally Deviations occur with a break somewhere in the chain of cooperation of the internal secretions controlling the growth of bone.
HANDS, FINGERS AND TOES
The size and shape and general configuration of the hands, fingers and toes are details that tell an endocrine tale. Students of hands naturally have grouped them as the long slender and the short, broad, the bony and the well-filled out, the tapering fingers and the stumpy. The character of a hand is determined anatomically by the length and breadth of the bones, the amount and distribution of fat, and the thickness and elasticity of the skin. Over these, the essential control lies in the pituitary and the thyroid. So we find that pituitary types have, when there is oversecretion, large bony, gross hands, spade-shaped, or when there is undersecretion, hands that are plump, with peculiarly tapering fleshy fingers. The hyperthyroid has long slender fingers, the subthyroid pudgy, coarse, ugly foreshortened hands, often cold, and bluish.
FACIAL TYPES
An artist will see in a face the past history of generations, a narrative of the adventures of the blood, a record of tears and smiles, wrinkles and dimples, the victories and defeats of buried drudgery and romance. These signatures which the Faculty of Life have scribbled or engraved over it as upon a diploma, bespeak for him spiritual moments. To the student of the internal secretions the lines, expressions, attitudes are important for they tell of the state of tensions and strains in the vegetative apparatus with which they are inseparably connected. It is when one comes to the consideration of the face as a complex of brows, eyes, nose, lips and jaws that he becomes most interested. For in the modeling and tone of every one of the features each of the endocrine glands has something to say. In consequence there has been described the hyperpituitary face, and the hyperthyroid face, the subthyroid face and the subpituitary face, the adrenal face, the eunuchoid face and the ovarian face and also the thymic.