THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY

A STUDY OF THE GLANDS OF INTERNAL SECRETION IN RELATION TO THE TYPESOF HUMAN NATURE

BY LOUIS BERMAN, M. D. 

ASSOCIATE IN BIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

1922

The passage from the miracles of nature to those of art is easy. 

--Francis Bacon, _Novum Organum_, 1620. 

CONTENTS

 INTRODUCTION: ATTITUDES TOWARD HUMAN NATURE I. HOW THE GLANDS OF INTERNAL SECRETION WERE DISCOVERED II. THE GLANDS: THYROID AND PITUITARY III. THE ADRENAL GLANDS, GONADS, AND THYMUS IV. THE GLANDS AS AN INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATE V. HOW THE GLANDS INFLUENCE THE NORMAL BODY VI. THE MECHANICS OF THE MASCULINE AND FEMININE VII. THE RHYTHMS OF SEX VIII. HOW THE GLANDS INFLUENCE THE MIND IX. THE BACKGROUNDS OF PERSONALITY X. THE TYPES OF PERSONALITY XI. SOME HISTORIC PERSONAGES XII. APPLICATIONS AND POSSIBILITIES XIII. THE EFFECT UPON HUMAN EVOLUTION

THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY

INTRODUCTION

ATTITUDES TOWARD HUMAN NATURE

THE CASE AGAINST HUMAN NATURE

Man, know thyself, said the old Greek philosopher. Man perforce hastaken that advice to heart. His life-long interest is his own species. In the cradle he begins to collect observations on the nature ofthe queer beings about him. As he grows, the research continues, amplifies, broadens. Wisdom he measures by the devastating accuracyof the data he accumulates. When he declares he knows human nature, consciously cynical maturity speaks. Doctor of human nature--everyman feels himself entitled to that degree from the universityof disillusioning experience. In defense of his claim, only thelimitations of his articulate faculty will curb the vehemence of hisindictment of his fellows. 

For all history provides the material, literature the critique, biology the inexorable logic of the case against human nature. Thehistorical record is a spectacle of man destroying man, a collectionof chapters on man's increasing cruelty to man. Limitations of timeand space have been shortened and eliminated. Tools of production havebeen multiplied and complicated. The sources of energy and power havebeen systematically attacked and trapped. But the nature of man hasremained so unchanged that clap trap about progress is easy target forthe barrage of every cheap pamphleteer. 

The naturalist probes into codes of conduct, systems of morality, structures of societies, variations in the scales of value thatindividuals, races and nations have subjected themselves to as custom, law and religion. Again and again the portrait is presented ofman preying upon man, of cunning a parasite upon stupidity and ofpredatory strength enslaving the weakling intellect. Until finally areevoked reactions and consequences that overtake in catastrophe andcataclysm preyer and preyed upon alike. 

Human nature is but part of the magnificent tree of beast nature. Manis linked by every tie of blood and bone and cell memories with hisbrethren of the sea, the jungle, the forest and the fields. The beastis a seeker of freedom, but a seeker for his own ego alone, and thesatisfaction of his own instincts only. Thus he struggles to a sort offreedom which makes him the Ishmael of the Universe, everyone's handagainst him, as his own hand is against everyone. The human animal hasachieved no advance beyond the necessities of his ancestors, nor freedhimself from his bondage to their instincts and automatic reflexes. And so the sociologist, the analyst of human associations, turns outto be simply the historian and accountant of slaveries. 

Yet the history of mankind is, too, a long research into the natureof the machinery of freedom. All recorded history, indeed, is butthe documentation of that research. Viewed thus, customs, laws, institutions, sciences, arts, codes of morality and honor, systemsof life, become inventions, come upon, tried out, standardized, established until scrapped in everlasting search for more and moreperfect means of freeing body and soul from their congenital thralldomto a host of innumerable masters. Indeed, the history of all life, vegetable and animal, of bacillus, elephant, orchid, gorilla, as wellas of man is the history of a searching for freedom. 

Freedom! What to a living creature is freedom? How completely has itdominated the life history of every creature that ever crawled uponthe earth? Trace our cellular pedigree, descend our family tree to itsrootlets, our amebic ancestors, and the craving for more freedom ismanifest in the soul of even the lowest, buried in darkness and slime. When the first clever bit of colloidal ooze, protoplasm as the ameba, protruded a bit of itself as a pseudopod, it achieved a new freedom. For, accidentally or deliberately, it created for itself a newpower--the ability to go directly for food in its environment, insteadof waiting, patiently, passively, as the plant does, for food to justhappen along. Therewith developed in place of the previous quietistpacifist, quaker attitude toward its surroundings, a new religion, anew tone: aggressive, predatory, careerist. 

That adventure was a great step forward for the ameba--a miracle thatfreed it forever from the danger of death by starvation. But latentin that move were all the terrible possibilities of the tiger, thealligator, the wolf and all the varieties of predaceous beast andplant, parasitism and slavery. The device that enabled the ameba tochange its position in space of its own will, and so increased itsfreedom immeasureably, meant the generation of infinite evil, pain, suffering and degradation for billions in the womb of time. 

THE BREEDING OF INFERIORITY

Human history, being a continuation of vertebrate history, is full ofsimilar instances. The invention of the stock company, for example, furnished a certain relative freedom to hundreds, a certain amount ofleisure to think and play, and independence to travel and record, andimmunity from a daily routine and drudgery. In turn, it bore fruit inmiseries and horrors multiplied for millions, like those of the childlacemakers of Mid-Victorian England, who were dragged from their bedsat two or three o'clock in the morning to work until ten or eleven atnight in the services of a stock company. 

A corporation is said to have no soul. The struggle for freedom ofevery living thing has no conscience. Throughout the living world, from ameba to man, parasitism and slavery together with theirby-products, physical and spiritual degeneracy, appear as the aftereffects of the more vital individual's efforts to remain alive andfree. The origins of slavery may be seen in the parasitisms of theinfectious diseases which kill man. The change from parasitism toslavery was an inevitable step of creative intelligence. In thetransition evolution made one of those breaks which it indulges inperiodically as its mode of progress. 

The natural effect of slavery has been a selection of two sorts ofindividuals along the lines of the survival of the adapted. It hastended to perpetuate in the breed the qualities of the strong whichwould make them stronger, and certain qualities in the weak whichwould increase their weakness. For parasitism and likewise slaveryinfallibly entail the degradation of certain structures and anovergrowth of others by the law of use and disuse. The type of organwhich would function normally, were not its possessor parasitic inthat function, invariably degenerates or disappears. Parasitic insectslose their wings. An entire anatomical system may even be lost. So thetapeworm, which feeds upon the digested food present in the intestinesof its host, has no alimentary canal of its own because it needs none. On the other hand, the organs of attack and combat grow by a constantuse into the most remarkable of efficient weapons. 

In human society the process continues. Out of the tapeworm nature, the tiger nature, the wolf nature, the simian nature, human natureevolves. Repeated episodes of subjugation and suppression mixed withcountless incidents of predaceous cupidity and rapacity have madeMan what he is today. Indeed, by a sort of instinct, society hasconstructed its institutions upon empirical observations andassumptions agreeing with this principle. The deductions concerninghuman nature and human traits that an interplanetary visitor woulddraw from a study of our common law would be at least slightlyhumiliating to our incorrigible pride. Law courts, codes of civilcontract and criminal procedure, the systems of subordination inarmies and navies, castes and classes, men and women, employers andemployees, teachers and pupils, parents and children, are based uponthe fundamental, the conservative axiom that man, especially thecommon plain man (Lincoln's phrase), is a being incurably lazy, stupid, dishonest, muddled, cowardly, greedy, restless, obsessed witha low cunning and a selfish callousness and insensibility to thesufferings of his fellow creatures, animal and human. 

Why is it that Man, the noblest creature of creation, made in theimage of God, capable of the flights of attainment that distinguish aChrist, a Caesar, a Plato, a Shakespeare, a Shelley, a Newton, is sodescribed, not alone by hopeless pessimists like Koheleth, Swift, andMark Twain, but by the common law, the common opinion, the commonassumptions of mankind? Because the development of slavery andparasitism in human society, the subjection of the weak to the strong, the dull and base to the clever and headstrong, set up a viciouscycle: the liberation of more energy for the making of more andmore slaves and the propagation of slaves and slave qualities in ageometrically increasing proportion. 

This might be called the _Malthusian law of slavery_. For thequalities that I have named as man's own characterization of himselfare the qualities of the slave and the slave-soul. Nietzche took greatpains to repeat ad nauseam that these qualities were the qualities ofthe slave. But by burdening himself with the hypothesis, evolved fromhis inner consciousness, that the slaves imposed from below a moralityof weakness upon their masters, he missed the really obvious processby which slaves beget more slaves, slavery begets more slavery, andthe slave-soul becomes universal. That process is the simple actionof physical and spiritual reproduction of the slaves. The subnormalbegets the subnormal, the inferior begets the inferior. 

Slavery appeared as an invention of the would-be-free. It was abrilliant flash of genius of a seeker after freedom. However, itbecame a boomerang. By multiplication and hereditary transmission, theinferiority and the number of the slaves created a new overwhelmingproblem for the superior few, the upper crust of the free. At last theproblem grew into the problem of problems, the problem of government, that threatened all freedom, as an epidemic disease threatens eventhe most healthy. Government, at first organized for conquest andsubjugation, had to change its character until it became more and moreto consist of experiments in a new social machinery that would freesomebody of the incubus. So through the centuries, one technique ofliberty after another was tested in the laboratory of experience. 

But always the attempts are so muddled, because the problem is notgrasped. Muddledom is the essence of the slave-soul. And theessence infiltrates and poisons the whole atmosphere in which thewould-be-free think and act. Kings' heads are chopped off, a wholeclass is guillotined, reform movements come and go, the masters fightevery inch of their retreat, and pile stratagem upon stratagem, deviceupon device, to retain their spoils. 

The democratic formula of freedom for all comes to the fore. So atlast universal suffrage is introduced as the panacea. Freedom seemswithin grasp. Now it looks as if a method and an objective have beenhit upon, that will lead both the free and the enslaved out of theirmutual bondage, and release the handcuffs which have bound themtogether. All the trial and error tests to which history had subjectedinstitutions appeared to culminate in the formula that wouldautomatically yield Liberty. The French wanted a little more and addedEquality and Fraternity. The Americans put it quite definitely as theformula that would assist the Pursuit of Life, Liberty, and Happiness. That formula is: the _democracy of the normals_. 

To be sure, a civilization might be organized for the breeding and theglorification of the supernormals. Such a civilization may yet have tobe tried. But as the supernormals, as we know them today, are merelybiologic sports, in a sense, simple accidents, no one can tell whetherthey will turn out true shots or just flashes in the pan. So it looksthe better course to stick to the plan of nature, which seems to bethe raising of the level of the normals, and the gradual increase oftheir faculties and powers. 

WHAT THE STATESMAN IS UP AGAINST

Under the terms of the democratic formula the problems of thestatesman seem to become enormously simplified. That is, if oneassumes that he has worked out a perfectly clear idea of whata democracy means and what the normal means. Assuming theseunassumables, his problem simplifies into the definite object ofproducing and developing the greatest possible number of normals--orif you will, the greatest happiness of the greatest number of normallives. 

Furthermore you then begin to have the entirely novel possibility inthe world: some sort of collective effort for a collective purpose, beyond the personal greeds and fears, factions and hatreds. So thestate, instead of fulfilling its old function of serving as the toolof certain powerful individuals, latterly known as the Big Men, mightbe transformed into an instrument toward freedom. With the ideal of ademocracy of the normals ever before him, the statesman could go onto construct and modify his social machinery. That would entail thesatisfaction not alone of the animal needs, but also the highestaspirations and therefore the provision of the finest conditions oflife for the normal: those most favorable, stimulative, and assistantto creative activity. For what else is the content of the idea offreedom?

Without committing the intellectual sin which William James namedVicious Abstractionism, the goal of the clearest progressive andliberal thought and forces of the twentieth century might be summedup as this freedom in a democracy of normals. A good formula whichcoincides with the technique of nature in the evolution of species. A fair fight, a free-for-all who are unhandicapped, is the mottoof natural selection. Where civilization shakes hands with naturalinstinct, what but the happiest of results can be expected?

Unfortunately, the formula in human society possesses an Achilles'heel. Again it is slavery. Where slavery has become bred into thebone, the standard of the normal becomes reduced so tremendously thatthe average of normals, the majority, are hopelessly inferior. Ineffect, they are really subnormal. So the ideal of our ideal statesmanis bound to be defeated because of the inadequacy of his material. 

No matter how interested in his main business: the promotion offreedom for creative activities in a democracy of the normals, he isbound to be beaten by the majority consisting of subnormals. There isnothing left for him but to cater to the minority of careerists, theone-eighth of the electorate representing superior intelligence. Theintelligence tests employed in the War showed that and also thatforty-five per cent of the examined, or about one half the totalpopulation, had a mental capacity, or natural ability that would neverdevelop beyond the stage normal to a twelve-year-old child. They aredoomed to remain forever subnormal. 

THE CAREERISTS AS THE ABNORMALS

The careerists are those who practice the careerist religion. Thecareerist religion is the religion par excellence of modernity. Someone once said, with the perfect candor of the North American, thatAmerica is the land of opportunity. He meant that America is the landof the Careerist or, as it has also been put, it is the land of theman on the make. The careerist, or the man on the make, is of athousand genera and species, varieties and subvarieties, withtransition links between. One finds him at every level of society. 

Excepting a negligible minority, the feminine career of today (as ofthe last ten thousand years of the race's history) consists in theacquisition of a husband. After that she is so identified with himthat her own life, as something distinct, individual and unique, becomes blurred and then completely erased. The feminine careerist, the careeristina, if you will, is a definite type. Consider theunimportance of a collective purpose to the woman whose career is themate, and then the mate's career. All the kinks and twists of thefeminine mind, resulting from the necessities of that fundamentalprimary problem, would form a multitudinous and interesting list. Themost successful careeristinas are the absolutely unconscious onesbecause they are not passively besieged nor actively bombarded by anydoubts as to what they want. They play their game exceedingly well asdo not the quasi-rebels and faint-hearted revoltees that form no smallpercentage of the Newest Women. For a number of women the feministmovement has been an attempt to break away from the traditions ofthe wife-careerist, and to strike a line of auto-careerism. Canthe careeristina instinct, the fruit of the practice of so manygenerations, be uprooted by the good intentions of a mere statesman?

But the masculine careerist is a marvelous creature. He is a biologicsport, an abnormal variation. New York is the place to watch andstudy him in his thousands and tens of thousands. You can observehim climbing, climbing, climbing, precisely as an ant climbs a tree. Nothing can really discourage or sway him from his chosen path. If heis not getting on financially, he is getting on socially, or he isusing the one method of advance to help him with the other. How theline of least resistance and greatest advantage is determined for andtaken by him is a fascinating process. 

The careerist instinct, the inherited flair for a career, must not beconfounded with the instincts of self-preservation, self-expansionor self-expression, because they are utterly different. Indeed, thecareerist instinct is often their direct antagonist, clashing with anddominating them. The making of the career involves the distortion, themutilation, degradation, degeneration or even the complete suppressionof the true personality. But it is all instinctive. To consider thelife of the careerist as an expression of instinct will explain toothe success of so many who have no inner awareness of what they want. These go straight for the career, looking neither to the right norto the left, without doubt or hesitation, just as they go for therespiration business as soon as they are born. 

Then there is the Super-Careerist. Ordinarily, the careerist is ratherobvious, easily recognizable, with diaphanous motives and conduct. Butthere is another and rarer bird, the careerist of talent, even thecareerist of genius, whom it is not so easy to see through. Clever andbrainy, he may be a good all around trifler, or his specific gift forsome line of achievement may make him more effective. There is nothinghe may not call himself: conservative, liberal, progressive, orradical. Often he is an agnostic about social and political affairsand problems, which passes for the indecision of the open mind, and isquite handy to render him all things to all men. But perpetually, theunderlying careerist instinct drives him to use all men and women, allideas and movements and forces he comes in contact with for his ownpersonal advancement, just as the slave making instinct guides the redant in all its activities to procure its captives. Ideas do not make ahero out of him, but he makes heroes of ideas, because they serve himin his ascent. 

Because he is the most subtle, the most complex and the most deceptivetype of careerist, he is the most dangerous to the adventure andspeculation in intellect which mankind is. To say that he is a wolf insheepskin is to be unjust to him, since he is most successful when heis most unaware of his own charlatanry. He is most sincere when heis most insincere, and most truthful when he lies best. A littleself-consciousness of hypocrisy is a corrupting thing, much of itcompletely incompatible with the most successful careerism. Tartuffeis always applauded by the world when he plays Hamlet, if he reallybelieves in himself as Hamlet. And, as all he has to do, if he is atall talented, is to look into his glass and see himself in the part, he carries it off very well. 

WHY THE STATESMAN FAILS

Slaves and careerists, subnormals and abnormals, are the importantelements of the constituency of every modern statesman. The financialand social careerists as business men, professionals, artists, publicists, presidents of countries, politicians, philosophersdominate his outlook, his plans, his horizon. The slaves, theinferiors, the subnormals exist merely to be exploited by them. Noone questions the causes of the multiplicity of them. No one asks whythere are so many little lives. For a fundamentally minded statesmanthe control of the production of the careerist, why he is produced, and how he may be prevented, becomes the primary problem of his art. 

Well, you say, what are you going to do about it? That is humannature. The Evils of Human Nature! There is the perpetual answer to berepeated by our clever editors unto Eternity. You cannot get away fromhuman nature. It is human nature to be a careerist. It is human natureto put the immediate triumphs of the self and its pleasures abovethe more indirect, the more remote and distant benefits of a great, wonderful, free community. We are all careerists. In so far asdemocracy has succeeded as a form, it has persisted because there wasin it for the common man the promise of his getting more out of lifethat way than any other way. For himself. And the devil take theothers. The myopia of such crude selfishness continues to determinehis politics to this very day. And so he proceeds to vote for favorsbestowed and patronage past or potential. That is, when he does notthrow his ballot away altogether into the fire of family habit, sectional inertia, or race prejudice. 

Again you say, that is human nature. It is human nature for us tobe narrow, to be confined within the circle of personal thought anddesire, without imagination for the beyond. So the calf is limited inits wanderings to the radius of the rope by which it is tethered. Theservile soul will always be submissive and docile, greedy and stupid. What else could you expect from the descendant of the solitary beastwho once lived for thousands of years in caves? Without servility ofthe soul, without chains for the spirit of the wild animal againstthe world, men could never have been driven to live together fortwenty-four hours in communities. 

The conception of human quality out of which all social machinery hasbeen devised and built is a conception of slave quality and careeristquality. As we are all caught in the net, as the unconscious memoriesof our slave and careerist ancestors flow in our blood and echo in ourcells, all we can do is accept it and work with it. Human nature is anincurable disease. Like Jehovah's definition of Himself, it is, it hasbeen, and ever will be. Everywhere the same, always the same, foreverthe same, there is no way out. 

POOR HUMAN NATURE

All of these strictures upon poor human nature are exceedinglydelightful to our careerists. Every unpleasant social fact, everyoutrage to our best instincts, every exhibition of incapacity, incompetency, inefficiency, indifference, every example ofsuper-criminal negligence is pardoned as an effect of that universalsin, human nature. Take the case of the statesman and the diplomatswho failed to prevent the Great War, though they saw it coming foryears, and who should therefore all, Entente as well as German, American as well as Japanese, be indicted for their criminalnegligence, precisely as a physician would be for failure to reportand stop the spread of an epidemic disease. All these crimes ofomission and commission are excused on the plea that it was all due tohuman nature, and that what can be blamed on human nature in generalcan be blamed on no one in particular. 

Poor human nature! Flagellated on every hand, what are we to do withit? Why is the careerist so numerous and ubiquitous? Why does theslave-soul infiltrate like a cancer the soul of society with its blackfluid? Is freedom, the divine idea, nothing but the toy of an oratorto the majority, a distant star in the night to a helpless minority?Yet the instinct to freedom, the appetite for freedom, flickersthrough the centuries as a fitful flame, though snuffed out by everygust of class passion, every wind of mob resentment, and every stormof national jealousy. Though the inferior subnormals multiply intogreat sheep majorities, and the careerists, like Napoleon, morbidvariants, involve millions in their disease, the idea of freedompersists obstinately. Have we any reason for regarding it as otherthan an illusion?

If freedom is an illusion, we must admit the doom of democracy. And noWagnerian crashes of orchestration mitigate the tragedy of the sceneas our eyes are opened to the twilight of our new gods. For what othersocial methods are there left to us? In the struggle against nature'sbarriers upon human aspiration for perfect satisfactions, it looks asthough every other method has failed us. 

In the past, refined aristocracies and benevolent despotisms havefailed as miserably as our democracies are now failing and as we aresure crude anarchism and communism would. Their inferiority has thrownthem on the scrap heap. As for our present ways of government as apermanent method, the storage of power in the hands of the Clever Few. War burns in the lesson of how little the careerist regards eitherthe subnormal or supernormal. He condemns them all sooner or later towholesale slavery and carnage. 

Is man then never to be the architect of his own destiny? Are we tosurrender our faith in the future of our kind to the spectacle of amiserable species sentenced by its own nature to self-destruction? Wethought to rise upon the wings of knowledge and beauty, lured bythe mysteries of color and the magic of design and the might of theintellect and its words, that have transfigured life into the greatestadventure ever attempted in time and space. But we find ourselvesmerely another experiment, intricate and rather long drawn out, to besure, with marvelous pyrotechnics, magnificent effects here and there, but bound to eliminate itself in the end, to make stuff for themuseums of the real conqueror of the stars yet to come. We arecondemned to be classed with the dodo and the mammoth by the comingdiscoverer of an escape from the slave and careerist. And so letus resign ourselves to fate. Let us eat of the humble bread of thestoic's consolation in the face of the mocking laughter of the gods, let us admit that Mind in Man has unconsciously but irretrievablywilled its own self-annihilation. What remains for us except to beatour breasts and proclaim: So be it, O Lord, so be it?

MAN AS A TRANSIENT

Yet, true as it is that the human animal has achieved no advancebeyond the necessities of his ancestors, nor freed himself from hisbondage to their instincts and automatic reflexes, is there no way outanywhere? Is there perhaps some ground for hope and consolation in thethought that we, of the twentieth century, no longer see ourselves, Man, as something final and fixed? Darwin changed Fate from a staticsphinx into a chameleon flux. Just as certainly as man has arisen fromsomething whose bones alone remain as reminders of his existence, weare persuaded man himself is to be the ancestor of another creature, differing as much from him as he from the Chimpanzi, and who, if hewill not supplant and wipe him out, will probably segregate him andallow him to play out his existence in cage cities. 

The vision of this After-man or From-man is really about as helpful tous as the water of the oasis mirage is to the lost dying of thirstin the desert. The outcries of the wretched and miserable, thegray-and-dreary lived din an unmanageable tinnitus in our ears. LikeGod, it may be but a large, vague idea toward which we grope tosnuggle up against. It seems implicit in the doctrines of evolution. But how do we know that in man the spiral of life has not reached itsapex, and that now, even now, the vortices of its descent are notbeginning? How do we know that the From-man is to be a Superman andnot a Subman? How can we dare to hope that the slave-beast-brute is togive birth to an heir, fine and free and superior?

We do not know and we have every indication and induction for the mostoppositely contrary conclusions. Life has blundered supremely, in, while making brains its darling, forgetting or helplessly surrenderingto the egoisms of alimentation. So it has spawned a conflict betweenits organs, and a consequent impasse in which the lower centres drivethe higher pitilessly into devising means and instruments for thesuicide of the whole. 

As War shows plainly to the most stupidly gross imagination, the germsof our own self-destruction as a species saturate our blood. Theprobability looms with almost the certainty of a syllogisticdeduction, that such will be the outcome to our hundreds of thousandsof years of pain upon earth. In the face of that, speculations upona comet or gaseous emanations hitting the planet, or the sun growingcold, become babyish fancies. How clearly the possibility is pointedin the discussions about the use in the next War of bacterial bombscontaining the bacilli of cholera, plague, dysentery and many others!What influenza did in destroying millions, they can repeat a thousandtimes and ten thousand times. What else the laboratories will bringforth, of which no man dreams, in the way of destructive agents actingat long distance, upon huge masses and over any extent of territory, is presaged in that single example. But besides thus willing, by aninner necessity, its own annihilation, Life, in the very structureand machinery of its being, seems caught into the entanglements of aninescapable net, an eternity-long bondage it can never rip, to fleeand remake itself into the immortal image that is its God. 

And so there go by the board the last alleviations of those unbeatableoptimists who would soothe their aching souls with at least the dropof comfort: that if man is a mortal species, with not the slightestprospect of a continuing immortality, not to mention a glorious futureand destiny, there are others. Man, after all, may be simply a badhabit Life will succeed in shaking off. No philosophy or religion canafford to be anthropocentric merely. It must include all life and allliving things to which we are blood-related. There are other speciesor latent species to take up the torch that burned poor homo sapiensand ascend the heights. The ant and bee may yet mutate along certainlines that would make them the masters of the universe. 

But no matter what species or variety gets the upper hand in thestruggle for survival and power, the implications of the qualitiesnecessary to victory in conflicts of individual separate pieces ofprotoplasm will be there. Besides, life is always begotten of life. That is why synthetic protoplasm is nothing but a phrase. It isimpossible to conceive of something alive, possessed of the propertyof remembering, that is not possessed of a store of past experiences. You can no more think of getting rid of these unconscious memories ofprotoplasm than you can think of getting rid of the wetness of water. They are imbedded in the most intimate chemistry of the primeval amebaas well as in our most complex tissues. 

The memories of the cold lone fish and the hot predatory carnivor whowere our begetters, may haunt us to the end of time. The bee and theant, too, have woven inextricably into the woof of their cells theinstincts that sooner or later would send their brain ganglia, even when evolved to the pitch of perfection, to elaborating theself-and-species murdering inventions and discoveries that areapparently destined to slay us. The powers of unconscious memory andunlearnable technique of reaction to experience, once grooved, thusprove the great gift and the eternal curse of protoplasm. Making itpossible for it to be and become what it is and has, they havealso made it forever impossible for it to be or become its owncontradiction. 

Add to this unsloughable remembrance of the past, for better, forworse, the secretive consciousness of its present needs every livingthing, as against every other living thing, is obsessed with. As aperegrinating, finite, spatially limited being, it is separated fromall other living beings by inorganic, dead masses, and yet driven tocontact with them by a fundamental impulse to assimilate them intoitself, and make them part of itself. That assimilatory urge ispresent in every activity from coarse ingestion as food to the moralmetabolism of the hermit-saint who would influence others to do as he. 

FATE AND ANTI-FATE

In effect the history of Life resembles the life history of thesmallest things we know of, the electrons, and the largest, the greatsuns and stars of space. The electron begins, perhaps, as a swirl inthe primeval ether, joins other electrons, forms colonies, cities, empires, elements of an increasing complexity, through stages of arelative stability, like lead or gold. Until it reaches the stage ofintegration which wills its own disintegration, that we have beentaught to look upon with proper awe and reverence as radium. And weare told that nebulae wander until they collide and give birth tostars, stars wander and collide and give birth to nebulae. Life beginsas a quivering colloid, goes on painfully to build a brain, whichautomatically refines itself to the point of discovering and usingthe most efficient methods of destroying others, and by a boomerangeffect, itself. Fate!

The conception of Fate was a Greek idea. The classic formula fortragedy, the struggle of Man with the sequence of cause and effectwithin him and without, that is so utterly beyond his grasp and ken, or power to modify, originated with them. But they must also be giventhe credit for having conceived an idea and started a process which, at first slowly and gropingly, now slipping and falling, torn andbleeding among the thorns of the dark forest of human motives, presently goes on, with a firmer, more practiced, more confident step, to emerge into the light as the deliberate Conqueror of Fate. Thatidea-process, this Anti-Fate is Science. 

Science began with the adventures of free-thinking speculators, whorevolted against religious cosmogonies and superstitions. Scepticsconcerning the knowledge that was the accepted monopoly of thepriesthood must have existed in the oldest civilization we knowanything of, more than twenty-five thousand years ago, theAurignacians. But it was to the Greeks that we owe that amalgamationof curiosity delivered of fear, that merger of systematic researchand critical thinking untrammelled by social inhibitions which is theessence of modern science. Out of them has come the great Tree ofKnowledge of our time, which is, too, the only Ygdrasil of Life, undying because it lives upon successive generations of human braincells. 

Science, as the pursuit of the real, began with very small things bymen with very small intentions. Inventories, collections of isolateddata, something permanent for the mind out of the flux of transientsensations, little tracks and foot paths in the jungle of phenomena, were their goal. With no sense of themselves as the mightiest ofmaster-builders, cultivating humility toward their material at anyrate, the little men ploughed their little fields, striking the oilof a great generalization or classification or explanation with nofanfare of trumpets. 

First as freaks and cranks, then as scholars and pedants, thenprotected and perhaps stimulated under the competitive royal patronageas societies and academies, they prepared for the harvest. Comparingthem to pioneer farmers sowing an undeveloped territory is reallytotally inadequate and inaccurate. For the most part, they were likecoral makers, laboriously constructing, with no vision, certainly nosustained vision, of the whole. To the practical men of affairs, theshopkeepers and traders, the land-owners and ship-owners, the soldiersand sailors, the statesmen and politicians, the people who specializedin maneuvering human beings and materials, they were, for thisfutile devotion to abstract knowledge, marked ridiculous and absurdweaklings, mollycoddles, babies, not to be trusted with the demandsand dangers of public life. 

But it so happened remarkably late in history that with the discoveryof the possibilities of coal there was a great boom in the demand forindustrial machinery. At the same time there were thrown up the mostmarvelous advances in physics and chemistry. Recurring War became notthe clashes of mercenary armies, but the catapulting of whole nationsat each other. New destructive devices out of the laboratories wereraised into the commandants of the course of history. Then scienceacquired prestige. 

Science as King, science as power, looms as the great new figure, theovershadowing novel factor, in practical statesmanship. Unlike thefactor X in the traditional equation, it is the known factor parexcellence, the factor by which the value of all the other factorsof human life will be ascertained and solved. As knowledge of theconditions determining all life, it stands as the courageous David ofthe race against the Goliath territory of the uncontrollable and theinevitable, even the unknowable. Human history resolves itself intothe drama: Science contra Fate. Quite a change from the vaudevilleshow of the restless personal ambitions of vindictive fools and greedyscoundrels, the mischief and adventures of half-witted geniuses andlicensed rogues that have been figures of the prologue. 

The future of science has become the future of the race. So much ofan inkling of the truth is beginning to be appreciated. That isordinarily taken to mean that the process by which the Wessex manbecame the New York and London man, the accumulation of accidentaldiscoveries and inspired inventions of scattered individuals, will goon, providing a succession of marvels and miracles for the careeristand his retinue. Not only is he to be entertained and served by them, but any commercial value will also be exploited by him. The naturalwonders of the laboratories have taken the place of the supernaturalabsurdities of the medieval mind as a fillip for the imagination ofthe man in the street. Even spiritualism apes the technique of thephysicist. The credulity of reporters alone concerning developmentsin surgery, for example, is incredible. There is enough rot publisheddaily for a brief to be made out against the idolatry of science. 

THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE

Science also as a religion, as a faith to bind men together, as asubstitute for the moribund old mythologies and theologies which keptthem sundered, is commencing to be talked of in a more serious tone. The wonder-maker may have forced upon him, may welcome, the honorsof the priest, though he pose as the humble slave of Nature and hersecrets. Presently the foundations and institutes, which coexist withthe cathedrals and churches, just as once the new Christian chapelsand congregations stood side by side with pagan temples and heathenshrines, may oust their rivals, and assume the monopoly of ritual. Should its spirit remain fine and clear, should it maintain theglorious promise of its dawn, should its high priests realize theperpetually widening intimations of its universal triumph, and escapethe ossification that has overtaken all young and hopeful things andinstitutions, the real foundation for a future of the species would belaid, and so its ultimate suicide prevented. 

The time has gone by, however, for any complacent assurance that theredemption of mankind is to be attained by a new religion of words. There is no doubt that the damnation or salvation of an individual hasoften been determined by a religious crisis, in which the magic ofwords have worked their witchery. There is plenty of evidence that apsychic conversion will effect an actual revolution in the whole wayof living of the victim or patient, as you like it. William James, in his "Varieties of Religious Experience, " established that prettydefinitely. When it comes to groups, races, nations, the outlook iswholly different. There is a conflict of so many and diverse habitsand interests, beliefs and prejudices, that hope for some commonmerely intellectual solvent for all of them is rather forlorn. If atall, the resolution of the conflict will come by a pooling of actualpowers and interests, in which the religion of science will playthe great part of the Liberator of mankind from the whole system oftorments that have made the way of all flesh a path of rocks alongwhich a manacled prisoner crawls to his doom. 

SCIENCE AND HUMAN NATURE

Science has a future. The religion of science has a future. Canscience assure us that human nature, in spite of its beast-brute-slaveorigins holds the possibility of a genuine transformation of itstexture? Can Fate's stranglehold upon us be broken? There will becertainly a tremendous, an overwhelming increase in the generalstock of informations we call physics and chemistry and biology. Anabundance of new comforts, novel sensations, fresh experiences, andbreath-bereaving devices that will thrill or heal, will follow ofcourse in their wake. The religion of science will infiltrateand penetrate and permeate by its capillary action the barbaricsuperstitions, the ridiculous rites, the unsanitary insanities of oursocial systems. 

But what about the poor human soul itself, with its inherent vicesand virtues, its fears and indulgences, audacities and nobilities, jealousies, shames, blunders, incurable likes, cravings and diseases?Can science change the texture of the slave and careerist, if theyrepresent the subnormal and the abnormal? What about the Becky Sharps, the Mark Tapleys, and Tom Pinches, not to speak of the NicholasNicklebys and the Hamlets, the Micawbers and the Falstaffs? Whatfuture have they as they recur in the generations? Indeed, does notthe very fact of their recurrence, of them and of the hundreds ofother types and temperaments, point implacably to the conclusion towhich the historian, the philosopher and the biologist have driven us:that in the grip of an endless chain of pasts the human soul has nofuture?

That may appear an irrelevant, an immaterial, and an incompetentquestion to our men of business and affairs. Human nature, as fallenangel or ape parvenu, has always looked upon itself as fixed foreternity. "Human nature never changes, and is everywhere and alwayswill be the same. " "As a man is built. " "Bred in the bone. " These arethe axioms of our social and economic Euclids. Indeed, Man, assumingthat his nature is as uncontrollable as the course of the stars, haslimited his research into the substance of freedom to a groping for anunderstanding of the adequate external conditions of liberty. Thus heset himself another of the insoluble problems he seems to delightin by neglecting the most important factor in the equation. Yet theinvisible soul of man, ignored, as a variable, varying quantity, hasupset all societies and constitutions, and all schemes of bondage aswell as of freedom. 

For freedom, it becomes obvious as soon as it is clearly stated, issheer impossibility until the internal conditions of his natureare ascertained, and the way paved for their control. A simpleillustration of the working of this principle is supplied by ourdemocracies, grossly pretenders. How can a democracy be possiblewithout a knowledge of the control of the individually and sociallysubnormal, who, since they offer themselves to exploitation bythe careerists, prove themselves the weak links in the chain ofco-operation with an equal opportunity for all, that is the democraticideal? In what does the equality or inequality of men consist? Justwhat are the qualities necessary for successful competition, or if youwill, co-living, of man with his fellow-men, and how and why do theyoperate? No freedom, independent of the servile repetitions ofhistory and heredity, is conceivable until these inquiries have beenelaborately carried out toward a certain working finality. 

THE PROMISES OF EUGENICS

There are, to be sure, the claims and assertions and negativeachievements of the youngest of the sciences, eugenics. They areinvincible optimists, the eugenists: it is perhaps a case of a virtueborn of necessity. Thus Francis Galton, in the preface to the "Bibleof Eugenics, " his essays on Hereditary Genius, declares: "There isnothing either in the history of domestic animals or in that ofevolution to make us doubt that a race of sane men may be formedwho shall be as much superior, mentally and morally, to the ModernEuropean, as the Modern European is to the lowest of the Negro races. "High hopes beat in this declaration. But Galton could not haveforeseen that the signing of a scrap of paper by one of the ModernEuropeans would let loose all the other Modern Europeans in apandemonium of horrors the lowest of the Negro races could not butenvy as a masterpiece of its kind. It seemed to be suspiciously easyfor him to accept an excuse to slide down the dizzy height he hadclimbed from the African level. 

The eugenists would put their trust in the encouraged breeding of thebest and the compulsory sterility of the rest. But what is the best, and who are the best, and where will you find them when they are notinextricably emulsified with the worst? It's a long, long way to theday of a segregating out and in of Mendelian unit-characters. Besides, this is a strange world of choices. Nobody is to be considered worthyof parenthood until he has fallen in love properly. Nobody who wouldpermit an outsider's decision as to when he was properly in love wouldbe worth thirty cents as a parent. There is the ultimate dilemmaof the eugenist--the dilemma which destroys forever the dream of acontrol of parenthood from the point of view of merely psychic values. 

NEW PSYCHOLOGY

There are the claims and outcries and promises of thepsychologists--the specialists in the probing of the human soul andhuman nature. In our time, the demand for a dynamic psychology ofprocess and becoming, psychology with an energy in it, has split theminto two schools--the emphasizers of instinct and the subconscious, the McDougallians, and the pleaders for sex and the unconscious, theFreudians. A synthesis between these two groups is latent, since theirdifferences are those of horizon merely. For the McDougallians lookupon the world with two eyes and see it whole and broad--the Freudianssee through their telescope a circular field and exclaim that theybehold the universe. It is true that they own a telescope. 

But what has either to offer our quest for light on the future ofthe species? Nothing very much. Thus, to turn to the disciplesof McDougall. In a recent volume entitled, "Human Nature and itsRemaking, " Professor William Ernest Hocking of Harvard contends thatMan, all axioms about his nature to the contrary, is but a creatureof habit, and so the most plastic of living things, since habit isself-controlled and self-determined. By the self-determination of thehabits of the race will the new freedom be reborn. It sounds old, very old. And pathetic because it recognizes original and permanentingredients of our composition in the words pugnacity, greed, sex, fear, as elements to be accepted in any system of the principles ofcivilization. It is the bubble of education all over again. What inour cells is pugnacity? What in our bones is greed? What in ourblood is sex? What in our nerves is fear? Until these inquiries arerespected, conscious character building or even stock breeding mustremain the laughing stock of the smoking rooms and the regimentalbarracks. 

Come the Freudians. To them we owe the aeroplanes to a new universe. They have opened up for us the geology of the soul. Layer upon layer, cross-section upon cross-section have been piled before us. And whata melodramatic cinema of thrills and shivers, villains and heroes, heroines and adventuresses have they not unfolded. Each motive, asthe stiff psychologist of the nineteenth century, with hisplaster-of-Paris categories and pigeon holes and classifications, labelled the teeming creatures of the mind, becomes anon a struttingactor upon a multitudinous stage, and an audience in a crowdedplayhouse. Scenes are enacted the febrile fancy of a Poe or a deMaupassant never could have conjured. The complex, the neurosis, thecompulsion, the obsession, the slip of speech, the trick of manner, the devotion of a life-time, the culture of a nation all furnish bitsfor the Freudian mosaic. Attractions and inhibitions, repulsions andsuppressions are held up as the ultimate pulling and pushing forces ofhuman nature. 

But is the problem solved? Is not human nature primarily animalnature? And do we so thoroughly understand this animal nature? Doesnot all this material of Freudianism consist of variations upon socialburdens imposed on the original human nature? To be sure, at everymoment of life, choices have to be made, and choice involves theclashing of instincts and motives, with victory for one or some, anddefeat for the others. But the Freudian material per se--the sexmaterial--is it not merely the by-product of a certain state ofsociety? A sane society would eliminate nearly all of Freudiandisease, but still have original human nature upon its hands. Why isit that of two individuals exposed to the same situation, one willdevelop a complex, the other will remain immune? The only soil we knowof, the real foundation stones of our being and living, are the cellswe are made of. Tell me the cellular basis of a complex, and I willgrant that you have arrived at some real knowledge. 

WAY FOR THE PHYSIOLOGIST

There has grown up, contemporaneously with the teachings of Freud, a body of discoveries and knowledge in physiology, concerningthese factors, which is like a long sword of light illuminating apitch-black spot in the night. The dark places in human nature seem tohave become the sole monopoly of the Freudians and their psychology. But only seemingly. For all this time the physiologist has beenworking. Beginning with a candle and now holding in his hands the mostpowerful arc-lights, he has explored two regions, the sympatheticnervous system and the glands of internal secretion, and has come upondata which in due course will render a good many of the Freudiandicta obsolete. Not that the Freudian fundamentals will be scrappedcompletely. But they will have to fit into the great synthesis whichmust form the basis of any control of the future of human nature. Thatfuture belongs to the physiologist. Already his achievements providethe foundations. I propose in the following chapters to sketch thehistory and outline the elements of this new knowledge, and then toglimpse some of the larger human reactions to it. A good deal of thisnew knowledge is not altogether new. A number of the isolated factshave been known and talked about for more than two generations. Butthe newer additions, and the light they have thrown upon old problemspresent the opportunity for a synthesis, which must sooner or later bemade. 

THE CHEMISTRY OF THE SOUL

Besides, it is time that the secrets of the laboratories stepped outinto the market place, unashamed. Imaginative man has played for agesimmemorial with wondrous fairy tales and fancies of what he wouldachieve. The sciences of physics and chemistry have made everydaycommonplace realities out of his radiant dreams. One need not repeatthe clichés of our editors. But the analogy is there nevertheless. Nocontrol over heat and light and electricity, today our slaves, waspossible until physics and chemistry took them in hand. No control ofthe human soul is possible until it too will be taken in hand by them. We may now look forward to a real future for mankind because we havebefore us the beginnings of a chemistry of human nature. The internalsecretions, with their influence upon brain and nervous system aswell as every other part of the body corporation, as essentiallyblood-circulating chemical substances, have been discovered the realgovernors and arbiters of instincts and dispositions, emotions andreactions, characters and temperaments, good and bad. A huge complexof evidence, as various, complicated and obscure as human natureitself, supports that fundamental law. 

The chemistry of the soul! Magnificent phrase! It's a long, long wayto that goal. The exact formula is as yet far beyond our reach. But wehave started upon the long journey and we shall get there. Then willMan truly become the experimental animal of the future, experimentingnot only with the external conditions of his life, but with theconstituents of his very nature and soul. The chemical conditions ofhis being, including the internal secretions, are the steps of theladder by which he will climb to those dizzy heights where he willstretch out his hands and find himself a God. Modern knowledge ofthese chemical substances, circulating in the blood, and affectingevery cell of the body, dates back scarce half a century. But alreadythe paths blazed by the pioneers have led to the exploration of greatcountries. The thyroid gland, the pituitary gland, the adrenal glands, the thymus, the pineal, the sex glands, have yielded secrets. Andcertain great postulates have been established. The life of everyindividual, normal or abnormal, his physical appearance, and hispsychic traits, are dominated largely by his internal secretions. Allnormal as well as abnormal individuals are classifiable according tothe internal secretions which rule in their make-up. Individuals, families, nations and races show definite internal secretion traits, which stamp them with the quality of difference. The internalsecretion formula of an individual may, in the future, constitute hismeasurement which will place him accurately in the social system. 

"More and more we are forced to realize that the general form andexternal appearance of the human body depends, to a large extent, upon the functioning, during the early developmental period, of theendocrine glands. Our stature, the kinds of faces we have, thelength of our arms and legs, the shape of the pelvis, the color andconsistency of the integument, the quantity and regional locationof our subcutaneous fat, the amount and distribution of hair on ourbodies, the tonicity of our muscles, the sound of the voice, andthe size of the larynx, the emotions to which our exterior givesexpression. All are to a certain extent conditioned by theproductivity of our glands of internal secretion. " (Llewellys F. Barker, Johns Hopkins University, 1st President of Association forStudy of Internal Secretions. )

The implications for the statesman, the educator, the vocationalexpert, the student of the neurotic and of genius, of delinquents, deficients and criminals, the explorers of the exceptional and thecommonplace, the understanding of the poetic and kinetic, base anddull types, as well as of those two master interests of mankind, Sexand War, are manifest. The mystery of the individual, in all hisdistinct uniqueness, begins to be penetrated. And so every phaseof social life, in which the individual is at bottom the finaldeterminant, must be reviewed in the light of the new knowledge. History may be examined from an entirely new angle. The biographiesof our Heroes of the Past, in the Carlylean sense, will bearreinspection. Even Utopias will have to be revised. 

The internal secretions constitute and determine much of the inheritedpowers of the individual and their development They control physicaland mental growth and all the metabolic processes of fundamentalimportance. They dominate all the vital functions during the threecycles of life. They co-operate in an intimate relationship which maybe compared to an interlocking directorate. A derangement of theirfunction, causing an insufficiency of them, an excess, or anabnormality, upsets the entire equilibrium of the body, withtransforming effects upon the mind and the organs. In short, theycontrol human nature, and whoever controls them, controls humannature. 

The control of the glands of internal secretion waits upon ourknowledge of them, the nature and precise composition of thesubstances manufactured by them, and just what they do to the cells. Envisaging the future, that knowledge today is meagre. Looking backfifty years, it becomes an amazing achievement and revelation. It isworth our while to survey the accomplished, and to trace its generalhuman significance. For a certain tangible degree of knowledge andcontrol has been attained and should be part of the average citizen'sequipment in dealing with the everyday problems of his life. 

THE ATTITUDE OF THE LABORATORY

A certain number of so-called experimental physiologists, that is, the physiologists of the animal laboratory, who will have nothing butsyllogistic deductions and quantitative determinations based uponanimal experiments as the data of their science, will be apt to lookaskance upon the preceding paragraphs, and those which will follow. Tothem, any man who relates the internal secretions to anything, outsideof the routineer's paths, puts his reputation at stake, if he hasany reputation at all to start in with. They would have us delivera Scotch verdict upon all the questions which arise as soon as oneattempts to take in the more general significance of the glands ofinternal secretion. This, even though the more general implicationsconcerning the effects of their products, the relations of them togrowth and development, nutrition and energy, environmentalreactions and resistance to disease, as well as the grand complex ofintelligence, are admittedly well ascertained in some directions. 

The method of absolute measurement in science has yielded miracles. For some thousands of years, an isolated individual, here and thereor an isolated institution have devoted themselves to the task, struggling not only with their own weaknesses, but with religious andpolitical dogmas which spoiled and vitiated even the beginnings oftheir efforts. When, in the seventeenth century, men associatedthemselves in research, for free communication and discussion of theirfindings, a great invention came alive. Close on its heels was bornthe exact experimental method. Amazing triumphs were born of thatmarriage which swept away before it ignorance and superstition andprejudice. Its children and grandchildren have flourished and grownstrong and mighty. They have transmuted the material conditions oflife. Certainly all the laurels belong to the method of absolute, measured observations. 

Yet all this time the old method of inductive observation has not gonedead. Most magnificent triumph of nineteenth century science, theevolution theory of Charles Darwin, remains the most conspicuousinstance of clarification of thought in human history. That work wasthe outcome of an attempt to relate and interpret a collection ofobservations on species and their variations, that had long lain tohand, a mixture without a solvent. Darwin saw certain generalizationsas solvents, and behold! a clear solution out of the mud. But it wasby piling evidence upon evidence, co-ordinating isolated facts notdirectly associated, that the towering structure was erected. There isno prettier sample extant of the powers of the inductive method. 

Not that there are no triumphs of the quantitative method in store forthe biologist. Already, the materials of the Mendelians have becomebasic parts of his structure. And today, in pursuit of the solutionsof hundreds of the problems of living matter, chemists andphysiologists are employing the most precise standards, units, andmeasures of the physical sciences. Blood chemistry of our time is amarvel, undreamed of a generation ago. Also, these achievements area perfect example of the accomplished fact contradicting a prioriprediction and criticism. For it was one of the accepted dogmas of thenineteenth century that the phenomena of the living could never besubjected to accurate quantitative analysis. 

However desirable the purely quantitative experimental methods may be, they naturally need always to be preceded by the qualitative studiesof direct observations. Inevitably there will be numberless errors, apparent and real inconsistencies and contradictions, and ideas thatwill have to be discarded. Just the same there is no other method ofprogress. Every bit of evidence points towards the internal secretionsas the holders of the secrets of our inmost being. They are the wellsprings of life, the dynamos of the organism. In trailing their scentwe appear to be upon the track not only of the chemistry of ourbodies, but of the chemistry of our very souls. An increasing host offactors and studies marshal themselves solidly for that declaration. Endeavor to conceive the consequences and possibilities for thefuture. A synthesis of the known in the field provides even now ameans of understanding and control of the perplexities of human natureand life that are like a vista seen from a mountain top after thelifting of a fog. 

The most precious bit of knowledge we possess today about Man is thathe is the creature of his glands of internal secretion. That is, Manas a distinctive organism is the product, the by-product, of a numberof cell factories which control the parts of his make-up. Much as thedifferent divisions of an automobile concern produce the differentparts of a car. These chemical factories consist of cells, manufacturespecial substances, which act upon the other cells of the body and sostart and determine the countless processes we call Life. Life, bodyand soul emerge from the activities of the magic ooze of their silentchemistry precisely as a tree of tin crystals arises from the chemicalreactions started in a solution of tin salts by an electric current. 

Man is regulated by his Glands of Internal Secretion. At the beginningof the third decade of the twentieth century, after he had struggled, for we know at least fifty thousand years, to define and know himself, that summary may be accepted as the truth about himself. It isa far-reaching induction, but a valid induction, supported by amultitude of detailed facts. 

Amazingly enough, the incontestable evidence, that first pointed to, and then proved up to the hilt, this answer to the question: What isMan? has been gathered in less than the last fifty years. Darwin andHuxley, and Spencer, who first opened men's eyes to their origins, were ignorant of the very existence of some of them, and had not thefaintest notion or suspicion of the real importance or function of anyof them. 

THE PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS

Now, there are certain prejudices and problems which appear to berudely brushed away by the dogmatic arrogance of the principle stated. What, you say, is Man but an affair of his peculiar gland chemistry?But what of mind, soul, consciousness? Still another of thesepathetically one-sided and superficial theories of man as a machinepure and simple which would make him the most complicated ofmechanisms, a marvel of intricate parts, but would deprive him of hisessence as self-conscious unique in the universe. Man, thinking man, at any rate, dreads to lose the cherished impregnable conviction thathe is something apart, inherently, and therefore infinitely differentfrom every other phenomenon in the range of his cosmos. 

A thorough dissection of the relation and attitude toward psychicmaterial of the consistent physiologist, who refuses to deal incontradictory terms, would lead us a little too far. So would thereconciliation between the claims of mind and the concept of theorganism as a system of chemical reactions. The most fundamentalaspects of that herculean task, warned by the sign, No Trespassing, we shall leave to the metaphysicians. The influence of the glands ofinternal secretion upon the mind we must consider, but at presentpostpone. Yet the hot-headed contenders on both sides may be remindedof certain facts. 

We live in the most iconoclastic of ages. There are sane people alivetoday going quietly about their business who deny the very existenceof consciousness. These heretics of course pooh-pooh absolutely thelions of metaphysics. On the other hand, it may be pointed out to ourmechanists who believe in mechanism to the bitter end, that even ifman can be described entirely as a mere transformer of energy, thereis no reason why he cannot also be described as a transformer ofenergy plus someone who makes use of the transformer and of theenergy transformed. The stone wall before the honest mechanist is theabolition of purpose, and design, an old insoluble problem uponhis premises. Preach, until you are blue in the face, behavioristtropisms, in which man is pushed and pulled about in his environmentas are iron filings in a magnetic field. Think up objectivephysiologies in which your life and mine become a series ofconcatenated influences and compound reflexes. Play with words likethe concentration reflex when you mean idea, and the symbolic reflexwhen you mean language. But your most rigid nomenclature will neverabolish the mystic personal purpose in the equation, no matter how lowthe step in the animal series to which you descend. The declarationthat a man is dominated by certain glands within his body should notbe taken to give aid and comfort to those who would banish mind fromthe universe. 

CHAPTER I

HOW THE GLANDS OF INTERNAL SECRETION WERE DISCOVERED

Just what are the glands of internal secretion? And how have we becomepossessed of whatever information about them we have? A brief reviewof how the idea of a gland of internal secretion came into the humanmind and of the contributions that have converged into a single bodyof knowledge is worth while. 

A gland is a collection of cells (those viscous globules which are theunits of all tissues and organs). It manufactures substances intendedfor a particular effect upon the body economy. The effect may beeither local or upon the body as a whole. 

Originally, a gland meant something in the body which was seen to makesomething else, generally a juice or a liquid mixture of some sort. A classical example is the salivary glands elaborating saliva. Themicroscope has shown us that every gland is a chemical factory inwhich the cells are the workers. The product of the gland work is itssecretion. Thus the sweat glands of the skin secrete the perspirationas their secretion, the lachrymal glands of the eyes the tears astheirs. The collectivism of management and control is the onlyessential difference between them and the modern soap factory orT. N. T. Plant. 

Man as a carnivor, and as a consequent anatomist, has been acquaintedwith these more superficially placed glands for some thousands ofyears. During all this time and during the epoch of the achievementsof gross anatomy, it was believed that the secretions of all glandswere poured out upon some surface of the body. Either an exteriorsurface like the skin, or some interior surface, the various mucousmembranes. This was supported by the discovery of canal-like passageways leading from the gland to the particular surface where itssecretion was to act. These corridors, the secretory or excretoryducts, are present, for example, in the liver, conducting the bileto the small intestine. Devices of transportation fit happily intoa comparison of a gland to a chemical factory, corresponding thusclosely to the tramways and railroads of our industrial centers. 

Little more than a hundred years ago, it was observed that certainorgans, like the thyroid body in the neck, and the adrenal capsules inthe abdomen, hitherto neglected because their function was hopelesslyobscure, had a glandular structure. As in so much scientific advance, the discovery or improvement of a new instrument or method, a freshtool of research, was responsible. The perfection of the microscopewas the reason this time. 

If one wishes to trace the idea of internal secretion by cells to anindividual, it is convenient, if not pedantic, to give the credit toTheophile de Bordeu, a famous physician of Paris in the eighteenthcentury. Bordeu came to Paris as a brilliant provincial in his earlytwenties and by the charm of his manner and daring therapy foughthis way to the most exclusive aristocratic practice of the court. Naturally a courtier, taking to the intrigues of the royal court likea duck to water, making enemies on every hand as well as friends, andwith a fastidious and impatient clientele, he yet found time to dabblein the wonders of the newly perfected microscope and to speculate uponthe meaning of the novelties revealed by it in the tissues. _He coinedthe thought of a gland secretion into the blood_. 

It was in the year 1749 that he came to Paris from the Pyrenees, a young medical graduate, destined to become the most fashionablepractitioner of his time. At the age of twenty-three he was holdingthe professorship of anatomy at his alma mater, Montpelier, wherehis father was a successful physician. At twenty-five he was electedcorresponding member of the Royal Academy of Sciences. A handsomepresence and a Tartarin de Tarascon disposition assured his successfrom the start. The medical world was then composed of the emulsion ofcharlatanry and science Molière ridiculed. Success stimulated envy andjealousy. One of the richest of the older medical men set himself thejob of procuring his scalp. On a trumped-up charge of stealing jewelsfrom a dead patient--a favorite accusation against the doctors of theeighteenth century--he had Bordeu's license taken away from him. Thegood graces of certain women to whom Bordeu had always appealed, andwho indeed supplied the funds to get him started in Paris, rammedthrough two acts of Parliament to reinstate him. Nothing daunted, hereturned to his quest for a court clientele, and was rewarded finallyby having the moribund Louis XV as a patient. 

This was the man with whom the modern history of the internalsecretions begins. Not content with adventures among the courtiers anddesperadoes of the most corrupt court in the most corrupt city of theworld, he went in for research. The high power microscope that cameinto vogue when he was studying, revealed vague wonders which hedescribed in a monograph, "Researches into the mucous tissues orcellular organs. " But what makes him interesting is a slender volumeon the "Medical Analysis of the Blood, " published in the year of theAmerican Declaration of Independence. The sexual side of men and womenaroused Bordeu's most ardent enthusiasms. Starting with observationson the characters of eunuchs and capons, as well as spayed femaleanimals, he formulated a conception of sexual secretions absorbedinto the blood, settling the male or female tint of the organism andsetting the seal upon the destiny of the individual. Thus he must bedonated the credit of anticipating the most modern doctrine on thesubject. 

The generation after him witnessed the triumph of the cell as therecognized unit of structure of the tissues, the brick of the organs. It was soon found that the cells of the more familiar glands, likethe sweat or tear glands, resembled the cells of the more mysteriousstructures named the thyroid in the neck, or adrenal in the abdomen, of which the function was unknown. What had hitherto preventedclassification of the latter as glands was the fact that theypossessed no visible pathways for the removal of their secretion. Sonow they were set apart as the _ductless_ glands, the glands withoutducts, as contrasted with the glands normally equipped with ducts. Since, too, they were observed to have an exceedingly rich supply ofblood, the blood presented itself as the only conceivable mode ofegress for the secretions packed within the cells. So they were alsocalled the blood or vascular glands. 

The names which became most popular were those which represented acontrast of the glands with the ducts, conveying their secretion tothe exterior, as the glands of EXTERNAL SECRETION and the glandswithout the ducts, the secretions of which were kept within the body, absorbed by the blood and lymph to be used by the other cells, asthe glands of INTERNAL SECRETION. How different these two classesof glands are may be realized by imagining the existence of greatfactories manufacturing food products, which would diffuse throughtheir walls into the atmosphere, to be absorbed by our bodies. 

There are certain terms for the glands of internal secretion whichare used interchangeably. They are spoken of often as the _endocrine_glands and as the _hormone_ producing glands. Endocrine is mostconvenient for it stands for both the gland and its secretion. Hormoneis employed a good deal in the literature of the subject. But itapplies specifically to the internal secretion, and not to the gland. 

THE EXPERIMENTAL PIONEER

All this clarification of the concept of the glands of internalsecretion occurred in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. However, no inkling of their real importance to the body, of whichquantitatively they form so insignificant a part, was apparentlyrevealed to anyone. Not even the most daring speculation or brilliantguess work in physiology engaged them as material. Thus Henle, thegreat anatomist, calmly affirmed that these glands "have no influenceon animal life: they may be extirpated or they degenerate withoutsensation or motion suffering in the least. " Johann Müller, the mostcelebrated physiologist of his day and contemporary of Henle, wrotein 1844 and coolly stated, "The ductless glands are alike in oneparticular--they either produce a different change in the blood whichcirculates through them or the lymph which they elaborate plays aspecial rôle in the formation of blood or of chyle. " In other words, they were dismissed as curious nonentities, of no real significanceto the running of the body. Laennec, the French founder of the Art ofDiagnosis in Medicine, once said that nothing about a science is moreinteresting than the progress of that science itself. He might haveadded that nothing either was more interesting than the contradictionsin that progress. For while these grand moguls of their sciences wereenunciating their dogmas, pioneers here and there were already settingthe mines that were to explode them. 

The experimental method, to the value of which biologists werejust beginning to awaken, was destined to be the vehicle of Time'srevenges. An application of it to the mysteries of sex was theimmediate occasion. Sex and sex differences have always more or lessobsessed the imagination of mankind. The volumes of theories aboutthem would constitute a respectable museum. Certain gross facts, however, were known. The effects of loss of the sex glands upon theconfiguration of the body and the predominating constitution inanimals and eunuchs have always attracted attention. The proverbs andstories of all nations are full of references to them. But up to thenineteenth century no controlled experimental work was ever carriedout regarding them. It was in 1849, that A. A. Berthold of Göttingen, aquiet, sedate lecturer, carried out the pioneer experiment of removingthe testes of four roosters and transplanting them under the skin. Itwas Berthold's idea to test whether a gland with a definite externalsecretion, and a duct through which that secretion was expelled, but which yet had powers over the body as a whole that were to beattributed only to an internal secretion, could not be shown, bya clean-cut experiment, to possess such an internal secretion. Hesucceeded perfectly. For he found that, though, in thus separating thegland from its duct and so cutting off its external secretion, theaction of the cells manufacturing that secretion was destroyed, thegeneral effects upon the body were not those of castration. Theanimals retained their male characteristics as regards voice, reproductive instinct, fighting spirit and growth of comb and wattles. Whereas if the glands were entirely removed, these male traits, peculiar to the rooster, were completely lost. The inference was theexistence of an internal secretion. 

To Berthold belongs the honor of being the first experimentaldemonstrator who proved the reality of a gland with a true internalsecretion and the power it exercised through the blood upon theentire organism. Besides, he showed that a typical gland of externalsecretion could also have an internal secretion, a possibility neverbefore considered. That two kinds of cells could live within the samegland: one set usually recognized as producing the external secretion, the other evolving the internal secretion, was an astounding originalconception. 

ENTER CLAUDE BERNARD

Science is supposed to be immune to the personal prejudices andemotional habits of the vulgar. It is the tradition that a newcontribution to knowledge emerging from no matter how obscure thesource, should be hailed as a gift from the gods. But the sad truth ofthe matter is that a new finding in science requires as much backingas a new project in high finance or social climbing. Berthold, likeMendel, the founder of genetics, was a great pioneer. But there was nopersonage, no person of consequence, with no patronage by anyone ofconsequence, no wife or kin, to push him, and no audience to stimulatehim. His poor four little pages of a report, published ten yearsbefore Darwin's "Origin of Species, " attracted not the slightestnotice. Buried in the print of a journal with a subscription list ofpossibly two or three hundred, of whom perhaps two dozen may have beeninterested enough to read it, but without any recorded reaction on thepart of any of them, it was a flash in the pan. Though it was good, original, conclusive stuff, it was cut dead, absolutely, by thescientific world. As a result, forty years elapsed before theimplications of his studies were rediscovered by the Columbus of themodern approach to the internal secretions, the American Frenchman, Brown-Séquard. 

It took a first class man of genius in his field, in Paris, with arespected position in the whirl of its medical planetary system anda university appointment, to boom and advertise the doctrine of theinternal secretions, so that people began to sit up and listen andtake sides--on the wrong grounds. This Frenchman was Claude Bernard. At a series of lectures on experimental physiology delivered at theCollege of France, in 1855, he coined the terms internal secretion andexternal secretion and emphasized the opposition between them, on thebasis of an incorrect example, the function of the liver in the supplyof sugar to the blood. 

Just as Columbus reached America, carried on a series of logicalsyllogisms, built upon unreal pictures of a straight path to the East, Claude Bernard opened up the continent of the internal secretions tothe experimental enthusiasts of his time by a discovery which todayis not grouped among the phenomena of internal secretion at all. Inattempting to throw light upon the disease diabetes, in which thereis a loss of the normal ability of the cells to burn up sugar, heexamined the sugar content of the blood in different regions of thebody. He found that the blood of the veins, in general, contained lesssugar than the blood of the arteries, which meant that sugar was takenfrom the blood in passing through the tissues. But the venous blood ofthe right side of the heart contained as much sugar as the arterialblood. Evidently, somewhere, sugar was added to the blood in the veinsbefore it got to the heart. The blood of the vein which goes fromthe liver to the right side of the heart was then found to contain ahigher percentage of sugar than is present in the arteries. The veinwhich transmits the blood from the intestines to the liver hadthe usual lower percentage of sugar corresponding to the analysisestablished for the other veins. The liver, therefore, must add sugarto the blood on its way to the heart. Extraction of the liver thenrevealed the presence in it of a form of starch, an animal starch, which Bernard called glycogen, the sugar-maker. The origin of thesugar added to the blood on its way from the liver to the heart wasthus settled. Bernard went on to hail glycogen and the sugar derivableas the internal secretions of the liver, and to erect, and then drivehome, a theory of internal secretions and their importance in the bodyeconomy. 

The case he had hit upon was exquisitely fortunate, as the liver hadhitherto been regarded purely a gland of external secretion, the bile. Nowadays, glycogen and the blood sugar are not considered internalsecretions, because they are classified as elementary reserve food, while the concept of the internal secretions has become narrowed downto substances acting as starters or inhibitors of different processes. Moreover, the process of liberation of sugar from glycogen itself inthe liver, upon demand, is today set down to the action of an internalsecretion, adrenalin. Claude Bernard's conception, like a novelist'scharacters, has turned upon its creator, taken on a life of its own, and evolved into something he never intended. He looked upon aninternal secretion as simply maintaining the normal composition of theblood, which bathed alike and treated alike the democracy of cells. Today, the blood is believed merely the transporting medium for theinternal secretion, destined for a particular group of cells. 

ADDISON'S AS THE FIRST ENGLISH CONTRIBUTION

The years 1855-56 are red-letter years in the history of the glands ofinternal secretion. They witnessed, not only the publication ofClaude Bernard's "Lectures on Experimental Physiology, " but also theappearance of a monograph by Thomas Addison, an English physician, entitled "On the constitutional and local effects of disease of thesuprarenal bodies. " In this, he described a fatal disease during whichthe individual affected became languid and weak, and developed a dingyor smoky discoloration of the whole surface of the body, a browningor bronzing of the skin, caused generally by destructive tuberculousdisease of the suprarenal or adrenal bodies. Addison promptly put downthese constitutional effects of loss of the adrenal bodies to lossof something produced by them of constitutional importance. He wasparticularly struck by the change in the pigmentation of the skin, somuch so that his own designation for the affection was "bronzedskin. " Since then, however, the condition has been universally styledAddison's Disease. 

There is something spectacularly mysterious and picturesque about mostof the malign, insidious effects of the disease which appealed at onceto a number of investigators. The most adventurous, the most daring, the most imbued with enthusiasm for the experimental method, was theAmerican Frenchman, Brown-Séquard, who is acknowledged the father ofmodern knowledge of the glands of internal secretion, though to ClaudeBernard belong the honors of the grandfather. 

BROWN-SÉQUARD THE GREAT

Brown-Séquard, as the outstanding figure in the history of the glandsof internal secretion, deserves some notice as a personality. In thewords of the note-makers for novels and plays, he was a card. He wasborn in 1817 at Port-Louis, on the island of Mauritius, off Africa, then French property. His father was a Mr. Brown, an American seacaptain; his mother a Mme. Séquard, a Frenchwoman. Early in childhood, the father sailed away on one of his voyages and never came back. Themother thereafter supported herself and her son sewing embroideries. At fifteen, Brown-Séquard, with the physical appearance of an IndianCreole, was clerking in a colonial store by day, and composing poetry, romances and plays by night. The call of Paris was in his blood, whichwas indeed a supersaturated solution of wanderlust. 

Soon he was landed there to make his fortune in literature, only toospeedily to be disillusioned. Exhibition of manuscripts to a leadingliterary light merely evoked curt advice to learn a trade or go intobusiness. He would have none of either and studied medicine instead, earning his way by teaching as he learned. In the laboratories, hemade the acquaintance of people who more than once were to be hissalvation in the ups and downs of his career. In 1848 he was one ofthe secretaries of the Society of Biology, newly founded by ClaudeBernard. 

Some trouble, perhaps some effect upon his health of cholera whichthen swept Paris, caused him to return to his native Mauritius, toencounter an epidemic of cholera. There he slaved manfully, for whicha gold medal was afterward struck for him. That over with, he embarkedin 1852 for New York, without a word of American, learning English onboard. This was the first of a series of voyages. As he often boasted, he crossed the ocean sixty times, not a bad record for the days whenthe _Mauretania_ was still in the womb of time. He made a hopelessfailure out of practice in New York, became so poor as to practiceobstetrics at five dollars a case, and married a niece of DanielWebster. Then he went back to Paris. Back to America next as Professorof Physiology at the University of Richmond, Virginia, a job occupiedfor a few months only because of his opinions on slavery, ostensiblyanyhow. 

To Paris then the rolling stone meandered again. So that soon after hewas offered and accepted the charge of a great newly opened hospitalfor epileptics in London. That proved merely an interlude and in1863 we find him back in his fatherland (if we may hold France hismotherland) as Professor of Neuropathology at Harvard. In New Yorkfame preceded him now with a thousand trumpets, so that on the day ofhis arrival, he was kept busy seeing patients until night, when hehad to desist because of exhaustion. But still he did not prosper. Anunfortunate second marriage almost broke his heart, and an attemptto found in New York a new medical periodical, the _Archives ofScientific and Practical Medicine and Surgery_, got him into hotwater. Not until the death of Claude Bernard in 1878 left vacant thechair of physiology in the College of France, did he find peace andrest. He hastened to Paris, was appointed, and lived, in spite of themost erratic of existences, to the ripe old age of 78, working up tothe last minute. 

Addison's monograph stimulated Brown-Séquard, in the year after itsprinting, to reproduce the fatal disease experimentally by excisingthe suprarenal capsules in animals. Addison was very modest in hismonograph. He stated that the first case of the malady had beenreported by his great predecessor at Guy's Hospital, London, RichardBright, the describer of Bright's Disease. Then he talks about the"curious facts" he had "stumbled upon" and refers to an "ill-definedimpression" that these suprarenal bodies, in common with the spleenand other organs, "in some way or other minister to the elaboration ofthe blood. " In the preface to his work he had spoken more confidentlyof the fact that Nature, as an experimenter and a vivisector, canbeat the physiologist to a frazzle. Indeed, he begins like this: "IfPathology be to disease what Physiology is to health, it appearsreasonable to conclude that, in any given structure or organ, the lawsof the former will be as fixed and significant as those of the latter:and that the peculiar characters of any structure or organ may be ascertainly recognized in the phenomena of disease as in the phenomenaof health. Although pathology, therefore, as a branch of medicalscience, is necessarily founded on physiology, questions maynevertheless arise regarding the true character of a structure ororgan, to which occasionally the pathologist may be able to return amore satisfactory and decisive reply than the physiologist--these twobranches of medical knowledge being thus found mutually to advance andillustrate each other. Indeed, as regards the functions of individualorgans, the mutual aids of these two branches of knowledge areprobably much more nearly balanced than many may be disposed to admit:for in estimating them we are very apt to forget how large an amountof our present physiological knowledge respecting the functions ofthese organs has been the immediate result of casual observations madeon the effects of disease. " William James expressed the same thoughtsome decades later, when he emphasized that the abnormal was but thenormal exaggerated and magnified, played upon by the limelight, andtherefore the best teacher and indicator of the exact definition andlimitations of the normal. 

Addison, speaking before the South London Medical Society in 1849, declared that in all of three afflicted individuals there was found adiseased condition of the suprarenal capsules, and that in spite ofthe consciousness "of the bias and prejudice inseparable from the hopeor vanity of an original discovery . .. He could not help entertaininga very strong impression that these hitherto mysterious organs--thesuprarenal capsules--may be either directly or indirectly concernedin sanguification (the making of the blood): and that a diseasedcondition of them, functional or structural, may interfere with theproper elaboration of the body generally, or of the red particles moreespecially. .. . " A modern, acquainted with after developments, wouldsay that Addison was very hot upon the trail indeed. But withal, though he must have been well aware of John Hunter's advice to Jenneron vaccination, "Don't think, make some observations, " his training inthe indirect reasoning and deductions of the clinician prevented himfrom going right on to a direct experimental test of his theories. 

This Brown-Séquard proceeded to do. Removing the adrenal glands inseveral species of animals, he found, meant a terrible weakness intwenty-four to forty-eight hours, and death shortly after. If only onewere removed, there was no change apparent in the normal animal, butdeath occurred rapidly upon removal of the other, even after a longinterval. Furthermore, transfusion of blood from a normal intoone deprived of its suprarenals prevented death for a long time, indicating that the suprarenals normally secreted something into theblood necessary to life. 

The years 1855-1856 beheld two other important glands of internalsecretion, the thyroid, the gland in the neck astride the windpipe, and the thymus, in the chest above the heart, make their debut. 

The thymus was introduced by the great classic monograph of Friedlebenon the "Physiology of the Thymus, " in which he mentioned the usualforgotten pioneers: Felix Plater, a Swiss physician, who in 1614 hadfound an enlarged thymus in an infant dying suddenly, and Restelli, an Italian, who interested himself in the effects of removal of thethymus more than ten years before. Friedleben believed that in theyoung without a thymus, there occurred a softening of the bones, andgeneral physical and mental deterioration. He started the ball rollingfor a number of researches. 

Moritz Schiff, of Frankfort-on-the-Main, showed that excision of thethyroid gland in dogs is invariably fatal. A number of physicians inthe first half of the century had reported certain remarkable symptomsassociated with enlargement of the thyroid gland, as goitre. In 1825the collected posthumous writings of Caleb Perry, an eminent physicianof Bath, England, recorded eight cases, in which, together withenlargement of the gland, there developed enlargement and palpitationof the heart, a distinct protrusion of the eyes from their sockets andan appearance of agitation and distress. Schiff's paper was the firstto throw any light on the subject. But for some reason, probably thesame as in Berthold's forlorn experiments with the sex glands, thework of a person of no importance was ignored, or perhaps the morecharitable view is that it was forgotten. Yet the tide of observationkept sweeping in relevant data. 

In 1850, Curling, an English pathologist, studying the cretinousidiots of Salzburg, written about centuries before by Paracelsus, discovered that with their defective brain and mentality therewas associated an absence of the thyroid body, and accompanyingsymmetrical swellings of fat tissue at the sides of the neck. ThenSir William Gull in 1873 painted the singular details of a cretinouscondition developing in adult women, a condition to which anotherEnglishman, William Ord, of London, five years later donated the titleof myxedema, because of a characteristic thickening and infiltrationof the skin that is one of its features. 

Surgery then enters upon the scene. The great Swiss surgeon. TheodoreKocher, performed the first excision of the thyroid gland in humanbeings for goitre, in the same year. In 1882, J. L. Reverdin, anothersurgeon of Geneva, noticed that in man complete removal of the thyroidwas followed by symptoms identical with those collected under the nameof myxedema, and used the phrase "operative myxedema" to emphasizehis conviction of the connection between them. Then Schiff, in1884, neglected twenty-five years, came back, with an array ofdemonstrations, proving that the various symptoms, tremors, spasms andconvulsions, following removal of the thyroid, could be prevented bya previous graft of a piece of the gland under the skin, or by theinjection of thyroid juice into a vein or under the skin, or by theingestion of thyroid juice or the raw thyroid by mouth. 

A crystallization of ideas about the true function of the thyroid wasnow inevitable. In 1884, Sir Victor Horsley produced an experimentalmyxedema by removal of the thyroid in monkeys, resembling closely inits symptom-picture the disease as it occurs in human beings. Möbius, a German neurologist, came out boldly for the conception that a numberof ailments could be due to qualitative and quantitative changes inthe secretion of the thyroid, and that just as myxedema and cretinismwere due to an insufficiency of the secretion, Parry's disease wasto be ascribed to an excessive outpouring of it. The next stepswere easy. In 1888, Sir Felix Semon, as an outcome of a collectiveinvestigation, established for all time that cretinism, myxedema andpost-operative myxedema were one and the same. 

It was bound to occur to someone that if human myxedema and animalexperimental myxedema were one and the same, Schiff's procedure ofprevention and cure by feeding thyroid gland by mouth in the lattercould be applied to the former. The idea occurred to two men, Murrayand Howitz, in 1891. Murray's patient, a Mrs. H. , was shown before theNorthcumberland and Durham Medical Society, an English country medicalorganization, in February, 1891. She was forty-two years old and hadborne nine children. The illness attacking her had begun insidiously, with a gradual enlargement and thickening of her face and hands. She had become very slow in speech and gait, sensitive to cold, andlanguid and depressed in spirit to the point of inability to go aboutalone. Murray, employing the glycerin extract of the thyroid gland ofa freshly killed sheep, injected twenty-four drops hypodermically, twice a week. There was an immediate and marvelous improvement, whichcontinued steadily, Murray finding that it could be maintained byfeeding the gland by mouth. The features and skin returned to thenormal, speech quickened and she became able to walk about and liveher life without hesitation or assistance. She lived to the age ofseventy-four, dying in 1919. In the twenty-eight years, during whichit was always necessary to administer the thyroid, she consumed overnine pints of thyroid, comprising the glands of 870 sheep. 

Giants and dwarfs and fat people have always interested people asfreaks, departures from the usual and the normal, and have formed thestock of popular museum, circus and country fair. Every mythology hasconcerned itself with them. The Titans among the Greeks, Og, Gogand Magog among the Hebrews, are examples of the fascination of thesuperlarge. John Hunter, the founder of experimental surgery, spent afortune in chasing after the skeleton of a famous Irish Giant in 1783. Dwarfs have also fascinated--witness the short-limbed satyrs of theGreeks and the dwarf gods (Ptah and Bes) of Egypt, as well as thevogue of the court dwarf-buffoons, of whom Velasquez has left us someportraits. Fat people, obesity as a manifestation of personality, havearoused wonder and amusement the world over. The Fat Boy has alwaysfurnished good sport to the Sam Wellers. 

All these characters, tall or short, fat or lean, are related to theactivity of a gland of internal secretion in the head, the pituitary, which became a centre of interest in the late eighties. Because of itssituation, the opinion of the ancients was that it was the source ofthe mucus of the nose, an opinion reinforced by the greatest anatomistof the Dark Ages, Galen, and held up to the seventeenth century. Inother words, it was considered simply a gland of external secretion. Experimental removal of the pituitary was essayed by Horsley in 1886, the same man who two years before had reproduced myxedema successfullyin monkeys. Others succeeded his attempt. But the conclusions drawnwere uncertain or contradictory, resulting from the difficulties ofthe operative technique of getting at a gland placed at the baseof the brain. Not until 1908 was the problem solved by Paulesco ofBucharest, who devised a way of reaching it by trepanning the skull. He was thus able to prove beyond a doubt that the pituitary gland wasessential to life, and that without it no animal could continue tolive for any length of time. Soon after, Harvey Gushing and hisassociates at Johns Hopkins Hospital discovered that removal of partof the gland was followed by a pronounced obesity and sluggishness. A basis for the understanding of obesity and growth was thenestablished. 

In the eighties, there came to the clinic of Pierre Marie in Paris, a pupil of the great Charcot, various women complaining of headache. They also told him about an enlargement of their hands and feet, andan alarming change in the bones of the face. He differentiated theaffection from its imitators, and created its present designation of"acromegaly" (enlargement of the extremities). Also he correlatedtheir relationship to the giants who have been mentioned. Acromegalicshave been also likened to the Neanderthal Man, who had probably, asthe gorillas may have, an excess of the pituitary in their systems. For four years he studied the morbid phenomena in the tissues of thesesufferers at last consigned to their end. First one, and then another, and then a third and a fourth exhibited a striking hypertrophy of thepituitary body and a consequent widening of the portion of the baseof the skull which cradles the gland. He proceeded to say so inthe graduating thesis of his pupil, Souza Leite. The inferencewas inevitable that the entire process was to be put down to anoveractivity of the pituitary. Ever since, too, the growth of theskeleton has been accepted as controlled by that gland. 

About this time another set of old observations came to life again, related to those of Docent Berthold on the auto-grafting of the testesof a cock, with complete retention of its sexual characters, which hesaid, must be due "to the productive action of the testes, i. E. , toits effect upon the blood, and thence to the corresponding effect ofsuch blood upon the entire organism. " Of course, stock raisers andpoultry fanciers have noted the interesting outcome of castration forabout as long as their professions have existed. And for ages thediminution of sexual activity as a predecessor to the decadence ofsenility has been harped upon. Rejuvenation, especially in connectionwith sexual activity, as well as with tissue and spiritual elasticity, has been one of the haunting phantoms of the imagination for as longas we have records of articulate humanity. Together with El Dorado, the Elixir of Youth has shared the honors with the Philosopher'sStone. The idea of employing the chemical materials of the sex glands, the testes or the ovaries, to bring back youth, to restore juvenility, had not, as far as we know, occurred to anyone who at any rate puthimself on record, by word or deed, until 1889. The hero of the newdeparture was the hero of so many daring adventures among speculativeexperiments, Brown-Séquard. 

At this time the wanderer was an aged sage, seventy-two years old, fit, as custom goes, only for retirement and resignation to the fateof all flesh. The old passion of experimenting upon himself as well asupon the guinea-pigs, dogs, cats and monkeys, by which he was alwayssurrounded, was as alive and kicking as ever. I suppose he had beenthinking for years concerning some method for the resumption of youth, for we find him exclaiming, when the opportunity loomed of a greatlaboratory on Agassiz Island, Long Island, on one of his recurrentflights to New York: "Would that I were thirty!" And other passages inhis personal communications refer again and again to his consciousnessof growing old. The miracles that were being performed by injectingthyroid and feeding thyroid in animals probably acted as the spark toan inflammable mass of ideas long smouldering in the subcellars of hismind. The effects were reported to the Society of Biology in Paris, one memorable evening, June 1, 1889, in two notes on the results ofthe hypodermic injection in man of the testis juice of monkeys anddogs, and certain generalizations deduced therefrom. Such juices, hestated, had a definite energy-mobilizing or, as he put it, dynamogenicaction upon the subject himself, stimulating amazingly his generalhealth, muscular power and mental activity. 

These experiments, their nature, the manner in which they wereconducted, the character and age of the experimenter, and the resultsclaimed, were exquisitely good stuff for ridicule. Cartoonists andreporters leaped upon the theme with the avidity of the true-blueinterviewer. Paris, where to be ridiculed is to be killed in publicwith the most ignominious of deaths, reacted as only the Frenchtemperament can react. The wits of the salons crackled, thebourgeoisie chortled, the proletariat roared. The Elixir of Life hadbeen discovered and it was excellent sport. 

But Brown-Séquard remained unshaken. He had all the roués of Parisrunning to him, and consequent charges of quackery and charlatanism. How much of these unsavory epithets really applied to him will not bedetermined until we have a better acquaintance with his more intimatelife. A biography and collection of his letters is needed. But it iscertain that the general principles he arrived at, aided as much bythe wings of intuition as by the clues of incomplete and incompletelycontrolled experiments, survive as the foundations of whatever we knowabout the internal secretions, and all our present viewpoints. Hesummed these up in 1891 as follows:

"All the tissues, in our view, are modifiers of the blood by means ofan internal secretion taken from them by the venous blood. From thiswe are forced to the conclusion that, if subcutaneous injections ofthe liquids drawn from these parts are ineffectual, then we shouldinject some of the venous blood supplying these parts. .. . We admitthat each tissue, and, more generally, each cell of the organism, secretes on its own account, certain products or special ferments, which, through this medium (the blood), influence all other cells ofthe body, a definite solidarity being thus established among all thecells through a mechanism other than the nervous system. .. . Allthe tissues (glands and other organs) have thus a special internalsecretion, and so give to the blood something more than the wasteproducts of metabolism. The internal secretions, whether by directfavorable influence, or whether through the obstacles they oppose todeleterious processes, seem to be of great utility in maintaining theorganism in its normal state. "

The only part of this statement not conceded today is that relating tothe formation of internal secretions by tissues other than those ofwhich the cells are definitely glandular, that is secretory: as can bedetermined under the microscope. Brown-Séquard added to the conceptof internal secretions, fathered by Claude Bernard, the idea of acorrelation, a mutual influencing of them and of the different organsof the body through them. The nervous system had hitherto beenregarded as the sole means of communication between cells, by itstelegraphic arrangements of nerve filaments reaching out everywhere, interweaving with each other and the cells. The Brown-Séquardconception inferred the existence of a postal system between cells, the blood supplying the highway for travel and transmission of thepost, the post consisting of the chemical substances secreted bythe glands. To be sure, the doctrine was only an inference, thoughwell-founded, of which the direct experimental proof was not tobe obtained until the researches of Bayliss and Starling. Yet toBrown-Séquard belongs the immortal credit, if not of the originator, at any rate of the resurrector of the idea of using gland extracts toinfluence the body. The unwarranted hopes aroused by his enthusiasticreports of rejuvenating miracles have long since been dissipated. Moreover, they smeared the whole subject with a disrepute which clingsto certain narrow and unreasonable minds to this day. But as everyphysiologist since has acknowledged, he was and remains the greatpath-breaker in the conquest of the internal secretions. 

THE HORMONES

The problem of the internal secretions was now attacked from anotherangle. A great Russian physiologist, Pawlow, called attention to thefact that the introduction of a dilute mineral acid, such as thehydrochloric acid, normally a constituent of the stomach digestivefluid, into the upper part of the intestine, provoked a secretionof the pancreas, which is so important for intestinal digestion. Heexplained the phenomenon as a reflex, a matter of the nerves goingfrom the intestine to the pancreas. 

His pupil, Popielski, threw doubt upon so easy an explanation, byproving that the same reaction could be elicited even after all thenerve connections between the gut and the spinal cord were severed. Ifthe relation was a reflex, it would have to be classed now as one ofthose local nerve circuits, which are pretty common among the viscera, a local call and reply as it were, without mediation of the great longdistance trunk lines in the spinal cord and the medulla oblongata. 

The work of Bayliss and Starling, two English physiologists, wascommenced then to test the hypothesis. They soon found that theexperiment could be so devised as to exclude any influence whatever onthe part of the nervous tissues, and yet result positively. Thus, if aloop of intestine was so prepared as to be attached to the rest of thebody only by means of its blood vessels, all the nerves being cut, putting some acid into it was still followed by a flow of pancreaticjuice, no less marked than when none of the parts about the pieceof gut had been disturbed. It was evident that the stimulus to thepancreas was carried by way of the blood stream. That the stimulatingsubstance was not the acid itself, was shown by the failure of thereaction to occur when the acid was injected directly into the bloodstream. Since there was this difference in the effects between acid inthe intestine and acid in the blood, it was manifest that the activesubstance must be some material elaborated in the intestinal mucousmembrane under the influence of the acid. So they scraped some of thelining of the bowel, rubbed it up with acid, and injected the filteredmixture into the blood. They were rewarded by a flow of pancreaticjuice greater in amount than any obtained in their other experiments. From the filtered mixture they isolated in an impure form, a solidsubstance which, when introduced into the circulation, has a similaraction. To this, of which the exact chemical make-up is as yet anunknown, they gave the name secretin. 

Secretin and its properties they used to generalize as a perfectlydirect and amply demonstrable example of an internal secretion. Metaphors are no less valuable in physiology than in poetry. Theydeclared that the internal secretions appeared to them to be chemicalmessengers, telegraph boys sent from one organ to another through thepublic highways, the blood (really more like a moving platform). Sothey christened them all hormones, deriving the word from the Greekverb meaning to rouse or set in motion. As a science is a well-madelanguage, a new word is an event. It sums up details, economizesbrain-work and so is cherished by the intellect. The study of theinternal secretions has advanced by leaps and bounds since it becameconvenient to speak of them as hormones. Withal, the brilliant work ofBayliss and Starling stands as the third great foundation stone, the first Claude Bernard's and the second Brown-Séquard's, in thearchitecture of the modern concepts of the internal secretions. 

CHAPTER II

THE GLANDS: THYROID AND PITUITARY

The glands of internal secretion, the history of which, as tools ofthought, I reviewed in the previous chapter, have each an interestingevolutionary story. Without some acquaintance with that story, therough outline of their physical architecture, and the particular workthey are called upon to perform in the body, no adequate understandingof their influence upon types of human nature and personality ispossible. 

THE THYROID GLAND

This gland consists of two maroon colored masses astride the neck, above the windpipe, close to the larynx. These are bridged by a narrowisthmus of the same tissue. They remind one of the flaps of a purseopened up. The gland has always attracted much attention because itsenlargement constitutes the prominent deformity known as goitre. 

To begin with, the thyroid was once a sex gland, pure and simple. Inthe lowest vertebrates and in the homologous tissues of the higherinvertebrates, the fractions of the thyroid are intimately connectedwith the ducts of the sexual organs. They are indeed accessory sexualorgans, uterine glands, satellites of the sex process. From Petromyzonupward that relationship is lost, the thyroid migrates more and moreto the head region, to become the great link between sex and brain. How alive that function still is, is grossly shown by the swelling ofthe gland with sexual excitement, menstruation and pregnancy. 

Relative to the body weight it is largest in the mammalia, andsmallest in the fishes. It therefore grows larger as the vertebrateascends in the scale. It has, in fact, developed in direct proportionto and side by side with the fundamental, differentiating vertebratecharacteristics. Of these, the possession of a dry hairy skin insteadof a moist or mucus bearing, chitinous skin, the ownership ofan internal bony skeleton and a large skull, and a complicateddevelopment of brain, are the diagnostic signs. Thyroid internalsecretion has a very definite controlling relation to all of them: toskin, its hairiness, moisture and amount of mucus, to the growth andsize of the bones, especially the bones of the extremities and theskull, and to intelligence and the complexity of the convolutions ofthe brain. Injury to the thyroid, especially in growing animals, isfollowed by profound retrogression or arrest of development in skin, skeleton and brain. 

In the fishes and the cyclostomes the thyroid is represented only bysome small scrubby patches, little larger than the heads of pins, scattered along the aorta, the great blood vessels from the heart, andout a little way along each gill. It becomes larger and more compactamong the amphibians and reptiles, but still remains quite small. Large and prominent among the birds and mammalia, it is largest andmost prominent among the primates and man. It is hence permissible tothink of the thyroid as a dictator of evolution, to crown it as thevertebrate gland par excellence, and to call the typical vertebratebrand marks secondary _thyroid_ characteristics in precisely thesense of Darwin classing the horns of cattle as secondary _sexual_characteristics. 

In such enthusiasm for the thyroid as a determinant of evolution, itspillar of cloud by day and column of fire by night, one should notforget the other glands of internal secretion. In them all, we maysuppose, Life, tired of inventing merely prehensile, destructive andreproductive organs, hit upon the happy thought of contrivances whichare in essence chemical factories to speed up the rate of variationand so of a higher evolution. 

CREATOR OF THE LAND ANIMAL

According to this conception the thyroid played a fundamental part inthe change of sea creatures into land animals. Experimentally, thyroidhas been used to transform one into the other. Thus the occasionalchange of a Mexican axolotl, a purely aquatic newt, breathing throughgills, into the amblystoma, a terrestrial salamander, with spottedskin, breathing by means of lungs, has long been known. Feeding theaxolotl on thyroid gland produces the metamorphosis very quickly, evenif the axolotl is kept in water. In the reptile house at the LondonZoological Gardens full-grown examples of the common black axolotl andthe pretty white variety are exhibited. Some are nearly three incheslong. Alongside are shown several examples of the amblystoma stage, produced in one of the laboratories of Oxford University and atthe gardens by thyroid feeding. A variation of the thyroid in thedirection of increased secretion was probably responsible for thefirst land animals. 

THYROXIN, SECRETION OF THE THYROID

Under the microscope, as in the test tube, the thyroid showsremarkable and unique features. Closed spherules lined by a singlelayer of cells enclosing a gelatinous material known as colloid, whichstains deeply with acid dyes, comprise the units of its architecture. Essentially, it may be pictured as a series of jelly bubbles secretedby outlying cells. 

A relatively high percentage of iodine is the unique distinctive factin its chemistry. Discovered by Baumann in 1895, the presence of theelement has focused the intelligence of chemists upon the gland, with the consequent demonstration of arsenic also in it. It was soonmanifest that the secretion of the gland was dependent upon theiodine content for its activity. Active extracts of the thyroid likethyreoglobulin and iodothyrin were proven to contain iodine, and tobecome inactive when the iodine was removed. Efforts to isolate theiodine containing active principle in pure form were fruitless untilthe work of Kendall at the Mayo Foundation. He obtained it as a white, finely crystalline, odorless and tasteless substance, heat stable, and analyzable. The free form separates as a sheaf of fine needles. Kendall at first called it the a-iodine compound, then named itthyroxin. 

There are other internal secretions of the thyroid, with a function oftheir own, that have no iodine. But they are secondary, and obscure. Thyroxin is accepted today as the purified internal secretion of thethyroid because all the effects of the whole gland may be elicitedwith it. Thyroxin produces results with doses amazingly minutecompared with the quantity of whole gland necessary. Moreover, a doseof thyroxin appears to last an organism in need of it over a period oftime; the other has to be administered continuously. 

Studies with thyroxin carried on in recent years have rounded out thewhole concept of the business of the thyroid in the body economy. One may sum it up by saying that the thyroid secretion is the _greatcontroller of the speed of living_. The more thyroid one has, thefaster one lives; the less one has, the more slowly one lives. 

That is not to imply any direct proportion between the amount ofthyroid secretion in an individual, and the length of life to which heis destined. The speed of living, in the chemical sense (which is thefundamental sense), and the rate at which the chemical reactions go onthat constitute the process of life, are dependent upon the thyroid. When the reactions go faster, more oxygen and food material are burnedup or oxidized, more energy is liberated, the metabolic wheel rotatesmore quickly, the individual senses, feels, thinks and acts morequickly. 

Likening one energy machine to another, the thyroid may be comparedto the accelerator of an automobile. That is a rough and superficialcomparison because an accelerator lets in more of the fuel to beburned up, while the thyroid makes the fuel more combustible. It thusresembles more the primer, for a rich mixture of gasoline and airburns at a greater velocity than a poor one. But the action of thyroidcould really be simulated only by some substance that could beintroduced into the best possible of gasoline mixtures, to increaseits combustibility by a hundred per cent or more. For that is whatthyroid will do to our food. Nor has it only this destructive orcombustion side. Withal there is at the same time a constructiveaction, for the process frees energy to be used for heat, motion orother need. The thyroid, therefore, in addition to its rôle as anaccelerator, acts, too, as the efficient lubricator for energytransformations. So we see it as accelerator, lubricator andtransformer of our energies. 

THE GLAND OF ENERGY PRODUCTION

The isolation of thyroxin has made possible the determination of theinfluence of the thyroid hormone upon the evolution of energy in anyhigher animal organism. There is, for every individual, a constant, known as the metabolic rate, or the combustion rate, a reading of therate at which his cells are consuming material for heat. The metabolicrate is thus a gauge of the energy pressure within the organism. It may be calculated by measuring the amount of carbon dioxide gasexhaled during a unit of time, and the number of calories of heatradiated by the skin simultaneously. A simplified device has latelyrendered it practicable to make actual determinations by a fewfive-minute readings of the rate of oxygen absorption by the lungs. Plummer, also connected with the Mayo Foundation, has shown that whatwould amount to less than a grain of the thyroxin would more thandouble the amount of energy produced in a unit of time. To be exact, one milligram of thyroxin increases the metabolic rate two per cent. That illustrates some of the power of the internal secretion of thethyroid and its importance to normal life. 

THE MOBILIZATION OF ENERGY

But not only is the height of pressure of energy in the cellscontrolled by the thyroid. The mobility of that energy is alsocontrolled. Without it, rapid and large fluctuations of energy output, and elasticity and flexibility of energy mobilization for any suddenmental or muscular act, let alone an emergency, become impossible. Awoman suffering with myxedema, the condition described by the Englishphysician Gull as a cretinoid state supervening in the adult lifeof woman, has an insufficient amount of thyroxin in her blood andtissues. She is clumsy and awkward and will stumble when endeavoringto walk upstairs. Any effort is almost paralyzed because the rangeof fluctuation of energy, the ability to mobilize energy, in turndependent upon an ability to increase the metabolic rate, is limited. In slang phrase, she cannot step on it. Her existence is set to go ata rate in the neighborhood of forty per cent below the normal. By theadministration of thyroxin, her metabolic rate can be raised to anydesired figure, the spark can be adjusted, so to speak, to any pointwe like, and it can be so maintained for years. 

In the normal animal, to be sure, the internal secretion of thethyroid is not absolutely essential to life. So it contrasts with thehormone of the minute parathyroids placed so closely to it, a minimumdose of which is absolutely a prerequisite for continued life. Thefundamental chemical reactions within the cells occur in the completeabsense of thyroxin. But they go on in a relatively fixed, rigid andunvarying way, confined within the narrow limits of a constant figure. Under such conditions, the level of energy production is bound to below, and to remain low, and the modus of its mobilization slow andunwieldy. With thyroid is introduced the trick of _catalysis_, or thespeeding up of the vital chemical reactions, through the agency of an_intermediate_ which accelerates the process. It is par excellence thegreat catalyst of energy in the body. (A catalyst is an intermediarylike the trace of water, which will bring about an explosion betweendry oxygen and hydrogen that without it have stayed inert with thestrongest currents of electricity. ) Thus it supplies a mechanism notonly for quantity output of that subtle reality we label energy, butalso an apparatus for varying the available amount of it, and forpermitting the maximum range in ease and rapidity of its utilization. The thyroid is still another device of life for procuring more andmore variation and differentiation, its goal, as far as we can peerthrough the opalescent screen upon which its manifestations quiver. 

From another point of view, the thyroid may be looked upon as theorgan evolved for maintaining the same amount of iodine in the bloodas there is in sea water. Sea water was our original habitat, since, like Venus, we have all come up out of the sea. 

The more intimate study of the composition of the blood has revealedthe most astonishing parallelism between it and the compounds of seawater. The blood is sea water, to which has been added hemoglobin asa pigment for carrying oxygen to the cells not in direct contact withthe atmosphere, nutrients to take the place of the prey our marineancestors gobbled up frankly and directly, and white cells to act asthe first line of defense. To keep the concentration of iodine in theblood a constant, the thyroid evolved, since there is no iodine inmost foods and very little in those which do contain it. 

That a minimum amount of iodine in the food is necessary to health isshown by the existence of goitre regions. Around some of the GreatLakes in the United States, for instance, the water does not containenough iodine. As a result, numerous cases of goitre occur. Iodine inthe 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 tenmillions, and that of the liver is about three or four parts to tenmillions. Since the liver is the most complex and active chemicalfactory in the body, its appropriation of a greater amount of iodinefor itself is understandable. 

When thyroxin is administered in a single dose, there is a distinctlag in the absorption of it by the tissues. A single dose does notgenerate its maximum effect until the tenth day. This effect continuesfor about ten days. Then there is a gradual decrease in the intensityof reaction for another ten days. So that the length of time a singleadministration of thyroxin functions within the body is about threeweeks. Again we have occasion to notice a protective device of thecells. Since the presence of thyroxin in the tissues determines therate at which they burn themselves up, it is obvious that if therewere no mechanism for retarding its action, and at need varying it, they really would set fire to themselves. That is to say, if thetissues held a maximum of the thyroid internal secretion, and had totake up more and more as it was fed out to them by the thyroid throughthe blood, the pressure of energy production would attain the state ofa boiler without a safety valve. Even if self-destruction were avoidedby the ingestion of the largest quantities of energy-bearing foods, rest for the cells would be difficult, if not impossible. 

The thyroxin in the tissues diminishes after a period of greatexertion, the thyroxin probably being carried back to the thyroidgland and kept there as reserve until further demand. So it has beendiscovered that during the winter months, the thyroid glands of beef, sheep and hogs all contain much less iodine than during the summermonths. During the winter months, manifestly, more energy is requiredto maintain body temperature, hence the gland surrenders more of itssecretion to the tissues and so keeps less of it itself. There mustbe, too, a certain wearing out of the potency of the iodine with time. Even dead inorganic catalysts, made of simple elements, wear out afterhaving been used time and time again. 

Though the thyroid is the supreme energizer, life is incompatible witha certain excess of it. Death can be produced by successive dailyinjections of its internal secretion. But it has, besides theenergizing effect, certain formative and nervous influences equallymarvelous. As illustrations, there are the cases of thyroiddeprivation in human beings, cretinism and myxedema, as well asthose in which it is believed there occurs an excess of thethyroid secretion in the blood and tissues, the condition of_hyper_thyroidism. 

CRETINISM AS THYROID DEFICIENCY

Not that there is any arresting contrast of startling differencebetween the phenomena presented by different species. The younger theanimal, the grosser the morbid symptoms witnessed. The animal fails togrow. The bones and cartilage, except of the skull, fail to develop. The abdomen projects and becomes large and flabby. The sex organsatrophy. There is sterility. Pregnant rabbits abort, hens producevery small eggs or none at all. These are the results of removing thethyroid in animals. 

Apathetic, indifferent, dirty, awkward, apparently idiotic, describethe human cretins. Their skin is rough and coarse, peeling in sheets. In some it is considerably knarled and creased as in the aged, and inothers swollen, hard and resistant. The hair becomes shaggy and rough, losing all luster, and tends to grow irregularly and fall out. Thetemperature becomes subnormal and an anemia supervenes. There is adistinct reduction in the resistance to infections and intoxications. 

Cretinism in the human is a condition in which the burning taper wecall Life flickers and smoulders and smokes. Thirty years ago itwas an example of the most hopeless idiocy. Whole populations wereafflicted 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 ispermitted to attack early enough. Modification, in the direction ofthe 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 triflesquatter than even the average new-born's flat nose. There may also beabnormal sleepiness, greater even than that of the normal baby in thefirst month or two in that there is no spontaneous awakening fromthe coma for food. But in most cases this is put down to normalvariability, or maybe to that limbo of all a baby's troubles:weakness. After some months, it is noticed that the infant is failingto grow at the normal rate, either physically or mentally. Examinationat this time reveals a curious thickening of the dental ridges. Thenthe tongue takes the centre of the scene, by becoming unusually thickand prominent, to the point of projecting beyond the mouth at alltimes, and interfering with breathing, when the infant is in arecumbent position. 

More and more of the characteristics of the affection turn up. Thequeer, repulsive, pitiful face of the cretins, which makes them allseem brothers or twins, shapes itself. A yellowish, white or waxypallor; rough, dry, scaly, bloated skin; swollen, often wrinkled brow;watery eyes, often almost concealed by the thickened eyelids; thedepressed 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; eyebrowsand eyelashes are scant, and often absent; the nails short, thin andbrittle; the teeth, very late in coming, may be represented by a fewsharp points, irregular, decaying quickly, sometimes not succeeded atall by those of the second dentition. 

Whatever growth occurs is irregular and disproportionate. The trunk, though small compared with the head, appears massive against thebackground 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, rollswhich cannot be smoothed out. Hands and feet are broad, pudgy, andfloppy, the fingers stiff, square and spade-like, the toes spreadapart, like a duck's, by the solid skin. Above the collar bones thereare frequently great pads of fat which sometimes encircle the narrowbull neck. 

The mental state varies with the degree of deprivation of the internalsecretion of the thyroid. In the worst cases it is repulsivelyvegetable. Even the intelligence common to the higher animals iswanting. The cretins of the "human plant" kind, as they have beennicknamed, will not recognize mother or father or any person aboutthem, or even a person from an object, and manifest no interest inanything or anybody, not even toys. Hunger and thirst they manifest bygrunts 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 whorecognize parents and familiar faces, and exhibit some evidence ofaffection for them, acquire a limited vocabulary, and then cease, noprogress possible even with the alphabet. They attain the size and ageof two or three years and there stop altogether, as if a permanentbrake were applied to the wheels of their growth. Some higher typesmay even come to speak connected sentences, and exhibit a certainmild 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 thyroiddeprivation as it occurs in infancy to illustrate how wide a sweep thegland's lariat embraces. Skin, hair, bones, muscle and fat, brain andintelligence, growth and development, are modified precisely as thesize and shape of certain crystals are modified by the presence orabsence of ingredients in an apparently homogeneous solution. Afertilized ovum, in which the predecessor of the thyroid gland ispresent, that is to say, in which there is the seed and soil for itssprouting, looks the same as one without that formative material. Yet, when the time comes for the internal secretion of the thyroid to putin its oar in the metabolic game, its presence or absence makes allthe difference in the world to the individual. 

In the middle of the nineteenth century, when the concentration ofphosphorus in the brain was established as significant, the cry forthe emphasis of that fact was--without phosphorus no thought ispossible. We can much more relevantly declare that without thyroid, no thought, no growth, no distinctive humanity or even animality ispossible. For the epigram about phosphorus was bombast, since it canbe declaimed with equal truth that without oxygen, without carbon, without nitrogen, without any of the food elements that go to makeup the chemical composition of brain matter, no thought is possible. Indeed, if one were set upon the indictment of a single chemicalelement as the begetter of consciousness, the prisoner at the barwould have to be copper. There is more copper in the brain by aconsiderable degree than in any other organ of the body. Which perhapswill be exceedingly regretted by the patrons of the aristocracy of thesoul who would have it as an emanation of a deposit in the brain ofsilver at least, if not gold. They are like the old lady who wouldnever permit herself to be cured of her ailments except by gold platedpills. Copper, however, is not necessary to intelligence. Withoutthyroid there can be no complexity of thought, no learning, noeducation, no habit-formation, no responsive energy for situations, as well as no physical unfolding of faculty and function, and noreproduction 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 ofchild as well as adult, by doing something to the speed of activitiesin their cells, is told straightway by the effects of it when eatenor introduced into the skin or blood of various people. A cretin, idiotic, dwarfish, deformed, hopeless, an incessantly prodding burdenof sorrow to the mother, who looks upon the masterpiece she hadlabored to bring forth, and beholds a terrible gargoyle, becomestransformed when fed thyroid. 

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

Yet, should the administration of the thyroid cease, an almostimmediate reversion to the original vegetative condition isinevitable. After a few days, reactiveness slows down, the child willspeak only when spoken to, will sit quietly in a chair all day andact semi-anesthetized. Gradually hair and skin return to the previouscold-blooded animal state, and the whole picture of the cretin is infull bloom. Supplying the internal secretion of the gland promptlyrepeats 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 consideredhopeless idiots, is scarce a generation old, we have no data, asyet, as to the character of their children or grandchildren, theiradventures and vicissitudes, in short, their life history. Those ofwhom we have any record are normal and healthy school children orworkers, alive to the interests of childhood or their occupationand social circles. No one outside their family knows that they arecretins, and the most acute observer would be hard put to it tosuspect. What a theme for the reflections upon appearances the eminentVictorians loved!

There are possibilities the imagination may envisage. One may supposesuch a cretin, with all his other ductless glands intact, grownsuccessfully to manhood under careful medical guidance. No one buthimself is aware of his affliction, outside of his medical advisers. Luck aids him to rise in the world, or perhaps he has been born witha spoon of the precious metals in his mouth. Adolescence, love andmarriage dance their sequence. Our hero of course keeps his dreadsecret to himself. Whether such an omission of confidence wouldentitle his wife to a divorce is something courts will be called uponto decide sooner or later. But, without anticipating, the honeymooninvolves a trip to the South Seas. A storm and a wreck throws themalone on an island, tropical, easy to live on, and rescue in thecourse of a few months certain. The man, to his horror, discovers thathe has saved of his medicaments only a pill box containing half adozen of thyroid tablets, his requirement being one a day. He seesthem go day by day. Finally they are all gone. He feels his facultiesslipping hour by hour. Shall he tell her? Indecision grips him, and hedelays until the day when his consciousness sinks to the point wherehis mind no longer grasps his problem. The wife must endure thespectacle of the enchantment of her husband, and his change fromgallant lover to dull animal ogre. A new version of Beauty and theBeast!

Cretinism as one manifestation of a soul without thyroid or withoutenough thyroid is not all. The first great successes with thyroid wereachieved in adults, particularly adult women, exhibiting a peculiarobesity, coldness, loss of hair and teeth and a remarkable lassitudeand torpor that might be summed up as a chronic drowsiness, like asaturation of the blood with some narcotic drug. Or there may be amelancholia, or a lack of ability to seize the finer points of amental process, or an argument treated in the abstract. Childrenare said to be lazy, slow or dull. They experience an irritatingdifficulty in understanding questions and expressing their wants anddesires, 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 ofthe body and the mind. Then there is infantilism, which is helped bythe giving of thyroid extract. It differs from the ordinary cretinismin that, while one is reminded of the latter by the physical stuntingand the other stigmata, there is a certain amount of intelligencewhich enables the individual to hold his own while he is a child. Hebecomes a grown-up baby: at twenty prefers the company of children often, and passes under the evil influence of designing so-called normalpersons. So dominated he will lie, steal, start fires, commit almostany crime, with no inherent flair for criminality, but because of alack of independent judgment and inability to resist suggestion, anda desire to please friends. He is simply an overgrown child who stillloves to play with toys, laughs and cries, becomes angry or afraid, unreasonably and ridiculously, and yells for mamma when thwarted orscared. 

So much for what happens when there is not sufficient of the thyroidsecretion in the blood and tissues. Now to consider the effects ofan excess of it, the condition called hyperthyroidism, as theinsufficiency of it is labelled subthyroidism. Too much thyroxin canbe introduced into the system of a normal individual, or even a cretinby the simple administration of too large doses or over too longa time. Also a train of symptoms similar to those evoked by anoversecretion of the thyroid may be mobilized by the taking of toomuch iodine. Great sorrow, great joy, a sudden severe jolt to thenervous equilibrium, sexual excitement, an overwhelming anger or griefmay leave in their wake a permanent hyperthyroidism. The symptoms arethe reverse of cretinism and myxedema. There is an over-excitabilityof the nerves in place of sluggishness, and an over-reactivity of thewhole organism to its environment. The heart's action is too fast, andunder the slightest stimulus gets faster to the point of obtrudingitself into the conscious mind as a palpitation. Instead of thelowered temperature and coldness of the cretin, there is a heightenedtemperature, one or two degrees above the normal, and a feeling ofheat. The individual has a high warm color, does not sleep well, becomes or remains thin no matter how much he or she eats, isabnormally 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 adjectivesapplicable. The eyes are bright and prominent, large and beautiful, when they have not reached the stage entitled "pop-eyed. " Or they mayeven become so protuberant and bulging as to develop the expression ofone staring aghast at some ineffable horror. The latter is the featureof only the severest types, when there is an associated goitre, thecombination designated as exopthalmic goitre. 

There are, too, individuals in whom hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidismare mixed, or rather alternate. At one time they present the phenomenaof the one, at another of the other. They are the people who complainof the cyclic quality of their moods and purposes. Their mood willbe a heaven of exaltation and exhilaration, and then descend into aslough of despond from which they feel themselves inextricable. Theyare always talking about the ups and downs of their mental states. Headache and languor and fatigability, dry skin and lack of appetitefor food or exertion on one day or for one week, give way on the nextday, or for the next week, to an energetic gayety, and sweaty, flushedskin, a prominent appetite for food and every sort of activity. Drivento be forever on the go, for one period, in the next they feel likelying 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 ofstimulation as far as mania. They may simulate manic-depressive orcyclic insanity. Something restrains them, and holds them bound as ina vise in the one cycle. And then they are driven on beyond themselvesby some invisible whip in the next. 

THYROID AS DIFFERENTIATOR

Besides the action of the thyroid as energizer, lubricator, and growthcatalyzer, it has a remarkable power as a differentiator of tissues. It determines the embryonic etchings of the different organs which intheir totality comprise the unique individual. Every multicellularanimal must first have existed as a single cell, the impregnated ovum. With the body and personality of the ovum, the creature is one andcontinuous, literally something the single cell has made of itself bysub-dividing and differentiating. In the process, the cell mass oftengoes through stages which stand out as individualities in themselves, that appear on the surface absolutely unrelated. So the caterpillarand the butterfly, to the naïve child, seem as far apart as worm andbird. In the case of the frog, the tadpole as a first sketch seemscompletely an impossible and wild absurdity. Yet we know that there isan orderly progression of events, a propagation of cells, a forwardgoing arrangement of chemical reactions, that results in expansion andintricate complication of the organism. Just what the forces at workin this most mysterious of all natural processes are, has been anintellectual mystery that the best minds of the race have attemptedto get rid of with words like pangenesis (Darwin). Words of Black(Mediterranean or Greek and Latin) origin, as Allen Upward has namedthem, always cover a multitude of ignorances. The glands of internalsecretion, here, as in so many other dark places, provide the opensesame to certain long closed doors of biology. They offer themselvesto us as the first definitely tangible agents which are known to keepthe process of growth going, and undoubtedly initiate the marvelousunfolding of tissues and functions, organs and faculties summed up asdevelopment or differentiation. 

Thus by the direct feeding of thyroid at particular points in thedifferentiating history most curious effects have been elicited. Ifthe gland is made part of the nutriment, the bathing environment, ofthe tadpole, a hastening of its metamorphosis is attained. The tadpolelives not out its day as a tadpole, but precociously turns into afrog. But such a frog! It is a miniature frog, a dwarf frog, a frogseen by looking through the wrong end of the telescope, a frog notmagnified, but micrified. Frogs have been so created the size offlies. There has occurred a splitting of the two reactions whichordinarily go hand in hand: the reaction of growth which is just bruteincrease of total mass or weight and volume, and the reaction ofdifferentiation which is the finer process. The picture is a frog, buta frog the size of a tadpole, a frog which has missed its childhood, adolescence and youth, skipping over these transition stages into theadult 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 spectacleof such a superbaby is not quite the most fantastic of allimprobabilities is shown by the condition of progeria, first recordedby the Briton, Hastings Guilford. A queer spectacle in which a childincontinently grows old without having lived--in the course of a fewweeks or months. You look upon him and see senility on a small scale, but with all its peculiarities: wrinkled skin, apathy, gray hair andall the rest of it. All we can say about it is that it is probably dueto a paralysis of all the glands of internal secretion, a removalof their influence upon the cells. Contrariwise to the feeding ofthyroid, removal of the thyroid of tadpoles will prevent theirdevelopment into frogs. If iodine is then fed to them, say mixed withflour, normal metamorphosis will occur. If Body is the tool chestwhich we carry about with us, as Samuel Butler said, then to thethyroid belongs the name of tool-maker. 

Another function of thyroid that must be taken into consideration iswhat has been spoken of as its antitoxic function--in plainer English, its power to prevent poisoning, or to increase resistance againstpoisons, including the bacteria and other living agents whichcause the infectious diseases. Each molecule of food, ingested forassimilation into our substance, accumulates a history of wanderingsand pilgrimages, attachments and transformations beside which thegross trampings of a Marco Polo become the rambling steps of aseven-league booted giant. In the course of its peregrinations, itbecomes a potential poison, potential because it is never allowed togrow in concentration to the danger point. The thyroid plays its rôleof protector like all the internal secretory machines. In an animaldeprived of a thyroid the feeding of meat shortens life--a singlesample of how it works to guard against intoxication from within. Thefeeding of thyroid will also raise the ability of the cells to standpoisons introduced from without--intoxications of all sorts. Alcoholand morphine will affect in much smaller doses the subthyroid personthan the normal or the hyperthyroid. As regards the infections, whichdirectly or indirectly kill most of us, the injection of thyroid willincrease the content in the blood of the protective antibodies whichpreserve us, temporarily at any rate, against malignant invaders. Theopsonins, for example, those substances which butter the bacteria sothat the appetite of the white cells for them is properly roused, aremobilized by thyroid feeding or injection. Other substances in theblood which destroy and dissolve bacteria are also increased. Thethyroid probably performs these functions by sending its secretionto the cells directly responsible for the immunity reactions, andstimulating them to activity. 

A sketch of the thyroid like the foregoing shows it as the wondrouscontroller of vitality and growth, and indefatigable protector againstintoxicants and injuries. When it is sufficiently active, life isworth while; when it is defective, life is a difficult threateningblackness. That would make it out as the gland of glands. It istremendously important, without a doubt, in normal everyday life. Butno more so than the other members of the cast. The position of star itmay claim, but in vain. The other glands of internal secretion tobe sketched will each, when the marvels of its business in thecell-corporation are considered, present itself as candidate for thehonors of the president. Justice should give fair credit to allthe organs which fabricate the reagents of individuality, and theregulators of personality. 

THE PITUITARY

In the human skull, the pituitary is a lump of tissue about the sizeof a pea lying at the base of the brain, a short distance behind theroot of the nose. It is of a grayish-yellow color, unpretentious andinsignificant enough in appearance, and so long neglected by thescientists 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. Atleast it consists of two different parts, distinct in their origin, history, function and secretions, but juxtaposed and fused into whatis apparently a homogeneous entity. They are conveniently spoken of asthe anterior gland and the posterior gland. 

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

To understand the story of the pituitary, variously acquired bits ofinformation concerning it have been assembled and fitted together likethe fragments of a picture puzzle, as Cushing has so well put it. Hereand there pieces stick out, obviously out of place. The relations ofsome of them to one another or to the whole design are not at allclear. Parts appear to have been irrevocably lost, or not yet to haveturned up. Chance bystanders will select odd figures and articulatethem into a new harmony. Yet out of the jumble of fragments, a fairlyrespectable 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 darlingtreasure" it might be called, since there has been provided a skullwithin the skull to shelter it. 

Under the most highly magnifying lenses of the microscope, three kindsof cells have been distinguished. The anterior gland is a collectionof solid columns of cells, surrounded by blood spaces into which theirsecretion is undoubtedly directly poured. A gelatinous material, presumed to be the internal secretion of the gland, has, in fact, beenobserved emerging from the cells into the blood spaces. The posteriorlobe, or gland, consists of secreting cells producing a glassysubstance which finds its way into the spinal fluid that bathes thenervous system. The spinal fluid itself is a secretion of anothergland at the base of the brain, the choroid. Nerves and internalsecretion are associated here with a closeness symbolic of theirgeneral relations. 

From each portion of the gland (to stick to the accepted nomenclatureof speaking of the two glands as one) an active substance has beenisolated. Robertson, an American chemist, separated from the anteriorlobe a substance soluble in the fat solvents, like ether and gasoline, which he christened tethelin. But P. E. Smith has shown that the activematerial is soluble neither in boiling water nor in boiling alcohol, the typical fat solvent. A number of facts favor the idea of theanterior lobe cells as stimulants of growth of bone and connectingand 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, itcontrols the _tone_ of the tissues, of involuntary or smooth musclefibres of the blood vessels and the contractile organs of the bodylike the intestines, the bladder and uterus. When injected, it willslowly raise the blood pressure and keep it raised for some time, andwill increase the flow of urine from the kidneys and of milk from thebreasts. It will also cause an intense continued contraction of thebladder and the uterus. It is also said to control the salt content ofthe blood upon which its electrical conductivity and other propertiesdepend. Normally, there is a certain fixed ratio of the salts in theblood, which keeps them like the ratio in sea-water. Again, we havean example of the curious atavism of the internal secretions. Thethyroid, remember, keeps the iodine concentration of the blood likethat of the ocean, our original habitat. Pituitrin likewise does itspart to maintain our internal environment as near as possible to whatwas once the surrounding medium. A substance somewhat similar has beenfound in the skin glands of toads. 

The extraordinarily well protected position of the pituitary, itspersistence throughout life, and its abundant blood supply, emphasizeits vital importance. No other gland of internal secretion canadequately substitute for it. Complete expiration means death, in twoor three days, with a peculiar lethargy, unsteadiness of gait and lossof appetite, emaciation, and a fall of temperature, so that theanimal becomes cold-blooded, its temperature the same as that of theatmosphere it occupies. If only part of the anterior lobe is takenaway, there occurs a remarkable degeneration of the individual. Thedegeneration is not a mucinous infiltration of the skin and theinternal organs which occurs with thyroid deprivation, but a fattydegeneration, with a tendency to inversion of sex. A singularsomnolence, a dry skin, loss of hair, a dull mentality, sometimesepilepsy, and a noticeable craving for and tolerance of sweets appear. These are but a few of the observations obtained in experimentalsub-pituitarism, that is, underaction or insufficient secretion of thepituitary, produced by removing part of the anterior gland. 

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

REGULATOR OF ORGANIC RHYTHMS

There are certain other singular by-effects of the gland in itsrelation to the periodic phenomena of the organism like hibernation, sleep, and the critical sex epochs of both sexes. In hibernation, orwinter sleep, the animal in cold weather passes into a catalepticstate in which it continues to breathe, more deeply but more slowlythan when awake, but shows no other signs of consciousness or life. A lowered blood pressure and a marked insensitivity to painful andemotional stimuli go with it. There is a preliminary storage of starchin the liver, and of fat throughout the fat depots of the body. Theseare so like what happens after part of the pituitary is removed, thata comparison of the two becomes inevitable. Common to both conditionsis a drop in the rate of tissue combustion or metabolism, which canbe relieved by injection of an extract of the pituitary, a rise oftemperature occuring simultaneously. Moreover, examination of theglands of internal secretion of hibernating species, like thewoodchuck, during the period of hibernation, shows changes in all ofthem, but most marked in the pituitary, the shrunken cells stainingas if they too were asleep, or in a resting stage. The characteristicalive qualities of these cells return, without relation to foodor climate, when the animal comes to in the spring, at the vernalequinox. Hibernation may, perhaps, be put down to a seasonal wave ofinactivity of the pituitary gland. 

Now winter sleep may be looked upon as an exaggeration of ordinarynight 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 certaincapacity for winter sleep, as the experiences of travellers andexplorers in the arctic regions indicate. In certain parts of Russia, where there is a scarcity of food during the winter months, thepeasants pass weeks at a time in a somnolent state, arousing once aday for a scant meal. Just as the sex glands influence the body andmind profoundly with a certain cyclic periodicity of activity andinactivity (rut, heat, menstrual period and so on), which has beendemonstrated to have a very close functional relationship with thepituitary, so sleep and hibernation will bear interpretation asproducts 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 theinternal secretion of a chemical-making bit of the brain, as anexplanation 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, andwho are really in a state of subpituitarism. They are people who mayhave something wrong or inferior with their pituitary, but not to theextent of interference with their daily life. They go about with theirtype stamped upon them for the seeing eye. The classical type isobese, with fat distributed everywhere, but more so in the lowerabdomen and the lower extremities. They are slow and dull, andsexually inactive, often impotent. They are sometimes tall, but mostoften dwarfish, and may be subject to epileptic seizures. They recallthe picture of what happens to young dogs partially deprived of thepituitary. Dickens delivered a perfect likeness of an extreme degreeof the condition in the Fat Boy of the "Pickwick Papers, " whoseemployment with Mr. Wardle consisted in alternate sleeping and eating. 

WHEN THE PITUITARY OVERACTS

All grades of overaction of the pituitary exist. Then its peculiarpower to act as a stimulant to the growth of bone and the softsupporting and connecting tissues like tendons and ligaments comesinto play. If the overaction or excess of secretion begins inchildhood or adolescence, that is, before puberty, there results agreat elongation of the bones, so that a giant is the consequence. Nowgiants have always appealed to the imagination of the little man, andhave had all kinds of wonderful abilities ascribed to them by him. Thegiants and ogres of folk-lore and fairy tales are favored with themost extraordinary mental advantages. Direct and analytic acquaintancewith the giants of our own day, as well as a probing of their conductin the past, has shown that normal giants--persons of exceptional sizefree from physical or mental deformities--are rare. There are peoplewith _hyper_-pituitarism who exhibit the highest mental powers. Inthem is an increased activity of the posterior lobe in associationwith enlargement and hyperfunction of the anterior, overgrowth is notso marked, and the individual is lean and mentally acute. But theordinary giant is one in whom there is degeneration of the pituitaryafter too much action of the anterior and too little of the posteriorglands. A tumor or disease process in the gland is most oftenresponsible. 

If the overaction of the anterior happens after puberty, when thelong bones have set, and can not grow longer, a peculiar diffuseenlargement of the individual occurs, especially of his hands and feetand head. The nose, ears, lips and eyes get larger and coarser. As these people are rather big and tall to begin with, the effectproduced is that of a heavy-jawed, burly, bulking person, with bushyoverhanging eyebrows, and an aggressive manner. For there is, too, something distinctive about their mentality which has been as oftenportrayed as those of the pathologic giant. Rabelais' most famouscharacter, Gargantua, belongs to the group. We recruit moredrum-majors than prime ministers from among these people. Theyoften suffer much from torturing boring headaches, and a consequentdespondency and feeling of hopelessness which colors gray the entirespiritual spectrum. Up to a certain point these sufferers have aremarkable alertness and capacity. When conscious of the malady, theyoften meet it with a doggedly courageous optimism, which is anothercharacteristic, although women occasionally commit suicide. 

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

THE BONY CRADLE OF THE PITUITARY

Always, in attempting to understand the pituitary, it is necessary toremember that it is tightly packed in the bony cradle, the TurkishSaddle or Sella Turcica. Should some stimulus, local, or in the blood, arouse the gland to growth, a good deal will depend upon whether ithas room to grow in, or it will make room by eroding the bone. Withspace for the formation of a large anterior and posterior pituitarygland, there will be created the long, lean individual, with atendency to high blood pressure and sexual trends, great mentalactivity, initiative, irritability and endurance. An outstanding traitof these favorites of fortune is that they remain thin no matter howmuch food they consume, and they have the best of appetites. Theyoften are subject to severe headaches because of intermittent swellingof the gland against the bone of its container. 

If the bony container is or becomes too small for its contents, itis interesting that along with the other signs of pituitaryinsufficiency, such as undersize, obesity, and asymmetry, theredevelopes conspicuous moral and intellectual inferiority. Theunfortunates suffer from compulsions and obsessions and lackinhibitions. They are the pathological liars with little or noinitiative or conscience--amoral, not merely theoretically, butinstinctively and unconsciously, with all the certitude and perfectionof the unconscious accomplishment. 

THYROID AND PITUITARY

The thyroid and the pituitary have often been compared. The anteriorgland and the thyroid arise from almost the same spot in the embryonicoesophagus, the thyroid being an outgrowth in front, the anteriorpituitary an outgrowth behind of the same soil. They both controlgrowth marvelously, also the differentiation, the mass and intricacyof the tissues. But they differ in the site of their control. Thethyroid bears more directly upon the inner and outer coverings of thebody, 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 skeletonand the mechanical supports and movers. Bone and ligament, muscleand tendon seem to be within its immediate sway. The secretion orsecretions of the pituitary diffuse directly into the fluid bathingthe nervous system, supplying beneficent stimulants and aiding in theabstraction of harmful waste. So while the thyroid raises the energylevel of the brain, and the whole nervous system, as a byproduct ofits general awakening effect upon all the cells of the body, thepituitary probably stimulates the brain cells more directly, perhapsin the manner of caffeine or cocaine. 

The difference between the thyroid and the pituitary might be put thisway: that while the thyroid increases energy evolution and so makesavailable a greater supply of crude energy, by speeding up cellularprocesses, the pituitary assists in energy transformation, in energyexpenditure and conversion, especially of the brain, and of the sexualsystem. In short, the thyroid facilitates energy production, thepituitary its consumption. The pituitary appears therefore as thegland of continued effort. Hence fatigability, an inability tomaintain effort, is one of the prominent complaints when there isdestruction or an insufficiency of it for one reason or another. Assuch, it contrasts with the glands of emergency effort, known as theadrenals. 

CHAPTER III

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, bythe accident of birth. It would be confusing, however, to speak ofeach as two glands, because there are, as a matter of fact, twoseparate adrenal glands, one in the right side of the abdomen, and theother in the left. Each gland is composite, or duplex. How the twoparts came to be united is a long story, interesting but too long tobe 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, forcenturies the glands were not given a separate status as organs, butwere passed up as part of the fat ensheathing the kidney. In childhoodand youth, in common with the other glands, they are relatively largerand more prominent than in the adult. Also, at every age, the amountof blood passing through them is very large compared to their size. Their tremendous importance in the body economy accounts for theirbeing so favored. 

The two parts of which each gland is composed, are known as the cortexor 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 theother. In the history of their development in the species and theindividual, and in their chemistry and function, a sharp differencecontrasts them. 

In the embryo, the cortex is derived from the same patch that givesrise to the sex organs, the ovaries in the female, and the testes inthe male, described as the germinal epithelium. How intimately thetwo sets of glands are connected is neatly pointed by this fact of acommon ancestor. All vertebrates possess adrenal glands. In the lowestof the vertebrates, Petromyzon, the two parts are distinct, the cellsof the cortex-to-be are situated in the walls of the kidney bloodvessels, projecting as peninsulas in the blood stream, the bloodsweeping over and past them. The medulla-to-be consists of cellsaccompanying the vegetative nerves. Among reptiles, the two becomeadjacent for the first time, and among birds one part occupies themeshes of the other. The size of the cortex varies directly with thesexuality and the pugnacity of the animal. The charging buffalo, forexample, owns a strikingly wide adrenal cortex. The fleeing rabbit, on the other hand, is conspicuous for a narrow strip of cortex in itsadrenal. Human beings possess a cortex larger than that of any otheranimal. 

No definite chemical substance has as yet been isolated from thecortex. That remains a problem for the investigator of the future. Butcertain observations, especially concerning the relation betweenthe development and behaviour of the so-called secondary sexcharacteristics, those qualities of skin, hair and fat distribution, physical configuration and mental attitudes, which distinguish thesexes, and the condition of the gland, indicate clearly that aninternal secretion will be isolated, and that it will in its activityfurnish certain predictable features. 

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

In certain disturbances of these glands, especially when there aretumors, which supply a massive dose of the secretion to the bloodpresumably, peculiar sex phenomena and general developmental anomaliesand irregularities are produced. If the disease be present in thefetus, taking hold before birth, and so brought into the world withthe child, there evolves the condition of pseudo-hermaphroditism. Theindividual, if a female, presents to a greater or less extent theexternal habits and character of the other sex. So that she isactually taken for a man, although the primary sex organs are ovaries, often not discovered to be such except when examined after anoperation or death. How closely such an occurrence touches upon theproblems 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 organsand the secondary sex characters are not affected. But there followsa curious hastening of the ripening of body and mind summed up in theword puberty, a precocious puberty, with the most startling effects. A little girl of 2, 3, or 4 years of age perhaps will come to exhibitthe growth and appearance of a girl of 14. She begins to menstruate, her breasts swell, she shoots up in height and weight, sprouts thehair 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 ormonths, become a little man, robust, rather short and stocky, butmoustached, with the muscular strength and sexual powers of a man andthinking as a man. It is all as if into some fermentable medium orsolution a little yeast were dropped that changed the quiet calm ofits surface into a bubbling, effervescing revolution. It suggests atonce that maturation, the transformation of the child into the man orwoman, must be due to the pouring into the blood and the body fluidsof some substance which acts like the yeast in the fermentablesolution. The adrenal cortex is one source of the maturity-producinginternal secretions. 

If trouble in the adrenal cortex starts after puberty, phenomena ofthe same type, but of a different order, exhibit themselves. A woman, say in the thirties, becomes thus afflicted. Slowly or quickly herbody will be covered by an abundant growth of hair, more or less of abeard and moustache appear upon the face, her voice will become deepand penetrating, her muscles will harden, and she will show a capacityfor hard physical labor. Sexually she appears to be made over, masculinity now predominates in her make-up. Virilism is the name bywhich the French in particular have popularized the knowledge of thecondition. Virilists have to shave or be shaved regularly and are notbothered in the least by the cares, responsibilities, jealousies andanxieties of personal beauty, for the change in their spiritualitymakes them immune to the preoccupations of the feminine. The cause ofsuch a transformation in a previously entirely normal woman has beenfound to be a tumor of the adrenal cortex. 

But not only is sexuality, and the conduct of the secondary sexcharacters, connected with the adventures of the adrenal cortex. Thedevelopment of the master tissues of the body, the brain, the prideand darling of evolution, is in some subtle way correlated withit. The adrenal cortex contains more of the phosphorus-containingsubstances of the general nature of those found in the central nervoussystem than any other gland or non-nervous tissues in the body. Duringhuman intrauterine life the adrenal glands are large and conspicuous, in the first half of the second month being twice as large as thekidneys. Most of this relatively huge size, which happens in the humanalone, and not in other animals, is due to enlargement of the cortex. Should this preponderance of the cortex over the medullary portion notoccur in the human, that is, if the proportions remain like those ofother animals, the brain fails to develop properly, or an entirelybrainless monster is generated. The human brain, therefore, probablyowes its superiority over the animal brain, to the adrenal cortex, indevelopment anyhow. The growth of the brain cells, their number andcomplexity is thus controlled by the adrenal cortex. 

Besides its action upon the sex cells and the brain cells, theinternal secretion of the adrenal cortex acts upon the pigment cellsof the skin, blunting their sensitiveness to light. In degenerationof the interior of the gland, which destroys the medulla, but not thecortex, the color of the skin is left unmodified. If, however, thecortex is invaded, as happens most often in the classical tuberculosisof the adrenals which drew the attention of the Englishman Addisonto them, then a darkening of the skin, which may go on to a negroidbronzing, follows. That means an increased sensitiveness of thepigment cells of the skin to light. Skin color control may thereforebe looked upon as an adrenal cortex function. 

So much is known about the adrenal cortex. Upon the medulla, theinterior gland of the gland, there has been lavished an amount ofattention beside which the cortex is to be classed as a neglectedwall-flower. Nearly everything that possibly could be determinedabout an internal secretion has in its case been settled or plausiblyguessed at. The cells manufacturing the secretion, its exact chemistryand function, its action upon the blood, the liver and spleen, theheart and lungs, the brain and nervous system, have been minutelyinvestigated, studied and charted. Its source in the food, its fate inthe body, its place in the history of the individual and the species, its importance as a weapon in the struggle for existence, and thesurvival of the fittest have been made the subject of an astonishingnumber of researches, considering the short period of scarce threedecades 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 nervoussystem. But these nerve cells are merely minor notes of the symphony. The motif is settled by a majority of large, granular cells, whichstain a distinctive yellowish-brown when the gland is fixed in asolution of bichromate of potash. All chromium salts, in fact, stainthe therefore labelled chromaffin cells. The characteristic stainingpower appears to be dependent upon, or correlated with, the presenceof the internal secretion of the medulla of the adrenal, adrenalin. For the content of adrenalin, as calculated chemically, and thedepth of stain as seen under the microscope, rise and fall together. Chromaffin reaction and adrenalin content go together. The poisonousskin glands of the toad have been found to give a marked chromaffinreaction, and to contain a large amount of adrenalin. Other massesof cells in the human body, especially along the course of thesympathetic nervous system, have been shown to give the reaction andto contain adrenalin. 

The erratic Brown-Séquard pounded and hammered away for more thanthirty years on the importance to life of the adrenal glands, sincedeath occurred so quickly after their removal. But it was not untilSchaefer, the Scotch physiologist, (who has done more than any otherliving man to stimulate study of the internal secretions) found thatan extract of them, when injected into a vein, produced a remarkablethough temporary rise of the blood pressure, that a real enthusiasmfor its investigation was generated. As the upshot, a number of othersignificant properties besides the first of blood-pressure raising, have been put down to its credit. Chemical tests demonstrated thatit originated in the medulla. The exact amount of it present in themedulla, in the blood issuing from the adrenals and in the circulationin general have been determined. The concentration in the blood isabout one part in twenty million, while there is about a hundredthousand times as much stored in the gland as reserve. In infectionsand intoxications, after muscular exertion, and with profoundemotions, there is a decrease of it in the gland and an increase inthe blood. Pain and excitement, especially fear and rage, will bringabout its discharge from the gland. With its entry into the blood, there is a tremendous heightening of the tone, a _tensing_, of thenervous system. The nerve cells become more sensitive to stimuli, more sugar is poured into the blood from the liver, more red bloodcorpuscles are squeezed into the circulation from the blood lakes ofthe liver and spleen. There is a redistribution of the whole bloodmass, a good deal of it being withdrawn from the internal viscera, andhurried to the skeleton muscles and the brain. The heart beats morestrongly, the eye sees more clearly, the ear hears more distinctly, and the breathing is more rapid. The temperature rises, the hair ofthe 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, ithas a reinforcing action upon the nutritive properties of the blood, the tone of the muscles, and the activity of the brain and thevegetative nerves. 

Chemists set themselves the task of discovering just what was thesubstance possessed of such extraordinary and hitherto unimaginedproperties. The pure adrenalin was isolated, capable of evoking allthe reactions of the impure adrenal extract mixtures. The finaltriumph was the preparation of it artificially in the laboratory, its synthesis. When a substance can be synthesized in the chemist'slaboratory, it means that its composition has become thoroughlyunderstood. Here at last was an example of those mysterious internalsecretions, the existence of which had indeed been postulated andproven, but which had never actually been inspected by the eye ofmortal man. To have it in a test-tube, indeed to possess it in largequantities in bottles, to be able to manipulate and examine it withoutfear 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 miraclearoused at once scores of researches. 

THE GLAND OF COMBAT AND FIGHT

Considering its effects, one is reminded at once of the similarityto the expression of a primitive emotion like anger or fear. So, byturning a relation upside down, it was argued that if artificialadrenalin could produce all these effects of an emotion like fear, theemotion itself should produce an increase of the natural adrenalin inthe blood. This was found to be the case. Cannon of Harvard has builtup an entire theory of the adrenal as the gland of emergencies uponthe basis of these effects. In the facing of crises the adrenalfunctions 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 glandsof preparedness, --such are the adrenal glands when viewed from theadrenalin standpoint. A picture of its activity in the evolutionaryscheme of struggle and survival is something like the following:meeting an enemy, the animal is put in danger. It must fight or fleefor its life. In either case, certain conditions must be fulfilled, ifthe body of the animal endangered is to be saved. To prevent injury toitself, and to do as much injury as possible to the foe--that becomesits immediate urge and necessity. Of the two animals, if in one theheart should begin to beat more strongly, the blood pressure to rise, the blood to flow more rapidly through the attacking instruments, themuscles, the teeth and claws, the brain and its eyes, while the otheranimal experiences none of these, the former will be the victor infight or flight. Adrenalin may be looked upon as the invention for themobilization at a moment's notice, or as we say, after generations ofuse, by instinct, of all these visceral and blood advantages in thestruggle of combat or flight. 

The nature of instinct, in its relation to the glands of internalsecretion, is a problem for another chapter. But we may note that theJames-Lange theory of an emotion regards it as a consciousness of thevery changes in the organism adrenalin causes. Since adrenalin is thestarter of the whole process, and since McDougal has defined emotionas the feeling aspect of an instinct, just as an instinct maybe defined as the motor aspect of an emotion, the adrenals asemotion-genetic, and instinct-genetic, play a part in the mostprofound processes of the subconscious and unconscious. 

THE MECHANISM OF FEAR

We may therefore visualize a mechanism of fear. An instant excess ofadrenalin occurs in the blood of, say, a cat when it is alarmed by thesight 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 forthat 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 reserveadrenalin responds. And with what an effect! The blood, that primarymedium of life, the precious fluid that is everything, must all, ornearly all, be sent to the firing line, the battle trenches, thebrain and muscles, now or never. So the blood is drafted from thenon-essential industries--from the skin where it serves normally toregulate the heat of the body--from the digestive organs, the stomachand intestine, which must forsooth stop now, since if the organismwill die, their last effort of digestion has been done--from the liverand spleen, great chemical factories in normal times, but now of nomoment. Besides, should they be wounded, it is better they shouldbe bloodless, and so run the least chance of bleeding to death, orgetting infected, for the more tissue there is around, the greater thedanger of infection. So, like the skin, the liver which usually holdsin its great lakes and vessels about a quarter of all the blood inthe body, is almost drained and blanched. At the same time, its greatstorehouses of sugar open their sluices and pour into the blood, increasing its sugar content by about a third because the combustionof sugar is the easiest way of getting energy free in the cells, sugarbeing the most quickly burned up of all the foods, and so the greatfood of the muscles and the heart. The poisons of fatigue, acidproducts of the contraction of muscles, are antagonized andneutralized by substances formed in the course of the oxidation of thesugar. Adrenalin, too, is directly fatigue antagonist. It causes theblood to clot faster than under ordinary circumstances. It erects thehair of the animal, and dilates the pupils of the eyes. There is anincrease of the apparent size, all of which are to intimidate theenemy, like an Indian's painting of his face blue and green. Italso--but what else does it not do?

The story of adrenalin would have delighted the heart of SamuelButler. His "Note Books, " opulent as they are, would have been thericher in pages and pages with his comments on it. Contending as hedid with the pompous, dogmatic mechanism worship of the new scientificclique of his time on the one hand, and the superstitions of the oldtheological caste on the other, he had to fight the hardest kind ofguerrilla warfare in defense of the Purpose of Life. Adrenalin, thatweapon of a gland tracing its ancestry back to the begetter of thebrain itself, for brain and adrenal gland both have evolved from thesmall nerve ganglia of the invertebrates, would have backed up to thehilt his argument, which he had to elaborate on the indirect groundsof 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 everythingnon-essential or detrimental to the matter of the moment is inhibited, arrested and suppressed--no more perfect sample of the design withwhich Life is drenched could be imagined by the most closeted ofpassionate idealists. 

FAILURE OF THE ADRENALS

As the gland of acute stress and strain, the adrenals in modern lifeare called upon to function more heavily and frequently than in thepast. 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 andshocks as that of the average city man or woman. In the case of thelatter, however, inhibitions, education, and the conditions of modernliving, improper food, sedentary indoor confinement, and universalrack and noise, have undoubtedly made greater and greater demands uponthe adrenal glands. Chemical quantitative studies have shown that byrepeated stimulation, the adrenal glands may be exhausted of theirreserve supply of secretion, which returns only insufficiently if notenough time is given for recuperation. There results a condition oftemporary or chronic adrenal insufficiency, supposedly an insufficientfunctioning of the gland as a whole. In persons so afflicted thereappears a fatigability, a sensitiveness to cold, cold hands and feet, which are sometimes mottled bluish-red, a loss of appetite and zest inlife, and a mental instability characterized by an indecision, and atendency 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 sometimestraced to such a deficiency of normal response to the needs ofeveryday conflict by the adrenal gland. In some, mental and physicalelasticity are totally lost, and even the slightest exertion ineither field often causes so much weariness and exhaustion as to beprohibited. Depression and even melancholia are associated with thefear of not being able to accomplish good work hitherto easy andenjoyed. Sometimes they are obsessed with the thought that they havelost their nerve completely, and so dread to commit themselves in eventhe most trivial of situations. The vacillating frame of mind is sodistressing at times as to arouse thoughts of suicide. When thesesymptoms concur in the type of personality whom I shall describeas the unstable adrenal-centered individual, there is evidence forexplaining the process as the effect of an insufficiency of secretionby the adrenal gland. 

Shock, collapse, heart failure and sudden death following abnormalemotion, like an attack of rage, or the terrors of a railroadaccident, or bad news, or excessive exertion like running a long raceor climbing a high mountain when in poor general health, as the phrasegoes, or in the terminal stages of infections like epidemic influenzaor Asiatic cholera, have been put down to an acute insufficiency ofthe adrenal gland. A lowered temperature, blood pressure, and bloodvessel tone, exhibited in tests of the response of the skin tostroking, 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 toincapacitate or at least greatly limit the sufferer. The neurasthenicis to be recognized by the fact that the most painstaking objectiveexamination of his organs reveals nothing the matter with them. Yet, according to his complaint, everything is the matter with him. Hecannot sleep when he lies down, he cannot keep awake when he standsup. He cannot concentrate, but still he is pitifully worried about hislife. The slightest irritant causes him to go off the handle. Ashe works himself up into his hysterical state as a reaction to adisagreeable person or problem, irregular blotches may appear onhis face and neck. Generally, his hands and feet are clammy andperspiring, his face is abnormally flushed or pallid, the eyes areworried or starey, unwonted wandering sensations involving now thisarea of the body, or now that obsess him. As the blood pressure istoo low for the age, the circulation is nearly always inadequate andpalpitation of the heart is a frequent complaint. So frequent, thatattention is often centered upon the heart, a diagnosis of heartdisease is made, and the unfortunate is doomed for life--to broodover horrible possibilities. The brooding over themselves and theirtroubles is one of the distinctive features of the whole complex. Neurasthenia may masquerade as any organic disease. An individual witha soil for a neurasthenic reaction to life will become neurasthenicwhen confronted by any stone wall, including a serious ailment withinhimself. 

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

Neurasthenia, regarded as a reaction of people to the stress andstrain of life, has without a doubt increased. The most casual ofobservers will tell you that the generation of the Great War is aneurasthenic generation. It takes its pleasures too intensely, its pains too seriously, its troubles too flippantly. But what isneurasthenia? Beard himself regarded it as a chronic fatigue and lossof 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 factthat it is the neurasthenics who furnish the majority of the clienteleof the cults, the Christian Scientists, the osteopaths and thechiropractors, and who are the subjects of the faith and miraclecures, like those of Lourdes. That is because their particulardisease, or what appears to them to be their very own disease--andthey certainly cherish their ailments--is but an expression of, acompensation for, indeed a consolation for, the underlying feelings ofinsufficiency or inferiority. Were there no moral code, were thereno social system, nor the consequent inculcated conscience to beresponsible to, there would be no such disguising symptom asthe disease which preoccupies the consciousness. The feeling ofinsufficiency would be there, and would be recognized as in itselfthe disease. To the physiologist and the psychologist, the feeling ofinsufficiency is the disease, no matter how spectacular the overlayingphenomena--a cripple on crutches or a man blind and speechless. Shellshock is now acknowledged to belong to this group. 

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

ADRENAL EXCESS

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

THE GONADS

(_Sexual, Puberty or Interstitial Glands_)

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

ORIGIN OF SEX TRAITS

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

Specifically different sexes come later, when mortality is a universalfate, as a means of rebirth and escape from death. Then the sexesdevelop their latest function, most prominent among the youngervertebrates, of acting as nature's most potent method of variation anddifferentiation. In the pursuit of the different, nature has exaltedsex, and the intensity of the sex life. As far as the preservation ofa species is concerned, and the reproduction of the individual, theasexual methods, budding, for example, would have done well enough. But when it comes to enacting a different individual apart from theeffects of environment, sex stands out as the favored method of Life. 

The development of the sexes and the sexual life brought a new elementof conflict into the living world. Before the advent of the sexes theconflict was essentially for the means of existence, food alone. Butwith the sexual life came a conflict for sex pleasure, a competitionamong members of the same species for the same individual as their sexpartners. The result was the introduction of a factor in evolutionwhich Darwin examined so closely in the "Descent of Man. "

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

We know that these interstitial glands, to stick to that name, (ratherthan to the name of the puberty glands, since they serve not onlyto induce puberty but to maintain maturity) are the actual primarydictators of the process by which male and female are distinguished, if not created. Castration was probably the first surgical operationcarried out for experimental purposes, suggested no doubt by acuriosity concerning its effects. Trepanning of the skull, thegeologic record indicates, was done even by the cave man. But as anexperimental operation, castration seems to hold the primary positionin the annals of surgery. 

Its effects noted, the satisfaction of one of the lower humaninstincts, jealousy, popularised it. From the days of Semiramis, eunuchs have been commonplace figures of the East, their functiondefinite: to guard the harems of the powerful. The age of Abdul Hamidwitnessed no diminution of the barbaric tortures by which children areprepared for the profession. It is to the credit of England that inits dominions in the Orient the practice has been abolished. But itgoes on even today. According to the best authorities, four out offive of these victims at the auto-da-fe of a vicious human instinctdie immediately or soon after from exhaustion due to pain andinfection. Not all of the ancient nations countenanced the brutalhorror. The Hebrews placarded castration an unpardonable sin, makingit a sin to castrate even animals. Nor was any man so mutilatedpermitted to worship in the house of the Lord (Deuteronomy xxiii, 11). Yet we have evidence that the latter Jewish kings employed foreigneunuchs in their harems, who often held the most important positionsas ministers of the court. 

Besides the eunuchs, another group of people have presented materialfor the study of the interstitial glands. These are the Skoptzi ofRussia and the Lipowaner of Roumania. Among them castration is areligious ritual. Mankind has always been most brutal to itself in thename of the ideal. These sects were founded because in the eighteenthcentury an antipode of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young discovered thispassage in Matthew xix, 12. 

"For there are some eunuchs which were so born from their mother'swomb, and there are some eunuchs which were made eunuchs of men: andthere be eunuchs _which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdomof 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. Asect was founded who thought that surgery was the easiest way to enterthe gates of Paradise, and they multiplied and fructified. The sectexists today, and some of the most interesting studies of the internalsecretion of the interstitial glands have been made among them. 

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

But a host of experiments and data prove the interstitial glands to bethe direct controllers of elementary sexuality and the specific sextraits of male and female. Beginning with Berthold back in the firsthalf of the nineteenth century, who studied the fowl, a number ofobservations have been made on the effects of excision, translocationand transplantation of these glands. 

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

In short, the castrated male takes on a feminine type, and thecastrated female, a male type. In either case there is also aninfantilism, a retention of the infantile mental traits, a lack ofdevelopment of the adult mental attitudes and reactions. Now, ifin the castrated male is transplanted an ovary, the positivecharacteristics of the female are evoked, such as enlarged mammaryglands, and a tendency to secretion of milk. Experiments have alsobeen reported in which a uterus was also placed in such an animal, with a means of entry, and pregnancy followed. If in the castratedfemale a testicle is planted, the masculine traits become much moremarked and striking. A direct exchange of the male and femalerôles can thus be achieved. Castration after puberty cannot modifyprofoundly structures like the skeleton which are already completed. Yet it may unquestionably bring about definite retrogressive changesin the secondary sex characters: reduction or loss of virility, diminution of facial and body hair, and a general presenility orhastening of senility. 

How remarkably these interstitial cells influence the entire structureand vitality of the organism is indicated by these facts. How muchthey have to do with sexual impulses, sexual excitement, and sexualdesire, what the Freudians have popularized as the libido, and howsubtly they act upon the coming and duration of adolescence andmaturity, as well as sexual precocity and peversions, we shallconsider in a later chapter. But it is enough now to remember thatthese interstitial glands are the primary dictators of the genitalsense and flair of the individual. In any attempt at measurement ofmen and women, the quality and quantity of the internal secretionof the interstitial cells must be respected as a fundamentalconsideration. The womanly woman and the manly man, those ideals ofthe Victorians, which crumbled before the attack of the Ibsenites, Strindbergians and Shavians in the nineties, but which must berecognized as quite valid biologically, are the masterpieces of theseinterstitial cells when in their perfection. They are such solelybecause of the right concentration in the blood of the substancesmanufactured not only by these cells, but by all the glands ofinternal secretion. For it cannot be repeated and emphasized too oftenthat the interstitial cells of the sex glands are most sensitive toall kinds of other influences, and, in particular, the other internalsecretory organs. They may indeed be watched as an index scale orbarometer 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 ductlessgland association. 

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

The ovaries are a most important factor in the regulation of the powerof the organism to keep lime in the bones. If they over-secrete in anexcess which cannot be taken care of by the other glands of internalsecretion, the body loses lime, a softening and curving of the bonesoccurs, and the most horrible deformities and tortures for thesufferer. 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. Morerecently, a British student of the subject, Blair Bell, was given thedirection of the treatment, at long range, of a number of cases inIndia, the land of chronic pregnancy with insufficient food, andconsequent oversecretion of the ovaries, with the typical softening ofthe bones. At his suggestion pituitary was used successfully. 

Some of the glands of internal secretion act as accelerators to thesex glands. Others act as retarding antagonists. Among the mostimportant of the latter is

THE THYMUS

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

Situated in the chest, astride the windpipe, it descends and coversover the upper portion of the heart, overlapping the great vesselsat the base of the heart. It is a brownish red mass, which when cutpresents the spongy effect of a sweetbread. The more intimate viewof detail revealed by the higher powers of the microscope showsconglomerations of the white cells of the blood known as lymphocytes. But scattered through the substance of the gland, between theselymphocytes, like the interstitial cells of the sex glands placedbetween the sex cells, are peculiarly staining cells in whorls. Of which there are many more in the thymus of embryonic and earlypostnatal life, known after their discoverer as Hassal's Corpuscles. They are believed by some to elaborate the specific internal secretionof the thymus. Present in all vertebrates, there seems to be more ofit in the carnivora than in the herbivora, like the thyroid. 

Concerning the exact function of the thymus, we are a good deal atsea. The latest opinion about the results of extirpation even in youngand growing animals is that they are nil. Yet there is a certainjustification for proclaiming the thymus the gland of childhood, thegland which keeps children childish and sometimes makes children outof grown-ups. There is a quantity of data for that proposition. Inthe first place, the curve of rise of growth of the gland seems tocoincide with the period of childhood, the curve of its decline withthe period of adolescence and the rise of the sex glands. In thepast, it was accepted, that with puberty the thymus atrophied andwas replaced by some sort of fatty tissue. Nowadays, it is held thatsecretion cells persist throughout life. When the extent of thispersistence is too great, the gland being from five to ten times aslarge as the normal, a number of other features become prominent tomake the extraordinary individual, the status lymphaticus, who amidthe hazards of life will react in an extraordinary way. He will betaken up in the consideration of internal secretion personalities. 

Then there are the varied and remarkable phenomena of thymusenlargement and hyperactivity in childhood itself. When an enlargedthymus is present in an infant, the initiation of breathing in thenew-born, the introduction of the newcomer to the oxygen of the air, may be an exceedingly prolonged, difficult, matter. Such a baby issaid to be born blue, and the breathing may be stridorous for days, becoming normal for a time, to be followed later by spells of troublein breathing, breathlessness or breathlessness with blueness, andthreatened extinction. Sometimes these spells come out of a clearsky in an apparently healthy child. That some poison, probably anoversecretion of the thymus, is responsible is shown by the reliefobtainable by X-ray shrinkage of the gland, or the surgical removal ofa part of it. 

Moreover, the gland is influenced by and influences the factorsof 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, declaredthat the size and condition of the thymus is an index to be the stateof nutrition of the body. Underfeeding for four weeks will reduce itto one thirtieth the normal. It seems to act as a storage and reserveorgan, affording some protection against the limitation of growth bylack of food material. In exhausting or wasting disease, the weightof the gland sinks much more quickly than other glands. Scatteredinstances have been reported of children growing, putting on inches inheight and expanding mentally, when thymus was fed to them, in whomevery other measure previously tried had failed. A French study ofover four hundred idiotic children with normal thyroids reported thatover three fourths had no thymus at all. Everything points to the mostdirect and close relation between the gland and nutrition and growth, but with nothing tangibly definite like our knowledge of the thyroidand the pituitary. 

There is evidence that the thymus is involved in the health andefficiency of muscle cells and muscularity. Certain tumors of thethymus, presumably destructive of the gland substance proper, andthus cutting off its secretion, are accompanied by a singular muscleweakness and atrophy of the muscle cells, entirely out of proportionto the general damage suffered by the other cells of the body whenaffected by the poison of a malignant growth. Also, the thymus hasbeen discovered diseased in certain mysterious progressive muscularwastings. A remarkable fatigability of muscles, which appears afterthe slightest exertion, is a feature. The feeding of thymus has causedmuscle cramps which apparently depends upon an increased excitabilityof the muscle nerve endings. 

Feeding of thymus to some of the lower creatures of the animal kingdomwill completely hold up differentiation. Take the unfolding of thespecialized tissues and organs which transform the tadpole into thefrog and the chrysalis into the butterfly. A tadpole kept suppliedwith enough thymus in a nutrient medium will swell into anextraordinary giant tadpole, but will not change into a frog. Recently, this experiment has been contradicted. Yet this effectcorresponds to the conception of its importance in childhood as aretardant of precocity, physical and mental. Clinical observationsemphasize that in childhood it is the chief brake upon the otherglands of internal secretion which would hasten development anddifferentiation, checking them perhaps for a given time and soprofoundly influencing growth. 

THE PINEAL

The pineal is another gland which has been credited with similarabilities and a like holding-the-reins-tight-in-childhood functionamong the cells. Like the thymus, it has been supposed one of thedistinctive organs of childhood and to die with it. Generations ofanatomists solemnly asserted, repeating each other's mistakes with theaplomb of the historians who declare that history repeats itself, thatthe pineal body was a useless, wastefully space consuming vestige of aonce important structure. That was the view in that century of grandlyinaccurate assertions, the nineteenth. Not that they relegated it withthat statement to the limbo of the dull and the uninteresting. Quitethe contrary. They conferred upon it a distinguished romance andmystery by identifying it as the last heir and vestigial remnant ofa third eye, situated in the back of the head, which may still beobserved in certain reptiles. Imagine it! Somewhere, stuck away in acranny of the floor of your head and mine, is this descendant of anorgan that once sparkled and shone, wept and glared, took in the starsand hawks and eagles, and now is condemned to eternal darkness and anineffectual sandiness. Today, we have not discarded that view of itshistory, but we know a little more regarding its composition andfunction. 

What and where is the romantic object? It is a cone-shaped bit oftissue hidden away at the base of the brain in a tiny cave behindand above its larger colleague, the pituitary. Microscopic scrutinyreveals that it is made up in part of nerve cells containing a pigmentsimilar to that present in the cells of the retina, thus clinching theargument for its ancient function as an eye. But the outstanding andspecifically glandular cells are large secreting affairs, which tooreach back to the tidewater days of our vertebrate ancestors, whenEurypterus and other Crustaceans were engrossed with the fundamentalproblems of brain versus belly. Besides these, there are the singularmasses upon which has been fastened the unnecessarily opprobiousepithet of brain sand. These, noted and commented upon from theearliest times, consist of collections of crystals of lime salts, sometimes small, lying about in discrete irregular masses, andsometimes grouped into larger mulberry-like concretions, varyingmuch in size. These brain sand particles have become of practicalimportance in the detection of pineal disease because they, like alllime 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 soago, the pineal was believed to have no present function at all, or atleast no ascertainable or accessible duty in the body economy. Thatit might perhaps be, in a sense, a gland of internal secretion wasa despised theory. Then a classic case, the most extraordinary andcuriosity-piquing sort of case, with symptoms involving the pinealgland, in a boy, was reported by the German neurologist, Von Hochwart. That boy provoked a little army of researches. He came to the cliniccomplaining about his eyes and other troubles which pointed prettydefinitely to a brain tumor as the diagnosis to pigeon-hole him. Nothing extraordinary about him in that respect. But the story told byhis parents was quite extraordinary, even to the jaded palate of theclinic professor and his assistants. They said that he was a littleover five years old, a statement conclusively proved correct at hisdeath. Up to the time at which his illness began, he had been quitenormal in size, intelligence and interests. But with the onset of hismisfortune, he had begun to grow, and rapidly until now he lookedand corresponded in all measurements to a normal boy of twelve orthirteen. Hair developed all over his skin, most prominently andabundantly in the typically hairy places of adults. His voice becamelow-pitched, and most remarkable of all, his sexuality and mentalityprecocious. He became capable of true sexual life and is said to haveasked many questions about the fate and condition of the soul afterdeath. On one occasion he remarked reflectively: "It is odd how muchbetter I feel when I let other children play with my toys than when Iplay with them myself. " Other statements attributed to him imply themost astounding maturity of thought and mental process. Headachesfinally came, and he died about four weeks later. The cause of thewhole bizarre tragedy was found to be a tumor of the pineal gland. 

As has happened before in medical history, no sooner was the oneprodigy reported, than a score of others of the same ilk sprang intothe limelight. Cases of precocious genital development, especially, some of them occurring as early as the second year of life, werelinked with them. It is an interesting point to be noted that inthese, as in those started by an overaction of the adrenal cortex, itis premature masculinity that is stimulated. The adrenal cortex mustbe classed as a gland of masculinity. The pineal possibly acts as abrake upon the adrenal cortex. 

Very soon after the report of Von Hochwart's prodigy appeared, anexperimental research on the pineal was begun in New York. The pinealglands of a number of young bullocks were obtained and used forfeeding, to see whether an overaction of the internal secretioncould be produced. Guinea pigs, kittens and rabbits were used. Theexperiments covered about two years in time. Of a dozen smallkittens, the subjects outgrew the controls rapidly in activity, size, intelligence, and resistance to intercurrent disease. Of ten smallrabbits, 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 ofdefective children, children with well-shaped heads, normal eyes, symmetrically functioning limbs, excellent digestion, strong musclesand 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 beenapplied. They have been a hopeless lot, belonging to the limbo of theincurables. Moreover, they, emphatically the physically normal ones, differ from one another enormously in the extent to which mentaloperations are possible. As all transitions and degrees exist, nodefinite classification and subdivision of them has been made. Yetever since the cretin, once looked upon as an eternally damneddefective, was transformed by thyroid feeding into an apparentlynormal being, there has been no dearth of effort to find the rightkind of internal secretion to fit their desperate situations, but invain. In defectives with definitely, organically damaged brains, no result of course was to be expected. In those of any class overfifteen, no response has been elicited by feeding pineal gland. In theothers 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 muscleshrinking and deforming disease, known as progressive musculardystrophy, hitherto a complete and unsolved mystery. Newer studiesof the pineal in this disease during life by means of the X-ray haveshown it calcified, that is, buried in lime salts, which signifies putout of business. Recently thus another hint as to its function hasbeen ferreted out. 

The tadpole as a reagent to test out the growth effects of differentglands of internal secretion has also been employed for the pineal. Ten-day-old tadpoles fed on pineal present a marked translucency ofthe skin due to a retraction of the skin pigment cells. Now without adoubt a number of as yet unknown growth and metabolic effects followexposure of the body to the complete gamut of light rays. Theinteresting suggestion follows that the pineal influences the body byvarying the degree of light ray reaction. 

The pineal, the ghost of a once important third eye at the back ofour heads, still harks back in its function to a regulation of oursusceptibility to light, and its effect upon sex and brain. So itbecomes one of the significant regulators of development, with anindirect hastening or retardation of puberty and maturity accordingas it works in excess, or too indolently. It appears thus the bloodbrother of the adrenal cortex which also influences the skin pigmentand so susceptibility of the organism to light, brain growth and sexripening. It is interesting that Descartes, in 1628, considered thepineal 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 tinyglands, each about the size of a wheat seed, the parathyroids. Forlong they were swamped in the nearness of their great neighbor, andconsidered merely a variable part of it. There are some who contendthat even today. But it has been proven that they are separate, individual glands, with a structure and function of their own, and adefinite importance to the body economy. 

On the animal family tree they appear early, contemporaneously withthe 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 wereconfused by contradictory findings with different animals because insome they would take out the parathyroids at the same time withoutknowing it, and in others they would not. That possibility suggested, more careful dissectors accomplished the job of extirpating thethyroid while leaving the parathyroids intact and vice versa. Inconsequence some definite information about the parathyroids isavailable, even though their internal secretion has never beenisolated, or its existence established as more than an inference. 

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

On the chemical side, an explanation for these nervous phenomena hasbeen advanced. Lime in the blood and cells appears to be necessary ina number of ways. In the making of bone and teeth, in the coagulationof the blood, in the keeping of fluid within the blood vessels, andin maintaining the tone of the nerves, it plays a major rôle. Now theparathyroids, among all the glands of internal secretion, seem to actas the prime regulators of the amount of lime held within the bloodand cells. For when the parathyroids have been completely andaseptically excised, without injuring any other organ, immediately thebody begins to lose lime. Something has gone out of it that helpedit to bind lime, and without that essential something, the internalsecretion presumably of the parathyroids, the lime departs. Asa conspicuous consequence the teeth fail to develop properly, particularly as to their enamel, for which lime is an essentialconstituent. Hair is lost, there is a general wasting, the nails getbrittle, and the bones soften, and the animal dies. Supplying limedirectly, particularly by direct injection into the blood, willrelieve the symptoms. 

In man, a condition of nervous over-excitability has been describedas tetany. It occurs most often in the young, the pregnant, or invomiting after operations. All sorts of tests have related the maladyto the phenomena succeeding parathyroid deprivation, and they are nowlooked upon as aspects of it. Individuals have been reported sufferingfrom an insufficiency of the internal secretion of parathyroids, with a sudden extreme depression, nervousness and restlessness, aninability to sleep or sit still, and a tremulous handwriting. Suchreports round out the evidence for the importance of the parathyroidsin an understanding of the factors which control growth, especiallyas regards lime utilization, for without lime properly handled nobuilding of cells is possible. Also the parathyroids are necessary toa steadiness of muscle and nerve. 

THE PANCREAS

The business of the parathyroids concerns the keeping of lime in thebody. Another gland, the pancreas or sweetbreads, this time within theabdomen, a close neighbor of the solar plexus, alias the abdominalbrain, is occupied with holding and hoarding sugar in the body, particularly in the liver, the great sugar warehouse. This matterof retaining sugar and controlling its output is one of the utmostsignificance for growth and metabolism, the resistance to infections, the response to emergency situations, and in general to themobilization of energy for physical and mental purposes. For withoutsugar sufficiently at hand for the cells, no muscle work or nervework, 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 ofthe gland, is poured into the small intestine to play the star indigestion. Scattered here and there among the definitely glandularcell groups creating the external secretion are smaller collections ofcells, called the islets of Langerhans, which have been demonstratedto elaborate the internal secretion. There are about a million ofthese islands in each gland. The hormone has been called insuline. Unlike most of the glands with a double secretion in which theinternal is absolutely independent, and so to speak, unconscious ofthe 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 secretoryfunction of the pancreas is diabetes. An enormous amount of work hasbeen spent upon the various aspects of it as a mystery. Hundreds ofpapers in a dozen languages upon the subject are in existence. In anutshell, they have established pretty well that diabetes is a diseasein which there is an excess of sugar in the blood and urine because ofan insufficient amount of the secretion of the islands of Langerhansin the pancreas. Removal of the pancreas makes the body, essentiallythe liver, unable to retain sugar, as well as unable to burn up sugarfor energy. The situation is comparable to a locomotive with its coalbins leaking, and the coal itself acting as if made of slate or someequally uncombustible or only partially combustible material. 

The control of sugar mobilization from the liver, where it is storedas glycogen or animal starch, is divided between the pancreas andthe adrenals, the pancreas acting as the brake, the adrenals as theaccelerator of the mechanism. Adrenal and pancreas are thereforedirect antagonists, the pans of the scale which represents sugarequilibrium in the organism. Diabetes may be regarded as a disturbanceof the adrenal-pancreas balance, assisted by events which produceadrenal overwork like great or prolonged emotion, or by strain of thepancreas, effected by over-eating for example. 

There are other minor glands of internal secretions. But thoseconsidered are by far the most important and the most recentlyexplored. 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 separateentity, and labelling it with certain properties and actions, we ofcourse commit the usual sin of the intellect: the sin of abstractionand isolation of its material. This crime of analysis the intellectcommits every day in the search for truth. Before its dissection, itseems to have to dip the elusive article in a fixative, and bottle itin a vacuum. 

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

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

ENDOCRINE CO-OPERATIONS

The body-mind is a perfect corporation. Not quite perfect, forcontinually there arise little insurgencies, inadequacies andfrictions to which in time it will succumb. Yet, in the efficiency ofits co-operations, and in the co-ordination of the needs and suppliesof producer, middle man, and consumer, there is no one of the greatorganizations of the captains of industry which can for a momentapproach it. 

Of this corporation the glands of internal secretion are thedirectors. But the huge corporation, not to topple over with its ownunwieldy size, must be composed of smaller units, each within itselfa corporation, and governed by a directorate. There are, in thecorporation-organism, different departments and bureaus, subdivisionsof function, which constitute the smaller corporations within thelarger corporation. These subsidiary companies have their own glandsof 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 ofthe brain, the number of its cells, the complexity of its convolutionsand the speed of its chemistry, which means the speed of thought andmemory and imagination. As its directorate, therefore, they may beentitled. The disturbance of one of them means the disturbance of allof them, and a consequent deleterious effect upon the brain. Now takethe burning up of sugar in the organism, the great material sourceof energy, which is controlled by the pancreas, the adrenals andthe liver, the thyroid and the pituitary. Together they form thedirectorate of sugar metabolism. But, as is evident from a glance atthe membership of the growth directorate, and comparing it with thedirectorate of sugar metabolism, there are some members who arepresent on both boards. An infection, an illness, an ailment, anexaltation or intoxication of such members will produce reverberationsin both directorates. A disturbance of sugar metabolism might thencause a disturbance of growth. The advantages and disadvantagesare before us of having, in the glands of internal secretion, aninterlocking directorate, rulers over all the varied and manifoldactivities of the organism. 

Behind the body, and behind the mind is this board of governors. Indeed, from the administrative and legislative points of view, thebody-mind may be said to be governed by the House of Glands. It is theinvisible committee behind the throne. Upon the throne is what? Man, the most baffling of complexities. Man who is not a mind, but owns amind--Man who is not a body, but possesses a body, just as he mighthave a motor car, a fortune or a calamity. Back of all his dailyactivities, behind the life of body-mind is the mysterious uniqueindividuality, the Ego, the Psyche or the Soul. Lately, a competitorwith these ancient and honorable terms has come upon the scene as theSubconscious. In that darkened No Man's Land is determined a man'sdestiny. The endocrine association stands out as at least the mostimportant physical determinant of the states and processes of thesubconscious. 

ANTAGONISMS AND CO-OPERATIONS

As within a corporation there are factions and cliques, influencesthat always work together, and forces that are always pulling inopposite directions, so within the interlocking directorate of theductless glands there are antagonisms and inhibitions, co-operationsand compensations. One gland will assist the action of another'ssecretion with its own, or will in turn be stimulated to secrete byit. Another will throw out its secretion in order to neutralize theeffects produced. Or its own activity will be depressed or completelyinhibited by it. Thus the pituitary arouses the interstitial glandsand vice versa, whereas the pancreas and the thyroid are mutuallyinhibitory. Indeed, whole systems of glands may work in unison, or bepitted against each other in certain situations, especially whenthe organism is subjected to conflicting impulses with the clashof opposing instincts, like fear and anger. In general there isreciprocity and team work among the internal secretions. 

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

It is important to get clearly in mind these subtle inter-reactions ofthe different ductless glands. They may be antagonistic in their endeffects because of the opposed functions of the nerves or organsstimulated. There are inhibitions and restraints produced when a glandwill send out its secretions to stop another gland secreting. Thereare 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 inresponse to another which is also oversecreting. There are lossesof balance, so that when one gland ceases secreting, another willsimultaneously or soon after. Normal secretion, oversecretion orundersecretion are thus adjusted, but leave a train of after effects. 

So with loss or insufficiency of the thyroid, there may be pituitaryovergrowth, because the pituitary may act as vicar for the thyroid. The thyroid and thymus are antagonistic, for the thyroid hastensdifferentiation, puberty and the coming of sexual maturity, while thethymus delays and retards them and prolongs the period of childhood. The thyroid and the pancreas are antagonists, for when the thyroidhas been excised, the pancreas appear no longer necessary to act as abreak upon the mechanism of sugar liberation into the blood fromthe liver. The thyroid stimulates the interstitial glands, formenstruation and pregnancy are impossible with no thyroid or aninsufficient thyroid. Removal of the pituitary makes the thymus shrinkbecause the restraining influence of the latter is no longer needed. But there is an enlargement of the thyroid to compensate. In castratesthere is an increase in the size and number of the cells of theanterior pituitary, again a compensation or substitution effect. Thepituitary and the adrenal cortex are mutually assistant, alike intheir influence upon the tone of the brain and sex cells. 

THE KINETIC SYSTEM

So there are combinations of glands to assist or restrain others, orto control a body function, or to determine the domination or abeyanceof an instinct. One such has been named the kinetic system because itcomes into play in situations which demand prompt adaptation withouthesitancy, and a consequent immediate transformation of static orstored energy into kinetic or active energy. According to thisconception the brain, the adrenals, the liver, the thyroid and themuscles 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 thingseen 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, theoriginal impulse finally landing upon muscles keyed up and suppliedwith 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 byanesthetics, and cured when it is abolished by sleep. 

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

THE CHECK AND DRIVE SYSTEM

Another instance of the complexity of these inter-glandular reactionsis furnished by the thyroid and the adrenals. The thyroid and theadrenals are mutually stimulating--when the thyroid oversecretes, theadrenal dittos, and vice versa. Yet they have directly opposed effectsupon the economy--because they act upon antagonistic portions ofthe involuntary or vegetative nervous system, the system which isindependent of the will. Before proceeding further, it is worth whilesketching this division of the nervous system. 

In the construction of a motor car from the point of view of absolutecontrol of it at every moment, the first thought of the mechanic is anadequate _brake_ and an efficient _regulator_ of speed, instrumentsantagonistic, but necessary to work simultaneously or alternately. The involuntary or vegetative nervous system is built upon the sameprinciple. It supplies every organ in the body beyond the control ofthe will (that is to say, the brain) with two sets of filaments whichhave opposing functions. One group of filaments in general increasesor activates the function of the organ to which it is distributed. Theother group of filaments, when tingling, inhibits or prohibits thatfunction. They are like the two buttons on the wall which regulatethe supply of electricity to incandescent bulbs, one switching on thecurrent, the other switching it off. It has been agreed to call thestimulative or activating portion the autonomic or drive system. Toits antagonist has been left the older name of the sympathetic orcheck system. It is because they do not both act upon these twocomponents of the vegetative nervous system, but only upon one, thatthe thyroid and adrenal though in themselves complementary, come toexert opposite effects. For the internal secretion of the thyroid hasa selective affinity for the autonomic or activating system, whilethat of the adrenals has a selective affinity for the sympathetic orinhibiting system. 

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

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

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

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

It was probably evolved in the Post-Tertiary Era, about twenty millionyears ago, when the coming of the carnivores introduced directbody-to-body conflicts, and their concomitants, a quick and versatilenervous system. During the Tertiary epoch the earth basked in the heatof a tropical sun nearly everywhere on its surface. The luxuriantvegetation of the torrid zone flourished and swarmed, for thetemperature all over was what it is today at the equator. Giganticvegetarians were the animals, creatures like the dinosaurs, enormous, gargoylean monsters, of an incredible size and strength, but clumsyand grotesque, with small brains and little intelligence. For whatneed was there for brain and intelligence when food lay about soabundantly at hand for them to gorge themselves. As there was nocompetition for food, there were no enemies. 

Then as the earth evolved and grew cooler, vegetation failed, theancestors of the present carnivora appeared, the fathers of thewolf and tiger, light, lithe and pugnacious, with senses acute andferocious weapons of attack, who set out to destroy everybody. Theydestroyed pretty nearly all of the huge leaf-eating species, and onlythe more plastic and smaller ones, who were more keen-sensed andswift-footed (of whom the deer and antelope, horse and ox are thedescendants), escaped. The smallest either took to the air to becomethe bat, or, like the forerunners of the squirrel and ape, took to thetrees. 

It was the coming of the carnivores, therefore, that accelerated thedevelopment of brain matter, and started the process which createdman. But in the millions and millions of years of conflicts, instinctsgrew into being that sank deep into bone and marrow. The mostfundamental reflexes, those immediate responses to irritation ordanger, 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 doits utmost to speed up everything that would help in the fight, whilethe check system came into play to hinder whatever would interfere orburden 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 fearand flight, and especially in hiding and simulation of death, wheneven breathing had to be inhibited. Until finally there developed, foreveryday use, a complete check and drive nerve machinery for everyorgan, to be used according to the exigencies of the moment, with thethyroid as the primary stimulant and controller of the drive systemand 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 thebalance of power that diplomatists might envy. In the co-ordinatingsynchronism, the vegetative nervous system plays the part of an agentthat acts as well as is acted upon. The chemical interaction of theinternal secretions is not the only way in which they influence eachother. 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 ofinternal secretion co-operating. The Check and Drive systems, with theadrenals and thyroid opposed, are one of the best instances of theirantagonisms. Besides, there are a number of other relationshipsbetween them that might be cited. They all bear with more or lesspressure, positive or negative, upon the sex glands which will beconsidered in its place. If one wished to consider all the glands intheir pro and anti relations, a separate volume would be required. 

THE VEGETATIVE APPARATUS

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

For modern thought does not regard the brain as the organ of mind atall, but as one unit of a complex synthesis, of which mind is theproduct, and the vegetative apparatus is the major component. Thatinvolves the blasting of the last current superstition of thetraditional psychology, the dogma that the brain is the exclusive seatof mind. 

That an animal is a vast concourse of cells is one of the acceptedfundamentals of biology. What is not so generally taken intoconsideration is that the assemblage is formed by the agglutinationsof millions of years, and that it is hence composed of parts ofdifferent ages and pedigrees, some exceedingly ancient and hoary, somemiddle-aged, and some relatively new and recent. In the invertebrates, who date further back in the history of the planet than anyvertebrate, the nervous system consists of discrete patches of nervecells, the ganglions composing the ganglionic system of which thevegetative or autonomic nervous system of man is the direct descendantand representative. The brain and central nervous system aredefinitely later acquisitions, imposed upon the original stratum ofthe check and drive machine. 

The primitive chassis of the mechanism, so to speak, is the so-calledvegetative nervous system. Grouped with that system are the primevalbreathing, feeding and reproducing inventions, the viscera boxed upin the chest and abdomen. The third partner is the glands of internalsecretion, which act upon the viscera both directly and indirectlythrough the check and drive effect upon the vegetative nerves. The glands are like tuning keys, by which certain strings in theinstrument may be tightened, so that its vibratory activity isincreased, or they may be loosened, the vibrations decreased, theactivity lessened. Tuning up the motors is a constant process in theorganism. Finally, there are the large nerve masses at the base of thebrain known as the basal ganglia, which contain the nerve centers forthe co-ordination of the other three. All these together constitutethe oldest family of the corporate organism. Beside them, the brainand the face and the prehensile organs are mere parvenus. 

THE OLDEST PART OF THE MIND

Granted, then, that this vegetative apparatus is the most deeplyrooted core of our being. What warrant is there for the grandiloquenceof the phrase: the Oldest part of the Mind? There is, indeed, room forrhetoric, even poetry, here. For all the evidence points to it as therightful occupant of the throne upon which Shelley placed his Brownieas the Soul of the Soul. Or to put it in another way, we think andfeel primarily with the vegetative apparatus, with our muscles, especially the involuntary, with our viscera, and particularly withour internal secretions. Whenever there is thought and feeling, thereis movement, commotion, precedent and concomitant, among these. Theyare the oldest seats of feeling, thought and will and continue tofunction as such. 

Just what evidence is there for this conception? In the first place, there is the fascinating story of the origin of vertebrates frominvertebrates of the sea scorpion or spider type. Then there is awhole group of data which demonstrate that the primitive wishes whichmake up the content of a baby consciousness are determined, settled bystates of relaxation or tension in different segments or areas of thevegetative apparatus. According to this, the brain enters as only oneof the characters in the play of consciousness. It is just the organof awareness by the organism of itself as an integer which must adjustitself to the specific condition within the disturbed vegetativeapparatus. 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 thewish-feelings generated by the vegetative dynamo. From each viscus, from the stomach and intestine, from the kidneys and bladder, fromthe liver and spleen, from the blood-vessels, from all the glandsof external and internal secretion, there flow along the vegetativenerves, to and from the brain, energies of various qualities andintensities. All the members of the vegetative apparatus are more orless active, and so all our wishes are all more or less active. Allour working hours we are aware of hunger, satiety or indifference, ofa desire to empty the intestine or bladder, or of a lack of necessityof doing so, of a state of tranquillity of the blood-vessels and sweatglands, or of a perturbation of them, of a varying tensity of even themuscles that are, as we say, under the control of the will, of thestate, in fact, of all the elements of the vegetative complex. Thestream of feeling which constitutes the undertow of consciousnessoriginates outside of the brain altogether, and is composed ofcurrents arising from viscera, muscles, blood-vessels and glands. 

Now the component currents are of different sizes and positions andvariable degrees of warmth. That is another way of saying that whetheror not a current is to become the center of the stream, or to approachit, or whether it is to be hot, cold, or tepid, depends upon thedegree of activity of the various parts of the vegetative apparatus. A convenient name for this is _tonus_. Tonus can be experimentallywatched and measured. Thus hunger, the most primitive of thewish-feelings, has been found to be simultaneous with certaincharacteristic 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 inthe upper abdomen, and accompanied sometimes by a sense of generalweakness. The vegetative activity going on as a current almost on theoutside of the stream of feeling has swelled and warmed, and so forceditself, in a manner of speaking, into the center of the stream. Or ifyou will, the rest of the stream has to arrange itself around it asthe center. A similar mechanism for the tonus of the other membersof the vegetative system, and how they determine consciousness andbehaviour is understandable. It has been shown that when the bladdertone and the intestinal tone are of a definitely measurable size, onehas the desire to empty them. The same applies to the sex glands. The pressure within a viscus is dependent upon the ratio between theamount of contraction of the involuntary muscle in its walls, theexternal pressure, and the quantity of its distending contents, theinternal pressure. The resultant quotient, the internal pressuredivided by the external pressure, measures the intravisceral pressure. The primitive wish-feelings are the direct expressions of the variousintravisceral pressures, or tones. The primitive soul is an awarenessof the fused primitive wish-feelings of themselves as a whole, and ofthe struggle between them for recognition, isolation, and, as we say, satisfaction. This satisfaction consists in a degradation of thehighest intravisceral pressure to a point at which some otherintravisceral pressure becomes higher and therefore predominant. 

PHYSICS OF THE WISH

Mind, consciousness, may then be portrayed as an ocean comprised ofmobile current layers, complexes built up around the awareness ofdifferent intravisceral pressures. A shifting hierarchy of suchpressures form the points of focusing of consciousness that result inconduct. Behaviour may be defined as the resultant of the organism'spressure against the environment's counter pressure until there isa sufficient reduction of the specifically exciting intravisceralpressure. Just as water flows to its own level, so will conduct flowto reduce intravisceral pressure to its own level. A physics of thesoul comes into prospect, in which a mathematical analysis will statethe process quantitatively in terms of some common unit of pressure. 

Not only conduct, but also character, because it is past conductrepeated, associated, and fixed, will be so statable. Forintravisceral tonus or pressure is not simply or only an acute orpassing affair. There is for it a persistent or average figure, the so-called normal for it, below which or above which the acutesituation will bring it. _Character_ is a _matter then of standardsin the vegetative system_. Character, indeed, is an alloy of thedifferent standard intravisceral pressures of the organism, a fusioncreated by the resistance or counter pressure of the obstacles in theenvironment. Character, in short, is the grand intravisceral barometerof a personality. 

Thus the comfortable, healthy, happy, well-balanced, progressive, constructive, virile personality is one in whom there is acontinuously harmonious reduction of the intravisceral pressures inthe environment called society. For in a gregarious creature, likeman, fellow beings are the most powerful determinants of negative andpositive vegetative pressures. Not so well rounded are other typesexisting because of inferiorities or excesses of the standard visceraltone. There is, for instance, the sexually cold type, comfortable bycreating for itself an anaphrodisiac environment composed of pressuresthat can be fitted into its own. Or there may be an insufficiency ofstandard pressure in the alimentary tract, and we have the ascetic, mal-nourished, striving, uplifting type. Different types will be madeby the permutations and combinations of factors that determine theintravisceral pressure and the environmental, i. E. , social resistancesor counter pressures. 

INTERNAL SECRETIONS DETERMINANTS OF VEGETATIVE PRESSURES

Now of all the different factors which determine the tones, that is tosay, the internal pressures, of the various parts of the vegetativeapparatus (including all structures not controlled by the will inthe term), the internal secretions or hormones are by far the mostimportant. This significance is conferred upon them because it isby their activities primarily that these pressures are produced, regulated, lowered and heightened; in short, controlled. We have seenhow the thyroid and adrenal hold the reins of the drive or checksystems in the vegetative apparatus. Together with the other ductlessglands, they decide the advance or halt, forward or retreat, tensionor relaxation, charge and discharge, of the visceral--involuntarymuscle--blood vessel combination which is at the core of life. Hereagain they emerge as the directorate. 

Carlson, the Chicago physiologist, who probably knows more about beinghungry than any other man on the planet, once demonstrated that theinjection of an ounce or two of the blood, which means the internalsecretion mixture, of a starving animal, into one not starvingincreased the signs of hunger and the accompanying hunger contractionsof the stomach. There can be no doubt that hunger is the expression ofa certain specific concentration of internal secretion or secretionsin the blood. When the quantity, in the cycles of metabolism, becomessufficiently great, it stimulates the stomach to contract in a waywhich augments the pressure within it to a point at which the feelingof 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. Sexlibido is an expression of a certain concentration, a definite amountpeculiar to the individual, of the substance manufactured by theinterstitial cells, circulating in the blood. It arouses its effectsprobably by (1) increasing the amount of reproductive material inthe sex glands in a direct chemically stimulating effect upon thegerminative cells, and so raising the internal pressure within them, (2) stimulating the involuntary muscles within the walls and thecanals of the sex glands, and so, by augmenting the tenseness of themuscles, elevating the total intravisceral pressure, (3) by a directchemical and indirect nervous effect upon the brain, the muscles, theheart, as well as the other glands of internal secretion stimulatingthe organism as a whole. Though the isolation in pure form of thesubstance or substances involved has never been scientificallyachieved, their inference is entirely justified. It is indeed the onlycomprehensible mechanism conceivable that will fit all the known factsabout the matter. And even though the assertions of Brown-Séquard wereonly the exaggerations of a semi-charlatan, it is certain that someday in the near future the particular substance, that he claimed hehad discovered, will be handed about in bottles for the inspection ofthe curious. 

Besides thyroxin, adrenalin, and the libido-producing secretion of theinterstitial cells, the substance produced by the paired glandlets, situated behind the thyroid, the parathyroids, have a profoundinfluence upon the vegetative apparatus and the vegetative nervoussystem. These direct the lime exchanges within the cells of theorganisms, including the nerve cells. It has been shown that lime is, relatively, a sedative to cells. It raises the threshold or strengthof stimulus necessary to evoke a reaction. Removing the parathyroidsmeans removing the lime barrier, for with their deficiency there is achange in, and then an escape, from the blood, of the lime, by wayof the kidneys. The result is sometimes an enormous increase in theexcitability of all the cells, and especially of the vegetativeapparatus. What that means for the individual whose comfort dependsupon a stability of the intravisceral tones and pressures may bereadily imagined. 

The pancreas likewise acts as a sedative to the vegetative apparatus. In particular, this applies to the sugar mechanism in the liver underthe discipline of the check and drive organization. The adrenal andthe pancreas are the direct antagonists in the struggle for control ofsugar. Removal of the adrenals will cause a decrease in the amountof sugar in the blood, while removal of the pancreas will produce anincrease. Excess of sugar in the blood may thus be concomitant withchanges of character considered incorrigible. 

In different locales of the vegetative apparatus, as indeed ofthe body in general, the directorate seems to be handed over to acommittee of control, generally made up of two members workingin opposing directions. Such a division of power in the generaldirectorate is analogous to the small holding corporations whichdivide functions in, for example, the United States Steel Corporation. The relative ratios of tonus in these smaller internal secretionbalances are of the utmost significance as causes of differencesin the vegetative apparatus, which are the basis of differences instructure, power, and character between individuals. 

THE GENERAL LAWS OF THE DIRECTORATE

Our knowledge of the glands of internal secretions as an interlockingdirectorate presiding over all the functions of the organism is stillexceedingly meagre. As yet, we seem to be knocking at the portalsof the chemistry of the imponderable. There are holes in the bronzedoors, and we glimpse the unfathomable distances of unexploredregions. But we do see something, and we do glimpse a beginning. Already the outlines of a differential anatomy, and a differentphysiology and a differential psychology, which will explain to usthe unique in the constitution, the temperament and character ofan individual, emerge. It is worth while, before proceeding to thedetails, so valuable to a society which would become rational, tosummarize the general principles emerging, expressing the directingpowers of the ductless glands over the individual. _They may beregarded as the present postulates of a new science of the whys andwherefores 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 largelyby his glands of internal secretion. That is, they, as a complexinternal messenger and director system, control organ and function, conduct and character. The orderliness of human life, in thesequential march of its episodes, crises, successes and failures, depends, to a large extent, upon their interactions with each otherand with the environment. 

2. One or several of the glands possesses a controlling or superiorinfluence above that of the others in the physiology of the individualand so becomes the central gland of his life, its dominant, indeed, sofar as it casts a deciding vote or veto, in its everyday existence andincidents 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 areexpressions of them. 

4. Specific types of personality may be directly associated withparticular glandular prominences, so that we have the thyroid-centeredtypes, the pituitary-centered types, the adrenal-centered types, etc. These are the classic Three, the prototypes in their purity mosteasily described and recognized. 

5. Combinations of these, as well as of other glands--with jointpredominance--occur and indeed form the majority of populations. Thephenomena of varieties in species are thus explained. 

6. Internal secretion traits are inherited, and variations in heredityare essentially the structural representation of the resultant of aparallelogram of forces exerted by each of the parental prepotentglands. If they are of the same type, they may reinforce each other:if not, inhibitions and compensations will come into play. Mendelianlaws may apply. 

7. The process of evolution, as the play of natural selection uponthese variations, becomes comprehensible from a new standpoint. 

8. Certain diseases, and disease tendencies, both acute andconstitutional, as well as traits of temperament and character, andpredetermined reactions to certain recurring situations in life, are rooted in the glandular soils that compose the stuff of theindividual. 

9. The subconscious, of which the vegetative apparatus is the physicalbasis, leads back to the internal secretions for the profoundestsprings of its secrets. We shall see how and why. 

10. Given the internal secretory composition, so to speak, of anindividual--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 andhabits. 

11. Within limits, if the previous history of an individual is known, his physical appearance may be approximately described, and his futureoutlined. 

12. Conversely, given the physical and psychic composition of anindividual, and his past history, one may deduce the internalsecretion 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 dependingupon the influences of the other glands, especially the interstitialcells of the sex glands. 

ANTE-NATAL DEVELOPMENT

In their ensemble, the glands of internal secretion wield adetermining influence upon the development of the individual fromhis very inception. If his various powers may be conceived of as anorchestra, they may be said to conduct it from the very beginning ofits movements, and to cease only with its termination. From the momentwhen the spermatozoon penetrates and fecundates the ovum, the fateof the future being is settled by their disposition. The seal of hisdestiny is soaked with their substance. 

POST-NATAL DEVELOPMENT

Every particle of protoplasm, every granule of the impregnated ovumcarries the representatives of the parental ductless glands. As aconsequence, they transmit chemically, with no figure of speechinvolved, the peculiar familial, racial and national characters fromprogenitors to offspring. They confer upon the child a number of theproperties commonly recognized as inherited. All those features whichdistinguish Caucasian from Mongolian, Scandinavian from Italian, Italian from Jew are determined by them. 

In short, at every step of his life, in every relation andassociation, in every expression of the inner forces that control hisbeing, 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 thatdistinguish species, varieties and families, has long been one of thechief puzzles of biology. It may indeed be called the leading puzzle, which led Darwin on to the collection of the data that culminated inthe "Origin of Species. " The why of the Unique is the fundamentalproblem of those who would understand life. 

An explanation is an attempt at a consistent and persistent, sometimesan obstinate clarity of mind. A vast number of observations gatheredby laboratory experimentalists as well as by those naturalists of theabnormal, physicians in active practice, prove that the constructionof the individual both during development before maturity, andmaintenance during maturity, his constitution, in short, is directedby the endocrine glands. It is possible now to present an explanationof the individuality of the individual. 

To assert that variation is responsible for the individual, that itis the mechanism which isolates him as a being like none other of hisfellows, not even his parents, brothers, and sisters, is merely to begthe question. What is variation? The internal secretion theory of theprocess offers, for the first time, an explanation that is coherentand comprehensive, based upon concrete and detailed observations. It provides an adequate interpretation of the numberless hereditarygradations and transitions, blendings and mixtures. It suggests acontrol of heredity in the future. 

THE PURE TYPES

In the pure types, only one gland, either by being present in greatexcess above the average, or by being pretty well below the average, comes to exercise the dominating influence upon the traits of theorganism. As the strongest link in the chain, or as the weakest, itrules. The others must accommodate themselves to it. Among them ascommanders of growth, development and normal function, it holds thebalance of power. In every emergency it stands out by its strength orby its weakness. It thus creates its own type of man or woman, withattributes and characteristics peculiar to itself. These pure types, as we have seen, are mainly the thyroid, the pituitary, and theadrenal-centered. 

Each with the signs peculiar to it can be identified among the facesthat pass one in the street. And they differ so markedly amongthemselves that they provide a new and accurate means of classifyingvarieties among the races of the species: man. The thyroid typediffers as much from the adrenal type as does a greyhound from abull-dog. The greyhound has a certain size, form, character andcapacity. The bull-dog has similar qualities which are yet quitedifferent. Each is built for a particular career. Among human beings, the pure thyroid type is easily distinguished from the pure adrenaltype, and both of these from the pure pituitary type. Each is stampedwith 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 sothey are more difficult to classify. The mixed types may be said tobe hyphenated. In them, two or even three of the internal secretoryglands conflict for predominance. The combined action makes for aresultant modification in the primary glandular markings and effects. A hyphenated classification thus becomes inevitable. Especially isthis so if the two glands are mutually antagonistic and inhibitory. A compromise effect is then necessitated. Or an individual may bedominated by one gland at one period of his life and by another at alater period. One of the glands, the thyroid, for example, will show, by the traces it has left upon the earliest developing features, thatit was in control at the very earliest dates of his history, whileother signs will disclose the more recent influence of the adrenalor of the pituitary. The combination becomes classifiable as thethyroid-pituitary type, or as the thyroid-adrenal type. 

That the external features as well as the chronic diseases of humanbeings are controlled by some common factor has long been suspected. Inquiries into morbid phenomena with a hereditary trend yieldedinformation that has paved the way for the internal secretion theory. It has long been known that certain diseases effect only certainindividuals of a definite constitution. Apoplexy, diabetes, arteriosclerosis, Bright's disease, are met with almost exclusively inwhat the older clinicians talked about as the apopleptic type. On theother hand, they said, anemias, tuberculosis, hemophilias, scrofulasoccurred more among the lymphatic type. But they had no idea whateverof the true functional basis of the two different types. The truthas we of today view it is that these two types represent differenttextures of human beings, fabricated of different internal secretions. They are really two different breeds of the species Homo Sapiens. Thematerials 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 exceedinglybroad and sweeping. It is well enough to establish types and classes. But beneath them are sheltered the infinite possibilities ofpermutations and combinations, which explain the countless varietyand complexity of form and function. Every individual born among thevertebrates, for example, must have a certain definite amount andpercentage of pituitary gland, anterior and posterior, pineal, thyroid, parathyroid, thymus, adrenal, pancreas, interstitial andso on. Now if, to state it in terms of percentages, for the sake ofargument, the pituitary is 25, the pineal 10, the thyroid 36, theparathyroids 15, the thymus 29, the adrenals 60, the pancreas 49, theinterstitials 72 (the gland when acting maximally to be graded as100), we see at once how different such an individual must be from onewho has, say, pituitary 84, pineal 39, thyroid 26, parathyroid 42, adrenals 96, pancreas 22 and interstitials 89. One obtains at oncefrom the contrasts of such figures some idea of the possibilities. Aseach point plus or minus must count to produce some difference in theindividual, the results are manifest. Varying within the numericallimits imposed by genus, species, variety and family (which limitsare probably responsible for the persistence of the particular genus, species, variety, or family) the individual becomes an individualbecause of the relative values of the percentages in his blood andtissues of these different internal secretions. We thus begin to gainan insight into the patterns according to which men, women and animalsare woven. 

We are, as yet, far from an exact endocrine analysis of theindividual. But we know that the endocrines rule over growth andnutrition, a vast dominion which incorporates every organ and everytissue. By enhancing or retarding the nutritional changes, the growthof the organ or tissue is favored or restricted. The size and shape ofan individual, as a whole, as well as of the specialized cell massescomposing him, as hands and feet, the nose and ears, and so on, aretherefore controlled by them. Whether an organism is to be tall orshort, lean or corpulent, graceful or awkward, is decided by theirinteractions. These, like human covenants, vary with the differentreactions of the parties to the contract. And so a great deal dependsupon whether they work harmoniously or discordantly, and upon whichdoes the most work and which the least. 

Undersecretion and Oversecretion

It is when a gland, either in the course of development, or because ofthe influence of starvation, shock, injury, poisoning or infection, begins to undersecrete or oversecrete that its effects upon growth andnutrition become grossly manifest. A veritable transfiguration of theindividual may occur, the black magic of which may perplex him fora lifetime. A man, made eunuchoid by an accident or by mumps, willobserve in himself astonishing changes in his constitutional make-up, mentality and sexuality. He would be more astounded to learn thatbeneath the appearances, the changes, so alarming him, there areprofound alterations in the rate at which he is taking in oxygen, burning up sugar, accumulating carbon dioxide and excreting wastebyproducts through the kidneys, which are responsible for them. 

The differences between the normal and abnormal are only a matter ofdegree. And so, to be sure, are differences between types. But it ishard to realize that the striking distinctions between the thyroidtype and the pituitary, comparable, as said, to the differencesbetween a greyhound and a bull-dog, are dependent solely uponquantitative variations in the general and local speeds of metabolism, among the cells. 

DIVISION OF LABOR

Besides the antagonisms and co-operations between them, there arecertain lines along which the glands, in their effects, specialize. The thyroid, for instance, is concerned specially with the regulationof the shape, form and finish of an organ. The pituitary shines at theperiods of developmental crises, determining them and modifying them. It exerts the greatest influence upon the time of eruption of theteeth, both the temporary and the permanent, the onset of puberty, therecurrence of menstruation in women, and the time of occurrence oflabor. The interstitial glands distribute the basis of the powers andlimitations of masculinity and femininity. Abnormalities of theseglands also affect the individual all along the line, in all of hisaspects. So affected he may apparently change into a wholly differentbeing. He may change in size, in the shape of his head, feet andhands, as well as in his habits, aptitudes and dispositions. So he mayfind it necessary to purchase an entirely different size of hat, morecommodious clothes, and newly fitting gloves and shoes. At the sametime, his family, relatives and friends, discover that the erstwhilegenerous, frank, neat and punctual and liked, has become stingy andsuspicious and slovenly and hated. And all because a gland has begunto undersecrete or to oversecrete. The transformation will be slightor marked, depending entirely upon the extent of impairment, positiveor negative, of the gland involved. 

But it is not only in the shaping of the normal individual'sarchitecture that the internal secretions dominate. Over that subtlesomething known in all languages as vitality, expressive of theintensity of feeling, thought and reactions in cells, they rulesupreme. Gay vivacity and grim determination, the temperament of aLouis XIV, and the soul of a Cromwell, are the crystallizations ofthese chemical substances acting upon the brain. 

INTERNAL SECRETION VARIETIES

There is no better way of illustrating the influence of the internalsecretions upon the normal than the analysis of the variation oftraits with variations in glandular predominances. The general buildof an individual, his skeletal type, the proportion between the sizeof his arms and that of his legs, as well as that between his trunkand his lower extremities, whether he is to be tall, lanky andloutish, or short, squat and dumpy, are to be considered. Differentfacial types are the expressions of underlying endocrine differences. The head and skull offer a number of clues to the controllingsecretions in the blood and tissues. Whether the forehead is to bebroad or narrow, the distance between the eyes, the character of theeyebrows, the shape and size and appearance of the eyes themselves, the mould of the nose and jaws and the peculiarities of the teeth, areall so determined. The skin, in its color, texture, the quantityand distribution of its fatty and other constituents, eruptions andweather reactions, is influenced. Also the mucous membranes, thecolor and lustre and structure of the hair, as well as its generaldistribution and development, are hieroglyphics of the endocrineprocesses below the surface. Whether the muscles are massive orsparse, atrophied or hypertrophied, soft or hard, easily fatigableor not, bespeak conditions in the glandular chain. In short, we mustregard the individual as an immensely complicated pattern of designstraced by the hormones as the primary etchers of his development. Though it must be admitted that the number of unknown and unsolvedrelations in the pattern are still enormously great, enough hasbeen established to make possible a rough working analysis of theparticular, 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 battledin vain for a satisfactory inclusive definition, or, at least, description of the normal. With the introduction of the biometricmethod, the goal at last appeared within sight. A cocked hat curveexpressing the distribution and range of the normal looks formidable. The attainable turned out a mirage, for the curves constructable bythe measurement of traits of a population only proved the truth of theold axiom that all transitions and variations between extremes exist. The Problem of the Normal seemed more elusive than ever. And the bestthat could be done for the elucidation of its mystery, was to applyand observe the law of averages. 

From the endocrine standpoint, the reason for this becomes clear. Thebiometric method concerned itself with externals, with, as it were, symptoms. Since these external signs are but manifestations of theinner chemical reactions, of which the internal secretions are thedetermining reagents, or factors, with permutations and combinationspossible in all directions, the diversity and variability of eachindividual and his traits stands explained and understandable. Thenormal, as the perfect or nearly perfect balance of forces in theorganism, at any given moment, emerges as a more definite and realconcept than that which would abstract it from a curve of variations. Moreover, since the directive forces within the organism arepre-eminently the internal secretions, the normal becomes definable astheir harmonious balancing or equilibrium, a state which tends not toundo (as the abnormal does) but to prolong itself. 

The potential combinations and compensations, antagonisms andcounteractions, attainable within the endocrine glands as aninterlocking directorate, point the cause for the elusive quality ofthe normal. Tall men and short men, blonde women and dumpy women, lanky hatchet-faced people, stout moon-faced people, Falstaff andQueen Elizabeth, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, Disraeli andWalt Whitman, Caesar and Alexander, as well as Mr. Smith and MissJones come within the range of the normal. There are all kinds andconditions and sorts of men and women, and all kinds and sorts andconditions of the normal, because an incalculable number of harmoniousrelations and interactions between the endocrines are possible, anddo actually occur. The standard of the normal must obviously not bea single standard, but a series of standards, depending upon whichglands predominate, and how the others adapt themselves to itspredominance. Adrenal-centered types, thyroid-centered types, pituitary-centered types, thymus-centered types, as well as hyphenatedcompounds of these, such as the pituitary-adrenal types, exist asnormals. They can be conceived of as normal types because they existas normal types. 

THE SKELETAL TYPES

Now men, for as long as we have any knowledge of their thoughts andclassifications and attitudes, have been accustomed to first thinkof 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 orharmless agencies in his surroundings, accounts for this. Relatively, of course, for all these modes of description imply offensive ordefensive possibilities of the stimulus for the recorder in relationto himself. The interest in stature is fundamental, and has persistedin the most civilized, nations. The relationship of height and weight, as well as of length and breadth, to other physical traits, haveformed the subject of scientific study. There is, for instance, theclassification of Bean, who divided mankind generally into two types, those of a medium size, stocky long legs and arms, large hands andfeet, short trunk, and face large in comparison to the head (themeso-onto-morphs) and those who were either tall and slender, or smalland delicate, with the smaller face, eyes close together, long, high, narrow nose, and trunk longer as compared with the extremities (thehyper-onto-morphs). Bean showed, too, that the hypers (to use a shortword to contrast with the mesos) were present to the extent of almosta hundred per cent in a series of tuberculosis, and about ninety percent in a series of central nervous system disease. All of which isexceedingly interesting and suggestive, but throws no light upon theunderlying 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 thepace they set. Now the primary determinant, catalyst or sensitizer ofthe growth of the long bones is the anterior pituitary. All staturesshould therefore be first scrutinized from the point of view of thepituitary. Individuals over six feet tall or under five feet fiveinches should be looked upon as having a pituitary trend. Thispituitary trend may be primary, due to its own undergrowth orovergrowth, or it may be due to lack of inhibition from the sex glandssuch as occurs in eunuchs and eunuchoids, or excessive or prematureinhibition from them as happens in certain salacious dwarfs. 

The long bones grow at a point of junction between the bone properand an overlying layer of gristle or cartilage, known as the zone ofossification. It is upon this zone of ossification that the variousgrowth influences appear to focus and concentrate their efforts, amongthem the internal secretions. After growth has been finished, that is, after adolescence, these zones of ossification close, so that growthis no longer possible unless they become reactivated. Upon the zone ofossification must act the pituitary, and indirectly the thyroid, theinterstitial cells, the thymus and the adrenals. Individuals oversizedor undersized either belong to the pituitary type, or if hyphenated, have the pituitary as one of the dominants in their composition. Thenecessities of child-bearing determine a greater angle between trunkand lower extremities in the female. Underactivity of the pituitary, for instance, will prevent the development of the normal angle. Theratio in length of the upper limbs to the lower is a fairly constantrelationship for each sex normally Deviations occur with a breaksomewhere in the chain of cooperation of the internal secretionscontrolling the growth of bone. 

HANDS, FINGERS AND TOES

The size and shape and general configuration of the hands, fingersand toes are details that tell an endocrine tale. Students of handsnaturally 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 andbreadth of the bones, the amount and distribution of fat, and thethickness and elasticity of the skin. Over these, the essentialcontrol lies in the pituitary and the thyroid. So we find thatpituitary types have, when there is oversecretion, large bony, grosshands, spade-shaped, or when there is undersecretion, hands that areplump, with peculiarly tapering fleshy fingers. The hyperthyroid haslong slender fingers, the subthyroid pudgy, coarse, ugly foreshortenedhands, often cold, and bluish. 

FACIAL TYPES

An artist will see in a face the past history of generations, anarrative of the adventures of the blood, a record of tears andsmiles, wrinkles and dimples, the victories and defeats of burieddrudgery and romance. These signatures which the Faculty of Life havescribbled or engraved over it as upon a diploma, bespeak for himspiritual moments. To the student of the internal secretions thelines, expressions, attitudes are important for they tell of the stateof tensions and strains in the vegetative apparatus with which theyare inseparably connected. It is when one comes to the considerationof the face as a complex of brows, eyes, nose, lips and jaws that hebecomes most interested. For in the modeling and tone of every one ofthe features each of the endocrine glands has something to say. Inconsequence there has been described the hyperpituitary face, and thehyperthyroid face, the subthyroid face and the subpituitary face, theadrenal face, the eunuchoid face and the ovarian face and also thethymic. 

To bring to mind an immediate complete image of the hyperthyroid face, one should think of Shelley. The oval shape of it, with the delicatemodeling of all the features, the wide, high brow, the large, vivacious, prominent eyes with the glint of a divine fire in them andthe sensitive lips all belong to the classical picture. Generallyflushed over the cheek-bones, there is undoubtedly a certaineffeminate effect associated with it. At least, it is the least animaland brutish of the faces of man. 

On the other hand, the subthyroid face is that of the cretin andcretinoid idiot, in a mild degree. So characteristic that we recognizethe portrait in the descriptions of Pliny in early Roman tunes and ofMarco Polo in his Asiatic travels. Coarseness, dullness, pudginess areits keynotes. Irregular features, tendency to wide separation of theeyes and pug nose, sallow, puffy complexion, waxy thickened nose andeyelids, deep-set, listless, lacklustre eyebrows, and thick prominentlips comprise the catalogue of the physiognomy. On the whole, the sortof face one passes in the street as stupid and common. But there area number of fascinating and marvelous varieties of the stupid andcommon. 

The adrenal face is most often dark or freckled. It tends to beirregularly broadish. It is hairy, one is struck forcibly. There is alow hair line, which makes the brow appear rather low, and there isa good deal of hair over the cheek bones. The adrenal type is roundheaded. 

The face of the hyperpituitary is striking and pretty sharply defined. It is long and narrow, with a tendency to prominence of the bonyparts. Square, protruding jaw, high, thin, straight nose, emphasizedeyebrows, and marked cheek-bones, comprise the leading points in itscomposition. On the other hand, the subpituitary is more rounded andtrends toward the full moon effect, the chin recedes, the cheek-bonesare buried under fat, the nose spreads more and is flatter. In itsgeneral expression, there is a complacence and tranquillity which isoften mistaken for sleepiness, and often actually is dullness. 

The eunuchoid face is usually fat with puffy eyelids. The skin issmooth and cool, marble-like often, poor in pigment and color. Sometimes it is sallow, wrinkled and senile in a man in his earlytwenties. At others, it is distinctly feminine in its hairlessness, and the delicate texture of the skin, as well as in the clean-cutpatterning of the features. Every gradient between premature senilityand sex inversion is encountered. 

The thymic face frequently stamps its possessor at sight. Its ownerhas a smooth, soft skin, with little or no hair, and a dead white or"peaches-and-cream" complexion. One wonders, when unacquainted withthe type, who the man's barber is, or where he learned to shavehimself so well. It may be curiously velvety to the touch and swept bya faint sheen. Among children occur the most exquisite samples of thekind designated as the angelic child. The face is finely moulded andbeautifully proportioned, features artistically chiselled, eyes blueor brown with long lashes, cheeks transparent with rapid, fleetingvariations in coloring, thin lips, and oval chin. In the adult, thechin is receding, and the mouth seems underdeveloped in one variety. 

THE TEETH

As closely connected with the internal secretions as are the bones ofthe face and the skull are the teeth. Tooth formation is essentially amodified bone formation. And as the bones of the face are influenced, so are the teeth influenced. But as each tooth is a miniature organ, inspectable by the eye as a unit, the action of the ductless glandsis more obviously reflected for the observer to read. By their teethshall ye know them. Upon the whole history of the evolution of eachtooth, in the growth of the dental follicle and its walls, thefruition of the dentinal germ, the making of the enamel organ, thedental pulp, the cementum and the peridental membrane, the endocrinesleave their mark. 

There are certain general statements about the teeth and the internalsecretions that can be made. The teeth of the thyroid types arepearly, glistening, small and regular; in other words, the teeth towhich poets have devoted sonnets. The pituitary types have teeth thatare large and square and irregular, with prominence of the middleincisors, and a marked separation or crowding of them. Theinterstitial types have small irregular upper teeth, with turned, stumpy or missing lateral incisors. The thymus types have youthful, milky white teeth that are thin and translucent, and scalloped orcrescentic at the grinding edge. The teeth of the adrenal type are allwell-developed, tend to have a yellowish color, with a reddish tingeto the grinding surfaces. 

The degree and regularity of development of the middle upper cutting, biting teeth, as distinguished from the grinding molars, the middleand lateral incisors, and the canines offer further guides to theendocrine constitution analysis. The size of the central incisorsseems to be directly proportional to the degree of pituitarypredominance. On the other hand, the size and regularity ofthe lateral incisors seem proportional to the influence of theinterstitial cells. When these are inferior in the make-up of anindividual, the lateral incisors are nearly always distorted. Thesize of the canines appears to be a measure of adrenal activity. Longsharply pointed canines mean well-functioning adrenal gland equipmentto start in with, inherited from a bellicose progenitor. 

No individual peculiarities of the teeth are accidental. Just as theabsence of hair on the face in a man or a moustache effect in awoman stand for some definite stress or strain in the mechanics ofinteraction of the internal secretions, so likewise do variations indentition, as to the time of eruption of the teeth, their position andquality, and their resistance to decay. 

Proper balance between the thymus and pituitary will permit theeruption of the teeth within the normal time limits, both the milkteeth and the permanent teeth. When there is equilibrium between thepituitary and the gonads, the teeth will be regular in shape andposition. Carious teeth, in children and adults, sometimes indicateendocrine imbalance. Thyroid and adrenal balance determines theresistance to decay of the molars. Early decay of the molars inchildren is significant of insufficiency of the thyroid. When thefirst permanent molar, which should appear in the upper arch in itsusual position between the sixth or eighth years, does not, there hasbeen a prenatal disturbance of the pituitary, according to Chayesand others. Rapid decay of the teeth in childhood should always callattention to the parathyroids. 

In pregnancy, the teeth suffer particularly because of disturbances ofthe endocrines. The saying, "A tooth for every child, " is said to haveits equivalent in every language. The bicuspids and second permanentmolars erupt around puberty, when profound readjustments are going onamong the glands of internal secretion. They consequently suffer withtheir abnormalities or divergences from type. The teeth thus furnish agood deal of information concerning the distribution of the balance ofpower among the hormones. 

THE SKIN

The skin is influenced in its color, moisture, hairiness, texture, fatcontent and disease vulnerability by the endocrines. The question ofcolor is very interesting, for it is probably the expression of theblending action of the different internal secretions. Davenport, theAmerican student of heredity and eugenics, has shown that neitherwhite nor black skins are either perfectly white or perfectly black, but are mixtures in various proportions of black, yellow, red andwhite. The exact percentages of the pigments in each particular skin, can be determined by means of a rotating disc. Thus a white person'sskin may have the following composition:

Black 8% Red 50%

Yellow 9% White 33%

The composition of the skin of a very black negro may be:

Black 68% Red 26%

Yellow 2% White 7%

Now the fact that in Addison's disease in which the adrenals aredestroyed there occurs a coincident increase in the black in theskin, and other evidence pointing to adrenal implication in darkcomplexioned white people, as well as in those possessing pigmentedspots, seems to indicate the adrenals as controllers of the blackand white factors. Davenport has concluded that there are two doublefactors for black pigmentation in the full-blooded negro which areseparately inheritable. The determinants of the red and yellow havestill to be worked out. 

The moistness of the skin, as perspiration, depends upon the numberand activity of the sweat glands. It varies with the water content ofthe body, the state of the vegetative nervous system, and the bodytemperature. Thus the skin of the hyperthyroid and the subadrenalis soft and moist, because of their antagonistic effects upon thesympathetic system. The subthyroid and the hyperadrenal have dryand harsh skins for the same reason, if no other glands intervene. However, in both of the latter, if there is a persistent thymus, theskin will retain the bland quality of adolescence. 

There is a curious variation among the different internal secretiontypes in the reaction of the skin to stroking. When the skin, especially the skin over the shoulders, the breasts and the abdomen, is stroked with some blunt object, the blood vessels react either by agreater filling up or emptying of themselves. The latter occurs mostregularly in the subadrenal types, the former in the hyperthyroid. Both forms of reaction run parallel to the different check or driveeffects of the vegetative apparatus. With too much drive, that is, toomuch thyroid, there is the flushing reaction; with too little check, that is, with too little adrenal, there is the whitening. Thesedifferences probably explain the emotional reactions of the face. Inanger, for example, some people become a dead white, others a fieryred. Whether one will do one or the other may depend upon the relativepredominance of the thyroid or of adrenal in the individual. 

In the distribution of fat beneath and throughout the skin all of theendocrine glands appear to have a voice. The typically hyperthyroidand hyperpituitary individuals tend to be thin, as well also as thosewho have well-functioning or excessively functional interstitialcells. In all of these the administration of the respective internalsecretions increases the burning up of material in the body, and allof them have a higher rate of tissue combustion than their confreres, with a subthyroid or subpituitary keynote in their cell chemistry, orwith insufficient interstitial cell action. Generally the latter havea very dry skin, the former a moist skin. With delayed involution ofthe pineal, obesity results. 

The elasticity of the skin is another quality that varies with theconcentration in the blood of the internal secretions. Elasticity ofthe skin, its recoil upon being stretched like a rubber band, may betaken as a measure of the activity of all the endocrine glands. For, as can be noticed especially upon the back of the hand, the older aman grows, the less elastic becomes the skin. In older people, raisingthe skin upon the back of the hand will cause it to stand up as aridge for a few seconds and then slowly to return to the level of thesurrounding skin. Whereas in a youthful person it will quickly snapback into place. This quality of elasticity of the skin is due to thepresence in it of the so-called yellow elastic fibres, cell products, with a resilience greater than anything devised by man. Thepreservation of the resilience is a function of the internalsecretions. Thus, after loss of the thyroid, the ridging effectcharacteristic of senility can be produced in one young as measured byhis years. It has been said that a man is as old as his arteries, andalso that as he is as old as his skin. It might better be said that heis as old as his elastic tissue, young when he is rich in it, old whenpoor and losing it. And as elastic tissue and internal secretionsstand in the relation of created and creators, or at least preservedand preservers, a man may be said to be as old, that is as young, fresh and active as his ductless glands. 

THE HAIR

There is no characteristic of the human body, except perhapsthe teeth, more influenced in its quality, texture, amount anddistribution than the hair. And again, each of the glands of internalsecretion plays a part, but most importantly the thyroid, thesuprarenal cortex and the interstitial sex glands. All contributetheir specific effect, and the blend, the sum of the additions andsubtractions constituting their influences, appears as a specifictrait of the individual, a trait so significant as to be used by theprofessionals absorbed in the study of man, the anthropologists, as acriterion of racial classifications. 

Some acquaintance with the history of the normal growth of hair isnecessary to its understanding. There develops during the life of thefetus within the womb a curious sort of wooly hair everywhere overthe entire body (excepting the palms and soles which remain hairlessthroughout life), remarkably soft and fluttery--the lanugo. At aboutthe eighth month of intra-uterine existence, a good deal of thislanugo is lost, to be replaced on the head and eyebrows by a crop ofthick, coarse, pigmented real hair. So it happens that at birth theinfant's hair is a queerly irregular growth, a mixture of what is leftof the general lanugo development, and the localized patches of themore human hair. Until puberty this children's hair remains the same, although at times, particularly after dentition, and after infectiousdiseases which undoubtedly alter the relations of the internalsecretions, changes of color and texture occur. Then, with sexualripening, there appear in males the so-called terminal hairs, over thecheeks and lips and chin, and, in both sexes, in the folds underthe shoulders and over the lower abdomen, the hair which might bedistinguished as the sex hair in contradistinction to the juvenilehair of the head, the extremities and the back. 

Now the smoothness of the face in children is connected with theactivity of the thymus and pineal glands. Among individuals in whomthe juvenile thymus persists after puberty, no growth of hair occurson the face, and in precocious involution or destruction of thepineal, hair appears on the face and in other terminal regions inchildren of six or less, a symptom classical in the child who sufferedfrom a tumor of the pineal, and discussed immortality with hisphysicians. It is probable that these thymus and pineal effects areindirect through their action upon the sex glands. For in the typeswith persistent juvenile thymus there occurs a maldevelopment of thesex glands, while in those with early pineal recession the sex glandsbloom simultanously with the appearance of adolescent hair and mentaltraits. The hastening of sexual hair by tumors of the adrenal glandmay also be put down to a release from restraint of the interstitialsex cells. 

There are certain spheres in the hair geography of the body, overwhich particular glands may be said to rule or to possess a mandate. The hair of the head seems to be primarily under the control ofthe thyroid. Thus in cretins reconstructed by thyroid feeding, thestraight, rather animal hair becomes lustrous and fine, silken andcurly. In the thyroid deficiency of adults, a prominent phenomenonoften is the falling out of the hair in handfuls. Baldness isfrequently associated with a progressive decrease of the concentrationof thyroid in the blood. At the same time, there tends to be athinning of the eyebrows, especially of the outer third. 

The hair of the face in males, and the other terminal hairs in bothmales and females, is regulated by the sex glands primarily. In thefemale, the ovary, that is to say, the interstitial cells of theovary, inhibit the growth of hair upon the face. In destructivedisease of the ovaries, as well as in other affections of it, hair inthe form of moustache, beard and whiskers may appear in female. Thatis why in women after the grand sex change of life, the menopause, hair often grows in the typically male regions because of loss of theinhibiting influence of the ovarian internal secretion upon them. After castration of the ovaries, the same may result. Removal of themale sex glands, or disturbances of them, will interfere with theproper development of the normal facial hair. Of the hair of thechest, the abdomen and the back, the adrenals seem to be thecontrollers. Adrenal types have hairy chests in males, and hair on theback in females. They have also a good deal of hair upon the abdomen. The hair on the extremities varies a good deal with the pituitary. People with hair upon hands, arms and legs, alone, are generallypituitary, or have a striking pituitary streak in their make-up. 

When the adrenals increase in size in childhood, a remarkable triadfollows--general hairiness, adiposity and sexual precocity. One factshould be noted. When the adrenals evoke precocity, and an earlyawakening of the secondary sex characteristics, it is a masculineprecocity, and an approximation to the masculine even in females. There is a definite trend toward an increase of the male in theindividual's composition at the expense of the female. We shall haveto consider this in greater detail when we analyze the internalsecretion basis of masculinity and femininity. In general, the degreeof general hairiness is an index to the amount of adrenal influenceupon the organism. All the endocrines which affect the hair growthalso act upon the sebaceous glands which oil the skin. 

THE EYES

Eyes present clues to internal secretion constitutions dependent uponinfluences of architecture and function. The thyroid eye is typical. It is large, brilliant and protruding. The individual is "pop-eyed. "On the other hand, subthyroidized eyes tend to be sunken andlustreless. The eyes of a pituitary type are either set markedlyapart, or close together, with the hair at the root of the nose soprominent as to constitute a separate bridge known as the nasal brow. The size of the pupil, and its humidity, which have so much to do withthe expression of the eye, vary directly with the activities of thedriving and checking divisions of the vegetative system, and area pretty good index as to which, at the time of observation, ispredominant. When the check system is in control, the pupils are largeand dilated. When its antagonist and rival, the drive system, is ontop, the pupils are small and contracted. The reactions of the pupilswhen charged by strong emotion, like fear or anger, likewise turn uponthe status of check or drive internal secretions in the economy of theorganism at the time the exciting agent presents itself. 

MUSCLES

It would seem, at first sight, that organs like muscles, mechanicalinstruments for the manipulation of the organism in space, wouldbe more or less independent of the subtler processes of internalchemistry of the blood and tissues. But no assumption would be morebeside the mark. Just as much as the bones and viscera, the teeth andthe hair, they show grossly how they are being influenced by all theendocrine glands. So thyroid types generally have a skeletonsparsely covered with a muscular mantle. Pituitary types have largewell-developed muscles. The pineal gland has some definite relation tomuscle chemistry not yet probed. Thus, it has been shown that when thepineal has been completely destroyed prematurely by lime deposits init, there is concomitant a wasting of muscles in places. This waste issometimes replaced by fat. Pictures and images in wood and stoneof these muscle freaks dating from the fifteenth, sixteenth, andseventeenth century are in existence. Then there is the extraordinaryfatigability of the muscles which occurs in the thymus types, who nevertheless have large well-rounded muscles, a paradox ofcontradiction between anatomy and physiology. Such a type, forinstance, may be picked out by a football coach for an importantposition in a line-up, simply on the tremendous impressiveness ofthe muscle make-up, only to see him bowled over and out in the firstscrimmage. The tone of muscles, the quality of resisting firmness oryielding softness, is essentially determined by the adrenal glands, especially in time of stress and strain. 

Brown-Séquard was the first to show that extracts of sex glands couldincrease the capacity for muscular work. Whether this was a directeffect upon the muscles, or indirect through the nerves or otherendocrines, no one can say. Certainly the carriage of an individual, outer symptom of the inner tonus among his muscles and tendons, may besaid to be as distinctively an endocrine affair as the color of hisskin. And like its variations, variations of their tone, development, reactivity, fatigability, and endurance may be traced to correspondingstates of overaction, or underaction, and odd combinations of thedifferent hormones. Much remains to be learned about them and themanner of their control. Such an affliction as flatfoot, dependentupon a laxity of the ligaments in one who seems perfectly healthy andstrong, may lead the analyst back to a thymus-centered personality. That is but one example. 

Since, too, muscle attitudes, muscle tensions and muscle relaxationsplay so large a part in the production of fundamental mental states:the attitudes, moods, memories and will reactions, the vegetativeapparatus enters, to play its part as a determinant. 

SEX

Over no domain of the body have the endocrines a more absolutemandatory than over that of the whole complex of sex. Both as regardsthe primary reproductive organs, their size and shape, and thecharacter of their implantation, malformations and anomalies, as wellas the physical and mental traits lumped as the secondary sexual, puberty, maturity, and senility, voice changes and erotic trends, virility and femininity, the internal secretions are dictators atevery step. So significant are these, that even a rough summary of thediscoveries and the outlook in the field involves some considerationof the details. 

CHAPTER VI

THE MECHANICS OF THE MASCULINE AND THE FEMININE

It needs a poet to chant the epic of sex. The mystery of it puzzledthe minds of the earliest Sumerian thinkers. As a source of deepestexcitement, it generated the most revolting ceremonies, bizarrecustoms, astounding cruelties and incomprehensible stupidities ofthe race. Men and women, as soon as they have done with their usualbusiness of keeping themselves free of disagreeable sensations, hunger, cold, fear of enemies, betake themselves to it as a primaryinterest all over the world. The most advanced psychologists of theday link the sex impulse with the windings and twistings of all humanactivity. 

Yet the Homer of sex through the ages is still to come. But at alltimes the mystery evoked speculation and attempt at explanation. Acting upon their theories as to the nature and function of sex, menhave, ever since the passing of the primeval matriarchates, segregatedwomen, equalized them, worshipped them, or enslaved them. Opinionshave varied from ancient national aphorisms to the effect thatwomen have no souls to the most ultramodern utterances ofbiologist-publicists that the differences between men and women arethe differences between two species. There are other epigrams, vastsweeping generalities, extant concerning the nature of sex, and womenparticularly. All partake of the complexity of truth and therefore owna certain validity. Still, since as a matter of fact, these items havebeen based upon superficial observations colored by the tradition andverbiage of the milieu, they are valuable more as human documents, asmaterial for the psychologist, than as scientifically obtained data, able to stand unblinking before the rays of the critical searchlights. 

SCIENCE VS. ART

Not that all the vast accumulation needs to be thrown pell-mell, higgledy-piggledy into the discard. The love lyrics of the poet, themagic of the emotions of Shelley and Poe, for instance, with theirmarvelous music and exquisite intonings of feeling, furnish us withimportant information. They are the facts of the sex life, as much asthe song of the nightingale, or the mocking laughter of the cuckoopursued by its mate. So Sappho and Elizabeth Browning, to take onlytwo samples, have contributed some of the feminine reaction. Theerotic motive in literature has but paralleled the erotic motive inlife, with all of its vagaries, delusions, confusions, ecstasies andsuffering. 

We have had concerning sex not knowledge, but a series of attitudes, the attitude of virtue, the attitude of pruriency, the attitude ofgood taste, the attitude of the theoretic libertine, the attitude ofthe satyr's vulgarity. All these poses, of course, have supplied notan iota to an understanding of the foundations of the problems of sex, biologically considered. Thus, a masculine master has coined thatimmortal phrase, the Eternal Feminine. And in a matriarchate weshould undoubtedly hear of the Eternal Masculine. Each leaves one asunenlightened as the other. A rough and ready code of life attributescertain grossly characteristic qualities of mind and body to eachsex. This is supposed to be enough for common sense. Beyond that themystery has been wrapped in cotton wool. That perhaps explains theenormous popularity of contemporary pornographic and so-called sexliterature. 

There are bound up with sex feeling and sex knowledge many customs, beliefs and habits, many legal statutes and social institutions, inthe complex that is called sentiment, to which science looms as thesacrilegious ogre who devours romance. Without spending space upon theravages of the sentimental idealist, certainly responsible for as muchhuman disaster as the brutal realist, it is manifest that a revolutionin sex standards and relations is inevitable as soon as the newdoctrines filter down as matters of fact to the levels of the commonintelligence. And surely, nothing else could be wished for in theworld desired by all of us, the world ruled by intelligence, andintelligent good will. 

SEX CHEMISTRY

A few general statements may be put down outright as material to goupon before we proceed to details. 

1. Femininity and masculinity have a definite chemical basis in thereactions of the internal secretions of which they are the expression. That is to say, that just as a precipitate of chalk is formed when onethrows some carbonate of soda into lime water, so the masculineand the feminine are to be looked upon as precipitates andcrystallizations of a long series of linked chemical reactions inthe fluids of the body, in which the internal secretions play adetermining part. 

2. Femininity and masculinity are expressions of the interplay of allthe internal secretions. It used to be said by smart cats and acceptedby the tabby cats, that a woman was a woman because of her ovariesalone. It is being said by some great discoverers of the day that manis a man because of his testes alone. Neither of these dogmas is true. There are individuals with ovaries who show every deviation from thefeminine and there are individuals with testes who exhibit everyvariation from the masculine. The other endocrine glands are of equalimportance. 

3. There is no absolute masculine or absolute feminine. The idealsof the Manly Man and the Womanly Woman were erected by the blindignorance of the nineteenth century illusionists, and a line drawn tocleave them. But indeed biologically there exists every transitionbetween the masculine and the feminine. The explanation of thesedifferent sex types consists in the different admixtures of theinternal secretions possible and actual. When we speak of the femininewe really mean the predominantly feminine. And when we speak ofthe masculine, we mean the mainly masculine. Between, all sorts oftransitions are possible and occur. 

Man in relation to the internal secretions we have considered inreviewing the interstitial cells. To him, we shall return later. Letus turn now to that fascinating subject of the ages, Woman. Whatproduces and maintains the Feminine?

THE CAUSE OF SEX

To all appearances, that inscrutable simplest of living things, thefertilized ovum, beginning of the human, starts bisexual, doublesexed, both masculine and feminine, or perhaps neither masculine norfeminine. Then a form develops. Then within that form a patch of cellsarise which the microscopist recognizes as the forerunners of the maleor the female reproductive cells. Then some more development. And atbirth, sex is definitely settled, as far as the reproductive organsare concerned. 

Our knowledge here, as everywhere, is still fragmentary. Statisticalreviews seem to show that in times of stress, war, famine, pestilence, more boys are born than girls. But that is neither here nor there. Itsheds no further light on the subject. Monosexuality is a distinctionof the human species: the sexes are pretty clearly differentiated. In some animals, such as some worms, there is a bisexuality of theindividual. There are present the reproductive organs of both sexes, capable of impregnating other individuals as well as of beingimpregnated. In some of these, even self-impregnation may occur. Thisis the condition of hermaphroditism. 

But the higher up one goes in the scale of evolution, the greaterbecomes the distinction between the sexes. Anatomic hermaphroditismbecomes a rare anomaly. Life appears to have perfected this trick ofseparate sexes, sex specialization, in short, for the sake of theefficiency which goes with specialization. 

When a germ cell divides, its nuclear material breaks up into segmentsknown as chromosomes. Now it has been found, for example in the caseof the common squash bug, anasa tristis, that there are 22 chromosomesin the female, and 21 in the male. In the female two of these arevisibly different from the rest, while in the male there is one oddone, the remaining 20 being like the corresponding 20 of the female. Before the germ cell becomes fit to mix with a germ cell of oppositesex, in the process of fertilization, it must lose one half of these. So the number of chromosomes for the species is kept the same orconstant. This is the process of maturation. In the process, when thechromosome number is halved among the females, 11 go into each matureegg. But among the males, the odd chromosome, also known as theX-chromosome, can perforce go only into half of the sperm cells, leaving the others without it. So the sperm are formed in equalnumbers of 10 and 11 chromosomes respectively. 

When fertilization occurs, and the sperm cell fuses with the egg, thefollowing may take place: (1) a ten chromosome sperm may unite withthe eleven chromosome egg, and produce a twenty-one chromosomeindividual or (2) an eleven chromosome sperm may unite with an elevenchromosome egg producing a twenty-two chromosome individual. It hasbeen found that the twenty-two chromosome individual invariablydevelops into a female, and the twenty-one into a male. Therefore, femaleness is a positive quality, dependent upon the action of theX-chromosome, and maleness an absence of femaleness, due to lackof the extra, odd chromosome. In man, two X-chromosomes have beendiscovered, half the sperm containing 12, and the other halfcontaining only 10 chromosomes. The number of chromosomes in humancells consequently is 22 in the male and 24 in the female. 

The X-chromosome is the bearer of sex destiny. There still remains thework to be done on the actual control of sex by man, apart from itsnatural determination. For the time being, let the feminists glory inthe fact that they have two more chromosomes to each cell thantheir opponents. Certainly there can be no talk here of a naturalinferiority of women. 

THE SECONDARY OR ENDOCRINE SEX TRAITS

Yet the matter is after all not so simple as this would make it outto be. All that can be safely laid down is that the character of thereproductive organs is determined by the extra chromosomes. And thoughthese reproductive organs have a good deal to do with the masculine orfeminine quality of the organism as a whole, through their internalsecretions, they are not alone. All the other internal secretions havetheir say in the final outcome, determining what may be called thedominant sex quality, but leaving inherent the latent soil of theother sex. This may become active and dominant in its turn, undercertain conditions of stimulation, abnormality, or disease, dependentupon a rearrangement of status and influence among the ductlessglands. Bisexuality preceded monosexuality in the animal pedigree, andco-exists with it even at the highest points of the genealogical tree. 

While from the standpoint of the species, the criterion of the sexclassification of its members will depend upon their capacity tofertilize or to be fertilized, a quality that may, therefore, bespoken of as the primary sex character, a number of other traits havebeen evolved by sexual selection, the secondary sex traits. They havecome to be just as important, to the individual, as far as his or herconsciousness of sex attitudes and reactions to it are concerned. Theterms primary and secondary sex characteristics, though inapt, must beallowed to stand. 

These accessory sex-serving traits undoubtedly survived because oftheir usefulness in external adornment for attracting attention incourtship, in the metabolic requirements of sex combat and the sexact, and in the necessities of caring for the young, until well-grown. The rooster's comb and spurs, the male frog's claspers, the stag'santlers, and so on, are familiarly and obviously so useful. Besidesthere are fundamental differences in inner physiology. The human maleconsumes more oxygen than the female per minute, since he has more redcorpuscles in his blood. In some caterpillars the blood is yellow inthe males and green in the females. W. I. Thomas has devoted an essayof some fifty pages to a review of the organic differences between manand woman. The ordinary criteria, employed every day by the man in thestreet to distinguish man from woman may be arranged as follows:

 _Man_ _Woman_

 Hair on face Hairless face Skin coarse and lean Skin fine and plump Muscles powerful Relatively weak Bones heavy Bones light Aggressive--bass voice Reserved--treble voice

THE RÔLE OF THE OVARIES

While the primary sex characters, as such, are present anddistinguishable from birth, quite the opposite holds for the secondarysex traits. During childhood they are in abeyance or at least prettysharply suppressed. Girls and boys who are permitted to dress alike, to play the same games and among whom no consciousness of sex isencouraged are often difficult to tell apart. The boys will be boys, and most of the girls tom-boys. 

With puberty comes a marked change of attitude toward the other sex. Puberty is the time of ripening of the specific germ cells. It isthen the ovaries begin to secrete ova ripe for fertilization, and thetestes begin to secrete sperm ready to fertilize. Before this canhappen an event announced in the female by the onset of menstruation, two conditions must be fulfilled in the endocrine history of theindividual. There must be a certain atrophy and retrogression ofthe thymus gland, and there must likewise be a similar atrophy andretirement of the pineal gland. Both of these involutions of theglands of childhood must occur before the normal hypertrophy anddevelopment of the sex glands and their secretions can start. Besides, there must be a minimum activity of the thyroid, adrenal and pituitaryglands. Without them, below a certain minimum, the reproductive organsand their secretions will remain infantile, causing a persistentinfantilism or delay of puberty. 

Formerly there was ascribed to the ovaries, in a lump and withoutqualification, an absolute despotism over the specifically femininefunctions of menstruation, gestation, parturition, and lactation. Nowadays, we see its domain as a limited monarchy, if not indeed asone sovereign state of a republic, a member equal but not superior tothe others of a board of directors. Its true business comes down totwo particular rôles: first, the production of ova, and, second, thesecretion of a hormone or hormones. Over the other functions oncesupposed its monopoly, all the ductless glands rule. 

What concerns us now is its internal secretion or secretions. One ofthem is known as lutein and it has never been chemically isolatedin its pure form. The existence of lutein, like the existence ofelectricity, is an inference, something we are sure is there becauseof its effects. It originates in a remarkable part of the ovary, thecorpus luteum. Besides, there are the products of the interstitialcells, the creations of a special layer of cells around the ovum, themembrana granulosa. They produce a substance tonic to the uterus. 

When the ovaries are removed, there occurs an atrophy of the wombmuscle, due to loss of this tonic substance. This atrophy, accompaniedby an abolition of the normal periodic uterine contraction, makesconditions unfavorable to pregnancy. It has been claimed that thesecretion of the corpus luteum is necessary for the complete progressof a pregnancy. Cases are on record, however, of ovaries taken outsoon after the onset of pregnancy, without interference with thegestation. 

Castration is comparable in every way with the menopause or thetime of cessation of sexual life, a process that might be calledself-castration. It produces certain general constitutional effects. Adiposity often develops, undoubtedly associated with underfunction ofthe thyroid and pituitary glands. The woman breathes less oxygen perminute and burns up less food and tissue. There is some disturbanceof the lime balance with an increased excitability of the vegetativenervous system. Concomitant is the release of some brake upon theblood pressure mechanisms, so that a family tendency to high bloodpressure will flare up. Some women are rendered unstable by theprocess, others are completely transformed, and still others adaptthemselves, with little or no discomfort, to the new situation. Theresponse to the revolution in the cell-republic of the castrate bythe other endocrines, the thyroid, the pituitary, and the adrenals, determines which it is to be. 

For normally, with feminine puberty, there is an increased activity ofthe thyroid, the posterior pituitary and the adrenal medulla. Thesechanges indeed constitute the formula of normal feminization. In themale, the ripening of the testes is accompanied or perhaps preceded byaugmented function of the adrenal cortex and the anterior pituitary. This difference in biochemistry accounts for the contrast between thesexes in the skin, hair, fat, cartilage (voice) and bone changes. Ovary and adrenal medulla and posterior pituitary and thyroidpredominance constitute the feminine formula. Testis and adrenalcortex and anterior pituitary predominance comprise the masculineendocrine directorate. 

THE REACTIONS OF THE OTHER GLANDS

As in so many other aspects, the facts about the various influencesexerted by the endocrine glands upon the reproductive system arecomplicated and disjointed. A chink of light has been let in upon adark cave, and slowly the chink will widen. But the gross effects areclear. 

Around the ovary and the uterus, the endocrines gyrate as the planetsaround the sun. The ovary is the organ for the preservation andmaturation of the germ plasm, that treasure which the body is builtbut to cherish and hand on as a sacred heirloom. The ova, the femaleegg cells, are the fundamental concern of the ovary. Secondarily, itsecretes its messengers to keep the rest of the body, and particularlythe other endocrines, in touch with the necessities of the adventuresof these ova. It is thus enabled to bend every force and power at itscommand to the service of the reproductive instinct. 

In learning their rôle so well in the course of evolution, thethyroid, the pituitary and the suprarenal have become indispensablestimulants (in various degrees peculiar to the individual), to theprimary function of the ovary. As a consequence, to hold the sexstimulating glands in check, there had to appear others, restrainingthem and so preventing sex precocity. These are the thymus and pineal. So closely are they all related that insufficient action of thethyroid, pituitary or adrenals may cause atrophy of the ovariesand uterus, with abolition of genital function. If the sex glandsthemselves fail, as occurs usually in most women sometime in theforties, the thyroid-pituitary-adrenal association must readjustitself to the new development. The adaptation evokes the phenomena ofthe transition to a new life, the climacteric. 

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PUBERTY

Tracing the development of sex life there is a certain order of eventsin a normal history. Before puberty, the ova have lain asleep, as itwere, in a cocoon state. Now with puberty they awaken. And with themall those profound mechanisms and inventions that have to do withtheir nutrition up to ripening. Then revolve the cycles that aretranslated as menstruation, the propulsion, fertilization andimplantation of the ova in the uterus, --the full development of thefetus, --its birth, and feeding after birth--all of which are ductlessgland controlled. 

Samuel Butler once noted that:

"All our limbs and sensual organs, in fact, our whole body and life, are but an accretion round and a fostering of the spermatozoa. Theyare the real "He. " A man's eyes, ears, tongue, nose, legs and armsare but so many organs and tools that minister to the protection, education, increased intelligence and multiplication of thespermatozoa, so that our whole life is in reality a series of complexefforts in respect of these, conscious or unconscious accordingto their comparative commonness. They are the central fact in ourexistence, the point towards which all effort is directed. "

Nothing could be said more truly of Woman, and the ova she carries. All that transpires during pubescence is symptomatic of the underlyingtidal stir in the cells. The uterus becomes gorged with bloodperiodically, to provide an enriched soil for the perhaps to befertilized ovum to plant itself. The breasts grow, and fat isdeposited in particular places as reserve material for the making ofmilk. The qualities which are to appeal to the eye and ear and evennostrils of the male appear. Instincts dawn, an independence of spiritgerminates, emulsified with a curious shyness and coyness and adesperate loneliness and secrecy. And all because there have been letloose in the blood from the glands of internal secretion the chemicalsubstances that set going the clockwork of sequential incidentselaborated and repeated through countless aeons of time. 

FEMININE PRECOCITY

Ordinarily, in the north temperate climate, puberty begins aboutthe fourteenth year, but may begin anywhere from the tenth to thesixteenth. Feeding and environment indirectly, the state of theinternal secretions as a whole directly, determine this. In girls, those definite signs, menstruation and the growth of the breasts, before the age of ten, mean premature awakening of the ovaries and aconcomitant co-reaction of the other endocrines, creating the ensembleof maturity. 

In females, the primary stimulus, the initial spark of femininity, must originate in the ovary. There are other forms of precocity in thefemale, dependent upon stimulations of other glands, but these formsare masculinisms, a masculinization of the personality, and not atrue awakening of the feminine constitution. So one must distinguishsharply between a precocity by masculinization and precocity ofpremature feminization. The latter always implies the touch of thefairy's wand upon the sleeping ovaries. Sexual precocity in boys maybe produced by a premature overactivity not only of the specificreproductive organs: the testes, but also by an early excess ofsecretion on the part of the cortex of the adrenal gland or thepituitary gland, or by a too early involution of the pineal or thymus. When such abnormalities of adrenal, pituitary, thymus or pineal occurin girls, it is the masculine streak in the hastening of growth thatis made manifest. All this emphasizes the relative bisexuality ofevery normal, no matter how pronounced, when superficially viewed, hisor her form of predominating sex may be. Under the right conditionsrecession of the most marked virility or femininity becomesconceivable, and occurs. 

THE SECRET OF THE MASCULINE

Masculinization having entered upon the scene, one may well ask: whattruly (which means chemically) lies behind all these differencesand divergences between male and female? What is the secret of thevariable internal secretion admixtures? You can tell us that therecipes are different, the ingredients different, the resultsdifferent as a Nesselrode pudding is from, say, a rice pudding. Butwhat is the inner mechanism of the process? Since the masculine andthe feminine are but expressions of certain relative capacities andpotentialities, some single principle must run through the making ofboth. 

Recognizing of course the qualifications inherent in so broad astatement the answer is: the handling of the lime salts. Lifeoriginated, or at least lived and worked for long ages in sea water. During these eras the salts of the sea have come to play a dominantrôle in its being. The lime salts, because of their peculiarproperties of dissolving or precipitating themselves according toelectrical conditions in their medium, have come to occupy acentral position in all the processes of growth, metabolism and sexdifferentiation. So it is that masculinity may be described as astable, constant state in the organism of lime salts, and the feminineas an unstable, variable state of lime salts. The male skeletoncontrasts with the female as the stronger, larger, heavier andstraighter because it is an expression of a greater capacity toutilize, store and keep lime in the system. Women throughout theirreproductive period are liable to rapid and pendulum-like fluctuationsof their lime content. 

Menstruation, pregnancy, lactation, all draw upon the stores of lime, sometimes depleting them to the point of softening of the bones andwrecking the whole skeleton. The endocrines control the transport, and course, combinations and permutations in the history of lime'sprogress among the cells, and are in turn themselves affected by it. Man is relatively free of these liabilities, and so remains man byhis freedom from the recurrent crises involving the lime salt reservewhich constitute the essence of the life story of woman. 

THE SEX INDEX

It follows from these considerations that when it becomes necessaryto size the sex composition of a man or woman, a measurement becomesestablishable which may be spoken of as the sex index. To be able tosay of Mr. Llewylln Jones that he is sixty per cent masculine andforty per cent feminine, or of Mrs. Worthington that she is seventyper cent feminine and thirty per cent masculine would be of the utmostvalue under all kinds of circumstances. Unfortunately, lacking as wedo the exact figures of an advanced blood chemistry (yet in its mostinfantile infancy) a direct indexing of the sort is impossible. But itis certainly conceivable, along the lines of measurement suggestedby the Binet tests and others, that a scale of evaluation of thesecondary sex traits may be elaborated, which would turn out asvaluable in understanding the frictions of the individual, and moreconcretely, that aspect of it to which pathologists of the mind aretracing so much needless misery and suffering: maladjusted sexuality, expressed and suppressed. Nothing will contribute more to harmoniousadjustment for these sufferers than recognition of the fact that weare all, more or less, partial hermaphrodites. 

THE FUNCTIONAL HERMAPHRODITE

The complete or total hermaphrodite we define as the individual whopossesses the reproductive organs of the male and the female, bothtestes and ovaries. So rare is such a combination in man that for along time its occurrence was doubted, descriptions of it regarded asmyth. However, undoubted cases are on record, examined by the mostcareful of observers, of ovo-testis or mixed reproductive organs. Strangely enough, the history of these cases, shows that at one timethe masculine set, and at another the feminine set, will hold swayover the sex traits and functions. Blending does not happen. 

Rare though the true hermaphrodite may be, the partial hermaphroditeis relatively frequent. The mixed ensemble of the directly contrastingtype, such as the concomitance of testes with feminine secondary sextraits, or of ovaries with masculine sex traits, have been describedfrom time immemorial as freaks. Occurring even more frequently is themixed sex ensemble, in which the type of reproductive organs and ofsecondary sex traits run roughly parallel, emulsified with certaintraits of the opposite sex. Physical features of one sex, instinctsand mental attitudes of the other co-exist in the same individual byreason of an excess in one direction or a deficiency in another of theinternal secretions. The degree of masculine trend in a woman is acrude measure of adrenal domination, the degree of feminine deviationin a man is roughly proportional to the amount of pituitary influencesin his make-up. 

Whether one or the other sex tendency will dominate depends upon thequantity of sex hormone divergence from the ideal normal. But alsodeterminant are the environment stimuli provoking excessive ordeficient secretory reactions from the other endocrines involved, through the vegetative nervous system. Such especially are theassociates of the mixed sex individual. Ordinarily the combative maleand the submissive female are differentiated by contrasts of skinand hair, fat and bone structure. The combative male is built as afighting machine, the submissive female as an organism of attractivegrace and beauty for impregnation and parturition. When one sees thefragile woman aggressive, the masculinoid woman submissive, onemay infer an education of experience that has brought the usuallyrecessive glands into the foreground, and by their hyperactivityimposed a bisexuality of function upon a unisexual anatomic structure. A man apparently as formidable as a tyrannosaurus, may be ruled byhis wife for the same reason. These combinations of a single organicsexuality with a functional bisexuality, based upon internal secretiondisturbances, are frequent, and merit the name of functionalhermaphrodites or mixed sex types. 

MIXED SEX AND THE FAMILY

The psychology of the family in its relation to the endocrine traitsof its members is something that still remains to be thoroughly workedout as a problem of tremendous importance. Particularly are thereactions of the mixed sex types to be carefully considered. For, since the family is fundamentally a sex institution, devised tosatisfy the sex needs, all the way from companionship to parenthood, it is apparent that the mixed sex types will be tried the hardest byits inexorable conditions. It is in relation to the mother (or nurse)first, the father next, and other associates in proportion to theirproximity, that the primary endocrine-vegetative mechanisms, the germsof the growing soul, become established. These are superimposed uponthe hereditary instinct apparatus. 

Fear, rage and love reactions develop first in association with thesuckling reflex, and the accompaniments, the mother's smile and voice, the color of her hair, eyes and skin, her breasts and odors. Each timethe babe reacts to a pleasant or unpleasant stimulus, there is anoutpouring of certain internal secretions, a cessation of others, atingling of certain vegetative nerves and organs, a hushing of others. The ensemble of reactions tends to be repeated around the samestimulus, until the whole becomes automatic. One may observe the sameprocess in the lower animals. Offer a piece of meat to a dog and hismouth waters. Ring a bell before offering the meat. Repeat this anumber of times, and after a while the mere ringing of the bell, without the presence of the meat, will cause his mouth to water. Thisassociated vegetative secretion reflex is the most fundamental tograsp in an understanding of the deepest strata of personality. 

Now there are, besides the associated vegetative-endocrine reactions, certain inborn automatic processes in the vegetative system and inthe internal secretion system, which work automatically to produceincreased intravisceral pressures. The reduction of these pressuresbelow the point of their intrusion upon consciousness, their relief, as we say, also form the centers of constellations around feelingsof satisfaction or love. Such, for example, are the voiding ofexcretions. Sooner or later, these automatic reactions, and theassociated reflexes formed around the mother, father and otherassociates, come into conflict. Inhibitions or prohibitions of theautomatic act at certain times or moments are imposed by somebody. And so there occurs a pitting of the automatic mechanism against theassociated reflex. Conflict with adjustment by suppression must occur. Thus a sense of self as active wisher (for the automatically pleasantexperience), and punishable suppressor (of the same in favor of theacquired associated reflex) develops. 

So far, so good. Compromise by regulation from above, from thebrain, of the automatic reactions follows, as training. No absoluterepression is forced, no absolute encouragement is indorsed. Harmonious equilibrium, or normality, continues. But now there comeupon the scene the unconscious fears. 

In the paleontology of character, these fears are the deepest strata, the eocene era, so to speak, of the soul. They are the hardest to getat and the most silent, as well as the most dominant of the influenceswhich guide conduct. In Sir Walter Raleigh's words:

 "Passions are best likened to streams and floods. The shallows murmur, the deeps are dumb. "

During the first period of childhood, up to five or six, the primaryfears group themselves around the taboos and secrets of its life. 

Though we have every reason for believing that the sex glands areacting in some way upon the organism during this time, nothingdefinite is known. Yet, as the numerous studies of the subconsciousrecently made prove, sex curiosity like the other curiosities, flowers. More than about the automatic visceral reactions, thesecuriosities evoke the repressive imperatives of the associates, themother and father especially. These repressive influences may beand often are the effects of ignorance, prudishness, vulgarity, orhomosexuality, or the sex perversions that are known as sadism andmasochism. But by the necessities of the case, the sex wishes becomeoverlayed by reflexes associated with the mother and father and closeassociates as love. This might be termed the oligocene. As the circleof acquaintance widens, other loved objects usher in the miocenephases of the development. With these become interspersed varioushates and detestations, deliberately cultivated and accepted by theconsciousness. So we have a cross-slice of the personality in thefirst five or six years of childhood. 

But now, with the onset of the second dentition, a subtle changebegins in the endocrine equations of the body. The second dentitionitself is an expression of a certain internal secretion wave passingthrough the cells, an increase of action of some hormones, a decreaseof others. And a consciousness of physical sexuality appears, whilethe outlines of character, hitherto mere tracings, become firmer, heavier, quasi-indelible lines. That there is some activity on thepart of the internal secretions of the sex glands, the ovaries andtestes, can be demonstrated by accurately charting the behaviour of aboy or girl after this time. It will be found that there is a cyclicvariation of health and conduct, more or less marked of course in eachcase. A cold may appear periodically at the end of each month, anincrease of irritability and waywardness may be observed, or, on thecontrary, a decrease of the regular restless playfulness. The ghost ofsex begins to haunt the scene. 

Now all kinds of possibilities of conflict emerge. The child is stilla bisexual, growing into a mixed sex type, depending upon the natureand amount of its internal secretions. The influencing adult of thefamily, the most important of the external factors encouraging ordepressing the tendencies of the child, possesses a fairly fixed idealof monosexuality which he or she, generally quite unconsciously, seeksto impose upon it. A doting feminine mother will make her son as muchas possible like her husband: if she dislikes her husband, as much aspossible like her father or grandfather. A masculinized mother willtend to make a sex object out of the son, however, which means hisfeminization. But, on the internal secretion side, the boy may bedefinitely masculine. That is, after adolescence he would be stronglymasculine, _if the vegetative-endocrine mechanisms created by themother's personality had not slipped into the inside track_, so tospeak. As a consequence, continual subconscious conflict between thetwo sets of sex reaction will, sooner or later, disturb, perhapsdisrupt and ruin his life. 

So an infant may start life with a fairly balanced endocrineequipment, with its wake of a normal life (barring accidents andinfections), and yet he may end as an inferior, insane, criminal, orfailure directly because of establishment of conflict between himselfas one sort of sex type, and his obligatory associates of anothersort of mixed sex type. This applies also to the mother-daughter, thefather-son, and the father-daughter relationship. 

Male and female created He them, is a bald misstatement of the facts. Male and female emerge as final by-products of endocrine heredity, environmental treatment and adaptation. Often the male-female, the female-male, persist anatomically, or are forced to persistfunctionally. Society, constructed upon the Biblical dogmas of man asa fallen angel, and absolute sex, is responsible for much misery andsuffering meted out to the functional hermaphrodite, as we shall seelater in an analysis of the endocrine character of Oscar Wilde. Theprivileges and powers of sex relationship, marriage and parenthood, should be safeguarded for the mixed sex type, the man or woman withthe variable sex index. For there are no tragedies in life morepitiful than those in which an aggressive masculinely built type isforced to assume a submissive, receptive, passive, feminine rôle andvice versa, the tragedy of compelled homosexuality, because of wrongassociates. 

MASOCHISM AND SADISM

The functional hermaphrodite enables us, too, to understand thephenomena of masochism and sadism, to a certain extent, on thechemical side. The masculine personality, the combination ofmasculine, e. G. , adrenal cortex and gonad internal secretionpredominance, is built for aggression. The feminine personality, the union of feminine, e. G. Thyroid and ovarian superiority, isconstructed for submission. Reverse the possibilities, or confusethem, as occurs in the functional hermaphrodite, and the attitudesbecome reversed or perverted. So a masculinoid personality in womanwill make for sadism, a feminoid personality in a man for masochism. Variants and refinements of these perversions will often be foundin the functional hermaphrodite who must satisfy two doubly flowingstreams of visceral pressure within himself. Persistence of the thymusor pineal gland tends to a prolongation of the infantile and childtypes, that will be taken advantage of. 

CHAPTER VII

THE RHYTHMS OF SEX

If one permits a drop of ink to fall into a glass of water, amazingfigures and shapes, bizarre and chameleon, are born as the blue swirlsand whirls through the resisting medium. Unseen forces and currents, tides and pressures, set up a seething and flowing, pulling andtwisting of the drop of ink until it becomes a strange wraith createdout of the molecules. A temporary individuality lives in the water. 

So likewise the forces of sex, essentially the forces of the internalsecretions, mould and sculpt and mould again the woman out ofthe flesh and blood. Adolescence--puberty--menstruation: themaid, --pregnancy--labor--lactation: the matron, thirty years of upsand downs of these processes around the idea of love or suppressedlove, against an aesthetic background of some sort--and finally theloss of the stress and strain of sex, the menopause. All the landmarksof the life of woman, in their entirety, are erected and dominated bythe tides and currents, the phases of concentration and dilution, ofthe different internal secretions in the endocrine mixture which isthe blood. 

Marvelous are all the manifestations of the reproductive necessity. Considering that reproduction was at first merely a form of growth, adiscontinuous kind of growth, that seized upon sex as a splendid meansto escape death, the chemical methods evolved arouse a sense of awe. A baby is born with her or his glands practically as fixed for her orhim as the color of the eyes. Thymus and pineal keep him a child, keephim unsexed. Then at puberty, a new current is added to the calmlyflowing river, and behold! a turmoil. Ovaries or testes activelyfunctioning erupt upon the calm spectacle, and the girl istransfigured into the maid, the boy into the youth. After the ovaries, the corpus luteum: after the corpus luteum, the placenta: after theplacenta, the mammary glands: after that the cycle begins again untilthe ovaries are exhausted and the chain is broken. Besides, all theother glands of internal secretion beat in rhythm, fluctuate in theiractivities, may divide prematurely the tides or dam them completely. 

Innumerable varieties and combinations of interglandular action supplyus with the limitless types of adolescent girls. Some endocrinecooperatives that make one girl stable and settled, will make othersunstable and unsettled. Alicia may be hyperthyroid, and so excitable, nervous, restless, and subject to palpitation of heart andsleeplessness. Bettina may have too much post-pituitary, and so willmenstruate early, tend to be short, blush easily, be sentimentallysuggestive and sexually accessible. Christina may be adrenal cortexcentred and so masculinoid: courageous, sporty, mannish in her tastes, aggressive toward her companions. Dorothea may have a balanced thyroidand pituitary and so lead the class as good-looking, studious, bright, serene and mature. Florence, who has rather more thyroid than herpituitary can balance, will be bright but flighty, gay but moody, energetic, but not as persevering. And so on and so on. 

Environment, habit-formation, training, education serve only to bringout the internal secretion make-up of the girl, or to suppressand distort and so spoil her. Adolescence will be peaceful, calm, semi-conscious, or disturbing, revolutionary and obsessive accordingto the reaction of the other endocrines to the rise of the ovaries. Harmony, and so continued happiness of the mind and body, meansthat they have been welcomed into the fold. Disharmony, ailments, unhappiness, difficulties, mean that they are being treated asintruders, or are acting as marauders. The after life, sexually theperiod of maturity, barring accidents, diseases, and shocks, will bearthe same character. The kind of adolescence provides the clue to thekind of maturity, for both are effects of the same endocrine factors. 

THE SEX GLAND CHAIN

Furthermore, the activities of a normal woman involve a series of sexglands. Since there function, in addition to the ovaries, the glandsof the uterus, the breasts or mammary glands, and the placentalgland (the secreting cells of the tissue which comes out as theafter-birth). Each of these contributes directly to the reproductivelife of the individual. To call the ova the sex glands is to conferupon them a name which really belongs to a chain of glands. 

All of the members of the sex chain, including those of the thyroid, the adrenal and the pituitary, are necessary to the functions ofmenstruation, impregnation, settlement of fertilized ovum in the wallof the uterus, labor and lactation. A disturbance of one of them willset up disturbances all along the line, and a resonance of distressor compensation upon the part of all of them. As an interlockingdirectorate over the sexual functions of the female, they are membersone of the other. So what helps or hurts one, helps or hurts all. 

THE CYCLE OF MENSTRUATION

Essentially, the ovary is a collection of follicles, nests ofcells, acting as safe deposit vaults for the ova that are to becomecandidates for fertilization. At birth, there are some 30, 000 to200, 000 of these, of which a good many atrophy during childhood sothat there are no more than about 30, 000 left at puberty. Of the30, 000, only an élite 400 actually mature between the ages of fifteenand forty-five. About every twenty-eight days, one of the folliclesswells, becomes filled with liquid, pushes or is pushed to the surfaceof the ovary, there to rupture and expel into the abdominal cavity thetiny ripe ovum. The rest of the torn follicle makes itself over intoa peculiar yellowish body, the true corpus luteum, should pregnancyoccur. If pregnancy and the consequent placenta do not occur, itshrinks and turns into a scar, the false corpus luteum. The truecorpus luteum resembles closely the adrenal cortex in make-up andstaining reactions. It seems as if, once successful impregnation hasbeen achieved, the feminine organism adrenalizes itself, makes itselfmore masculine and less feminine, inhibiting the posterior pituitaryand the adrenal medulla, as well as the ovaries. Besides, the corpusluteum stimulates the thyroid to prepare for the heavy demands to bemade upon it during pregnancy. 

Before menstruation, there is a stage of preparation, a stir andtwittering of the endocrines, the premenstrual state. Currents ofcommunication flow between the different glands, messages and repliespass to and fro. When these are properly balanced, so that all goeswell, the consciousness of the woman will be disturbed by no knowledgeof them. In some women abnormal sensations appear, a sense of fullnessin the breasts, or of weight in the back or pelvis, or pain in thehead. The last is probably due to swelling of the pituitary beyondthe capacity of its bony container. In a good many women, nervousand mental phenomena herald the expected menstruation because of acomplete upset of the balance between the internal secretions, withresulting disturbance of the nervous system. Irritability, depression, excitability, melancholia, exaltations, restlessness, hysteria, lossof self-control, or even more marked mental aberrations may appear. Following them, and roughly paralleling them, may come variousabnormalities of menstruation itself. The character, extent andduration of these furnish us the best clues to the endocrine stabilityor instability of the particular feminine organism. 

Menstruation is simply the uterus saying: well, not this time. As thedestined ovum within its nest, the follicle, grows, its fluid affectsthe interstitial cells to send their specific stuff into the blood. There it circulates, hits this gland and that, makes some more active, others less, transforms the chemistry of the cells, and engorges themucous membranes, most of all those of the nose and of the uterus. Itis all to welcome the mature ovum and its possible impregnation, toprepare a site for its landing and settlement, blood and food for itsnutrition, safety for its development. But it is not to be. No spermat hand, or effective enough to penetrate that wandering ovum. Love'slabour's lost. All must return to the so-called normal, really theintermenstrual state. The womb must surrender some of that blood, the glands return to their routine, and a sex diastole of the wholeorganism succeeds. Until again, another follicle swells, another ovummatures, and the premenstrual state of sex high tide cycles back. 

Seven to ten days before menstruation we know that sex high tide isbeginning for that is when the blood pressure goes up. As this rise ofblood pressure is probably controlled by the posterior pituitary, wehave a clue to the reason for the rhythmic variations in the rate ofproduction of its secretion by the ovary. For, since menstruation isso closely connected with the phases of the moon and the tides, therhythmicity of the posterior pituitary may be traced to the days whenthe pineal was an eye at the top of the head, and in direct relationwith the pituitary. 

Menstruation has been said to be a miniature labor. It is not thatas much as it is a miniature abortion. It is an effort of naturestill-born. But nature is quite used to its disappointments andreturns placidly to the daily grind. The four phases of a woman'stwenty-eight day cycle succeed each other as the premenstrual, the menstrual, the postmenstrual and the intermenstrual, with theprecision of pistons moving in a motor, when no interfering factoras disease, profound emotion or climate disturbances are present, affecting the endocrines. 

The sequence of events appears to be about as follows: The amount ofpost-pituitary secretion reaches a certain concentration. This in turnstimulates the thyroid and adrenal medulla. They in turn activate theovarian cells, which congest the uterine glands and lining membrane. The follicle bursts, the ovum is discharged and wanders, the uteruswaits and wonders. Nothing happens, the curtain is lowered, thescenery is removed, the actors revert to civilian clothes. That is thestory of menstruation, the central phenomenon of woman's pre-pregnancylife. One sees it clearly as a play of an internal secretionsyndicate. 

THE PREMENSTRUAL MOLIMINA

The premenstrual molimina is the traditional title accorded symptoms, sensations, feelings, observations of women in the premenstrual phase. In the light of endocrine analysis, they become exceedingly importantindicators of the underlying constitution of the individual concerned. Indeed, the premenstrual period furnishes a direct clue to thedominating internal secretion in a woman. Moreover, these premenstrualphenomena are the shadows cast by coming events. For they mimic andprophesy the events of the last crisis of feminine sex life, the cessation of ovulation which goes by the name of menopause, gonadopause, or change of sex life. The premenstrual phenomena providea positive film, so to speak, of the latent negative picture of theendocrine system of the girl or woman. 

Thus, there is the sub-pituitary or pituitary insufficient type, inwhom the excessive swelling of the gland causes headache, and a dull, heavy, tired feeling, a definite depression. Drowsiness, sleepishness, indifference to surroundings, general sluggishness of thought, feelingand reaction, a phlegmatic frilosity, all go with it. It is due toan overweighing of the pituitary, controller of good brain tone, andalive wakefulness, by the demands of the organism. 

On the other hand, the hyperthyroid type of woman reacts with anexaggeration of her tendency. When the posterior pituitary begins tosecrete more in her its stimulation of the thyroid is enough to tip itover the normal line. Such a woman in the premenstrual phase becomesirritable and restless, does not know what to do with herself, cannotconcentrate on conversation, occupation or any single activity, maybecome excited to the point of mania. Hot, tremulous, sleepless, orsleeping badly, she has a much harder time of it than her pituitarysister. 

These samples of premenstrual internal secretion reaction are theextremes of a vast number and variety of types. There are women in anunstable quasi-premenstrual state for the greater part of their lives. Sometimes an infectious disease or a psychic blow will put a womaninto this class. The significance of these cyclic changes has beentremendously increased by the recent formal admission of women toparticipation in public activities on a plane of equality with men. 

Evidence exists that in man, too, there is some cyclic rhythmicity ofhis endocrines, which sets up a fluctuation in his physical and mentalefficiency. The curves of these variations have still to be plotted, and will doubtless contribute no little to our knowledge of thecontrol of human nature. One unexpurgated fact stands out: thereproductive mechanism of woman has rendered her whole internalsecretion system, and so her nervous system, all her organs, her mind, definitely and sharply more tidal in their currents, more zigzag intheir phases, more angular in their ups and downs of function, and soless predictable, reliable and dependable. 

THE MASCULINOID WOMAN

The masculinoid woman, as a functional hermaphrodite, exists firstas a congenital entity, with an inborn distribution of endocrinepredominances that make for masculinity. There are also numerousacquired forms. The infections of childhood, measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, and above all mumps, may so damage the hormone systemthat an inversion of sex type follows. However, the stimulative anddepressive effects of environment are even more significant. Theeffects of environment in producing changes in an organism, thechanges the biologist sums up as adaptation, can be tracked in manyinstances to responsive reactions of the glands of internal secretionto demands made upon them by changed external conditions. So a coldclimate, which necessitates a more voluminous hair covering for ananimal, will evoke a hypertrophy of the adrenal cortex. Secondarilyother effects appear as by-products of the adaptation. The adrenalcortex makes for pugnacity, temper, animal courage, irritability andanger reactions. So a hairy animal will, in general (unless otherendocrines come in to defeat the primary effect), be more pugnacious, courageous, irritable and combative. The same applies to woman. Anenvironment which tends to encourage the masculine traits in her, toarouse repeatedly her pugnacity and combative decisions in the morerapid give and take of the masculine world, will rouse the adrenalcortex to greater activity, and so make her face hirsute, herattitudes aggressive, and perhaps render her sterile. Concomitantlythere may be a disturbance of menstruation. 

The presence or absence of sterility, natural or enforced, alwayspresent, or say appearing after the birth of one child, must all bedonated a prominent place in studying the endocrine make-up of awoman. When there is not enough ovarian secretion, the ovum may not beable to burst through the ovary, a necessity before it may begin itstravels to the uterus. Next, the propulsive action of the genitalducts may be insufficient because of defective corpus luteum. Or theuterus may not have received enough posterior pituitary or thyroid tomake it fit soil for the ovum to plant itself in. Or there may betoo much of these, which cause the uterus to massage itself daily bygentle contractions and so keep it well-toned. Excessive massage willthrow the ovum out. All these are factors in the sterility problem, with its psychic resonances affecting the maternal instinct. 

THE MATERNAL INSTINCT

There have been created high odes to an unknown god, sensuous lyricsof love, apostrophes and addresses to every human passion. But nopoet, to my knowledge, has risen to the heights of the maternalinstinct. Some contemporary clap-trap about sentimentalism willperhaps decry and ridicule the demand for an apotheosis of it. Thereare some who deny its existence, and assert that maternity is forcedupon every woman. Reduced to its elements, such nonsense turns out theabsurd pose of the theorist desperate to épater le bourgeois or tocover up hidden defects in his or her make-up. 

Without the maternal instinct, without the hope of immortality throughsomatic or spiritual posterity, we should all, who were sane enough, have to condemn ourselves to the futilities of hedonism. So that thecriminal who was condemned to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only tosee it roll down again, would have to thank his lucky stars for hislighter punishment. The future, tomorrow, the Kingdom of Heaven onEarth, or if you will, the Republic of Supermen, means to all of uswhat the child means to the madonna. The cynical epicurean careeristsand careeristinas, and the depraved degenerates of a comfort-lustingcivilization may have suffered an absolute atrophy and castration ofthat instinct. But they are pathologic specimens, and we are not forthe moment concerned with them. 

The Freudians have set up a great hullaballoo about creativeactivities as sublimations of the sex instinct, or as they would haveit, the libido. That is their obsession, the confusion of the sexinstinct, the instinct for sex life and satisfaction in the relationof the male to the female, with the maternal instinct. The paternalinstinct bears the same relation to the maternal, as the breasts ofthe male do to those of the female, i. E. , a functional hermaphroditetrait. The maternal instinct is the instinct to create, provide andcare for offspring. 

The mother expresses the deep craving of protoplasm for immortality. What drives her is the instinct of Life to preserve itself untoeternity in infinite space and time. That separates it sharply fromthe temporary needs of the sex instinct. The artist, the man ofscience or letters, the statesman, craftsman and maker of everysort is instigated by the maternal instinct. He creates for his ownpleasure, to be sure. But it is in its essence the pleasure of thebird making its nest. 

It is necessary, therefore, to distinguish between the sex instinctand the maternal instinct. For different glands of internal secretionhave been found responsible for them. A distinct difference in thequality and amount of the two instincts may be observed in the sameperson. A strong maternal instinct may be seen again and again todominate a woman with but little or no sex urge or passion. Numerousphysiologically frigid women have lived successful and happy marriedlives because of contented maternity. Other women, with normal orexaggerated sex instinct who welcome and stimulate the sex life, mayhave no wish for children, no functioning maternal instinct at all, and if sterile, will accept their fate with indifference or evenexultation. These variations occur because of a difference in chemicalsource and determination of the two instincts. While the ovary, stimulated by the thyroid and the adrenal medulla, is the chiefdeterminant of the sex instinct, to the posterior pituitary must becredited the chief hormone of the maternal instinct. The interactionsof the two glands, the ovary and the posterior pituitary, modifiedby accessory influences, determine the relative intensity of the twoinstincts. In a sense, the two glands may be said to be antagonisticand yet one stimulates and complements the other. 

THE TRANSFIGURATIONS OF CHILD-BEARING

Though what happens at puberty, what happens all through life throughthe agencies of the endocrines is amazing enough, what occurs duringthe period of child-bearing is perhaps the most amazing of all. Asemphasized, pregnancy is the time, among the internal secretions, of agreat uprooting and stirring, of fundamental and cataclysmic changesin the most intimate chemistry of the cells. It is as if a dictator, inspired by his country's danger, its enemies at the gates of itscapitol, were to draft and mobilize everyone, man woman and child fromeveryday activities to the necessities of defense. Or rather it isas if there appeared within the heart of our civilization a commonpurpose and intelligence, now so palpably lacking, which magnetizedand drew to itself all the streams of individual self-aggrandizingeffort. Imagine that possibility and how it would change the face ofthe earth and the entire basic constitution of human life and society. So do the profound tides of the hormones, centering around the newcreature being made in the womb, transfigure the face and constitutionof the child-bearing woman. 

During pregnancy, in consequence, the integrity of every structureof the body is tested. A stern, relentless accountant goes over thecells, counts up their reserves, establishes a balance, credits anddebits according to the demands of the growing parasite within them. Follow changes in the skin, the bones, the nervous system and themind. That is, all the glands, subtle recorders, transmitters, producers of the vibrations of change are influenced. But the mostinfluential are the most affected, as the most dominant personalitiesin a community are most disturbed by a revolution. 

In Sinclair Lewis' "Main Street, " the best novel ever made aboutAmerica as a nation of villagers, the heroine, Carol Kennicott, hasthis to say to someone sentimentalizing about maternity. 

"I do not look lovely, Mrs. Bogar. My complexion is rotten, and myhair is coming out, and I look like a potato bag, and I think myarches are falling, . .. And the whole business is a confounded nuisanceof a biological process. "

The exploration of the internal secretions has brought us anexplanation and an understanding of why child-bearing is a nuisance. We know now that if Carol Kennicott's complexion became rotten andher hair fell out, it was because her thyroid was not adequate to thedemands of pregnancy, and that if her arches were falling, and herfigure acquiring a potato bag dumpiness, it was because her pituitarywas insufficient. In all probability she was a thymus-centered type, which accounts for much of the material that goes to make up thenovel. 

Different endocrine types react characteristically toward thesituations of pregnancy. The adrenal type may not be able to respondwith the necessary enlargement of its cortex which is normal for theneeds of gestation. So pigmentations, darkenings and discolorations ofthe skin, especially of the face, the traditional chloasma develops. The hyperthyroid type may become sharply exaggerated, almost to thepoint of mania and psychosis. The subthyroid will suffer an emphasisof her defect, and pass on, because of pregnancy, to the trulydiseased state of myxedema, the state of dull, slow, stupid, semi-animal semi-idiocy. The pituitary type becomes more masculinized. The face becomes more triangular and coarser, the chin and cheek-bonesmore pronounced, and there is a growth of all the bones, so that sheis seen to grow visibly in height and breadth, and in the size of thehands and feet. Concomitantly, there is a changed, a more matured andsteadier outlook upon life, all due to stimulation of the anteriorpituitary, controller of growth, physical and mental. 

In general, the major endocrines, the pituitary, the adrenals, and thethyroid should hypertrophy and hyperfunction during pregnancy. Should they not, should adverse mechanical circumstances or chemicalmalfunction prevent, dire effects may follow. A woman with theclosed-in type of pituitary, shut up in a small non-expansile sellaturcica, will suffer the most violent headaches, will become fat, willfrequently abort. One whose thyroid cannot rise to the demands ofgestation, because of previous disease (like typhoid or measles) whichinjured her thyroid excessively, may be poisoned by the new elementsintroduced into the blood by the growing fetus, as it is the jobpar excellence of the thyroid to render innocuous these poisons. Of adrenal insufficiency, failure of the adrenals to hypertrophysufficiently in pregnancy, little is known. Possibly the corpusluteum, the endocrine formed of the torn egg nest in the ovary, makesup for any deficiency in this respect. For there is the most curiousresemblance imaginable between the cells of the adrenal cortex andthose of the corpus luteum, some day to be completely explained. 

THE PLACENTAL GLAND

The placenta, an organ and gland of internal secretion newly formed inthe uterus, when the fertilized ovum successfully imbeds itself withinit, must be considered in any analysis of the transfigurations ofchild-bearing. Born with the pregnancy, its life is terminated withthe pregnancy, for it is expelled in labor as the after-birth. Itsimportance and function as a gland of internal secretion has becomeknown only recently. Many still doubt and question the accordance ofthat rank to it. But feeding experiments with it, in various endocrinedisturbances in human beings, have proved its right to the title. 

The placenta is created by the fusion of the topmost enlarged cellsof the uterine surface and the most advanced cells constitutingthe vanguard of the growing and multiplying ovum. These front lineinvaders interact with the cells in contact with them to make a neworgan which serves as lung, stomach and kidney for the embryo, sinceit is the medium of exchange of oxygen, foodstuffs and waste productsbetween the blood of the mother and the blood of the embryo. Ultimately it acts, too, as a gland of internal secretion, influencingthe internal secretions of the mother, and also those of the embryo. 

Settlement of the fertilized ovum in the womb introduces into thesystem new secretions, new substances which are partly male in origin, since the ovum contains within it the substance of the male spermwhich has penetrated it. This masculine element causes a rearrangementof the balance of power between the endocrines towards the side ofmasculinity. They push down the pan of the scale to inhibit thepost-pituitary. So menstruation, the menstrual wave which follows theincreasing tide of post-pituitary secretion, is postponed. For tenlunar months, not another ovum breaks through the covering of theovary, and the uterus is left undisturbed. The placental secretionplays a most important rôle as brake upon the post-pituitary, the mostactive of the feminizing uterus-disturbing endocrines. Until at lastsomething happens that puts the placenta out of commission in thisfunction of restraint, and the long bottled up post-pituitarysecretion explodes the crisis apparent as the process of labor. 

A condition of self-poisoning often occurs in pregnancy, with symptomsorchestrating from mild notes like nausea and vomiting to the highkeys of convulsions and insanities. They represent what happens whenan unbalanced endocrine system is attacked by the placenta. Dependingupon where in the internal secretion chain the weak point, theAchilles' heel spot, will be found, the nature of the reaction willvary. And even after labor, after the explosive crisis, so much of thereserve endocrine materials may be consumed, that an actual mania or achronic weakness may come in its wake. 

Yet the placental secretion must not be looked upon as somethingwholly evil in its potentialities. Without enough of it to hold theuterus stimulating endocrines, particularly the post-pituitary, incheck, still-birth results. If there is enough, and not too much ofit, the woman will not feel ill at all, or perhaps only transiently, but will be possessed of a curious feeling of drowsy content andpassive, relaxed happiness. Let there be relatively too much of it, too little of the other glands, and the grosser transfigurations andailments of the child-bearing period follow. 

THE MAMMARY GLANDS

Once pregnancy is terminated by labor, the placenta is expelled fromthe body as the after-birth. The placenta removed, a new arrangementof the balance of power among the endocrines becomes necessary. But anew-comer appears upon the scene to take up the function left vacantby the absent placenta. This new-comer is the secretion of theactivated breasts, the mammary glands. They make for a persistenceof the state of equilibrium among the endocrines attained duringpregnancy. 

The mammary glands are typical glands of external secretion. They makethe milk and pour it out of the breasts through little canals into themouth of the suckling. Yet evidence forces us to conclude that theyare also glands of internal secretion, that their internal secretionsubstitutes to a certain extent for the loss of that of the placentabut not quite. 

What seems to happen in fact, is this: the corpus luteum secretionstimulates the dormant cells of the mammary glands, formed duringpuberty, but latent until the advent of pregnancy. We know thatinjection of corpus luteum will cause an hypertrophy of the breasts. The same effect is produced regularly during the menstrual period, with a consciousness of swelling of the breasts. Their atrophy at themenopause coincides with the shrinkage of the ovaries that takes placeat that period. Activity of the breasts parallels indeed more or lessthe activity of the corpus luteum. 

With the prolonged activity of the corpus luteum during pregnancy, prolonged stimulation of the breasts occurs. The secretion of thepost-pituitary would now cause the change from the internal cellsecretion to milk. But it is inhibited from so doing by the placenta. When the placenta is removed, after labor, the post-pituitary can act, and a free flow of milk is established. However, to counterbalancethis, and to prevent the post-pituitary from overacting, the breastssecrete a hormone with an action like that of placenta, but not sostrong, which tends to inhibit the ovary. So is put off the impositionof a pregnancy upon a period of lactation, obviously bad for mother, infant, and embryo. We have here an exquisite sample of the checks andcompensations which make for a self-balancing of the whole endocrinesystem. 

CRITICAL AGES

The Dangerous Age is a phrase coined by a Scandinavian writer as amore dramatic euphemism for the time of life when sex function ceases, the climacteric. As a matter of fact, the age of adolescence is justas much of a dangerous age as the age of deliquescence. The onlydifference between them is that the dangers of the one have beenhushed up, the dangers of the other well boomed and advertised. Both are dangerous to the individual, because both are periods ofinstability and readjustment of the cells, particularly the braincells, to a deranged endocrine system and blood chemistry. 

Moral attitudes differ at the two ages, not so much as an effect ofexperience, as expressions of different visceral pressures producedby newly dominant internal secretions. So in Eugene O'Neil's play, "Diff'rent, " we see the woman Emma Crosby as she is in her youth, whenher ovaries have budded and bloomed for only a few years, and herother endocrine influences are still dormant. She breaks off herengagement to Captain Caleb Williams on the eve of her wedding becauseshe is informed of the episodes of a sex affair he was involved in onhis last voyage, under circumstances not discreditable to him. Thenext act shows her thirty years later when, as an elderly spinster, she is passing through the climacteric, and is in the state of sexualhyperesthesia some women are afflicted with before the menopause. Itis as if the ovaries and the accessory sex internal secretions eruptinto a sort of final geyser before they are exhausted. So the captain, ever faithful, finds her, and discovers to his horror that she is athousand times more like other women than he has ever been like othermen. Because of his ignorance of the underlying chemical basis forthe transfiguration, tragedy follows. Critics may cackle about a sexstarved woman, who has repressed her natural desires, and hail theplay as a contribution to the Freudian clinics. As a matter of fact, it is a study of libido variation, with endocrine variation, at twostages of the inner chemical life of a woman. 

The chain of events at the menopause, the acme and then ebb of the sextide, may be summed up something like this:

The ovaries cease producing their eggs and so shrivel as a storagebattery atrophies when it dries up. An important member of theendocrine board of directors thus drops out, and so a rearrangementof gland activities, a new régime, becomes necessary. If a balanceof power is established quickly and equitably, very little happens. Quickly the woman passes on to the next plane of her existence. Butif some endocrine proves recalcitrant, and takes advantage of thesituation to make itself dominant, trouble and maladjustment, andtheir psychic echoes, come. Anterior pituitary control will meana relative masculinization, with hair on the face and aggressiveattitudes. Post-pituitary most often refuses to settle down, andexpressing its ambition as headaches, flushes, obesity and hysteria, may cause extreme misery and unhappiness to its possessor. Sooneror later, if the harmonious equilibrium of the normal life is to berevived, all the glands must regress, thyroid, pituitary and adrenals. 

With the waning of the ovarian function, the thyroid type will alsoexhibit its particular flare. If there is thyroid excess the womanwill be excitable and irritable, the thyroid deficient will bedepressed and dull, the thyroid unstable (that is swinging betweenexcess and deficiency) will have a cyclic up and down alternation ofmood and temperament. The adrenal centered will have a high bloodpressure and masculinoid traits, the adrenal inferior will have a lowblood pressure and suffer from a constant weakness and fatigability. So each form of reaction to the critical ages is individualizedaccording to the predominating glandular influence in the constitutionof the woman. When the womb has atrophied, and the breasts haveshrunk, the typical tan complexion, and the angular masculinoidfigure, face and psyche follow, and the transfiguration has beencompleted. 

Man has his critical age of sex cell deterioration as well as woman. The age period swings between forty-five and fifty-five. Here entersupon the scene that organ of external and internal secretion, theprostate, the most important of the accessory sex glands in the male. Experiments with its extract upon growing tadpoles have demonstratedit to have the same differentiating effects as thyroid, but withoutthe poisoning effects. Furthermore, the microscope reveals cyclicchanges in its cells comparable to the menstrual phenomena of theuterus. Indeed it is accepted as the homologue or male representativeof the uterus. Small and undeveloped during childhood, its growth atpuberty parallels that of the other reproductive organs. Its secretionhas been shown to be necessary to the vitality of the sperm cells. The regression of the prostate, its retirement from the field ofsex competition, is the central episode of the male climacteric. Accompanying its shrinking are prominent an irritable weakness, despondency, and melancholia, which may emerge at any time if there isdisease or disturbance of it. The influence of the prostate upon man'smental condition, and its contribution to the sex index, still remainsto be investigated in detail. 

SEX CRISES

At the periods of interstitial cell hyperactivity, when a waveof radicalism in the blood sweeps through the tissues, the otherendocrines are tested, and their latent stability or instability ismade manifest. Even before puberty, cyclic variations of health andconduct may be observed in boys and girls which undoubtedly dependupon currents among the internal secretions. Children, who, in thebest of circumstances, habitually are attacked by a wanderlust and runaway from home, or suffer from fits of naughtiness, are samples ofsuch endocrine lability. Children specialists have found that at aboutthe end of the second year their charges begin to individuate. In acertain percentage, sex traits appear pretty early. But the factof the matter is that it is rather the minority of girls whospontaneously exhibit the traditional stigmata of the natural girl. The doll-cherishing, housekeeping imitator of mother is another story. 

At puberty arise the most exquisite cases of life crisis dependentupon hormonic crisis. The boy becomes restless, irritable andquick-tempered when his thyroid and adrenals respond to the call ofthe interstitial cells. If they do not, he will become dull, heavy, lazy and listless. The girl correspondingly is transformed into avivacious, gay, nervous and apprehensive butterfly, or a sedate, dreamy, bashful, or even morose moth. It is interesting to note thatpoise, mental equilibrium, is not established until physical growthceases, marked by a cessation of growth of the long bones known asossification of the epiphyses. Poise seems to be controlled by theante-pituitary. The growth of the long bones is also dominated by theante-pituitary. It would seem as if, its secretion dedicated to theone function, could not be available for the other. So it happens thatthose in whom growth ceases early (probably because of an earlierand more vigorous invasion of the internal secretion system by theinterstitial cell product), develop mental maturity more rapidly andpossess more of it than those in whom growth continues. The acumen andsalacity of certain dwarfs is proverbial. The puberty phenomenateach that sex crises of every sort are dependent fundamentally uponfluctuations, periodic or aperiodic, of the sex index, as we havedefined it. 

THE DETERMINING FACTORS OF SEX LIFE

The material summarized in the preceding paragraphs furnish someslight inkling of the vast dominion of Sex, in all its relations, somatic and spiritual, over which the glands of internal secretionsrule. The founder of modern pathology, Virchow, said that woman iswoman because of her ovaries. He meant that woman is a woman, the sortof woman she specifically is, because of her internal secretions. Butno divine decree has laid down a line of cleavage between man andwoman. There are fundamental constitutional differences between manand woman. But it is just as true that man is man because of _his_internal secretions. 

We have seen that the concepts of Man and Woman are the end-points ofa curve including variations of every possible combination that areembraced in the construction of a sex index. This sex index is not anabsolute constant, although its range of fluctuation is pretty wellfixed at birth. It varies from day to day, year to year, dependingupon the influences that have been brought to bear upon it. But itdetermines the character of the three planes of sex: the endocrine, the vegetative, and the psychic. The endocrine is concerned with thefundamental chemistry of sex, the internal secretions, which determinethe chemical reactions that provide the free energy for the sexprocess. Upon the vegetative plane occur those transformations, tensions, and relaxations, in the viscera, which are controlledin part by the endocrines and in part by the experiences of theindividual as registered in his subconscious. Upon the psychic, conscious planes appear the echoes and reflections of the occurrencesupon the other two planes, as well as reactions arising in the brainfrom the necessity of the organism reacting as a whole to isolatedepisodes. Accompanying is a self-awareness of the organism as a unit. The three planes are not like separate plates of glass one raisedabove the other, the usual idea picture of planes. They arenebulae, swirling into each other, influencing and being influencedcontinually. The reactions among these three complexes of sex createthe milieu for the variations and aberrations of tendency, characterand conduct which stamp his unique quality upon the individual. Sexmorale is likewise so influenced. The fundamentals of sex ethics will, in due time, be revised in accordance with these conceptions. 

CHAPTER VIII

HOW THE GLANDS INFLUENCE THE MIND

It is impossible to review here in detail all the facts accumulatedconcerning the influence of the internal secretions upon all theprocesses of mind, intellectual and emotional. A volume would notsuffice for their adequate consideration. Reflexes, instincts, habits, tendencies and emotions are involved in their machinery. Thedevelopment and normal functioning of the intellect, the pure reasonas Kant called it, are controlled by them. Brain, without them insolution, without enough of them in that wonderful solution, theblood, sleeps or remains dormant like the butterfly in the cocoon. The cretin, who has not enough thyroid or no thyroid, is an imbecilebecause of his deficiency. Supply him with thyroid from outsidesources, feed him animal thyroid, be it of the sheep, the pig, or thegoat, and behold a miracle! he is restored to the level of at leastthe relatively normal intelligence. 

Acuteness of perception, memory, logical thought, imagination, conception, emotional expression or inhibition and the entire contentof consciousness are influenced by the internal secretions. The mostultramicroscopic activities of the molecules and atoms in the highestnerve cells and nerve tissues are dominated. The speed of theirchemistry and their associations, and thus the speed of thought, areregulated. Iodine has been shown to increase the electric conductivityof the brain that is, the rate at which electrons will fly through it. The thyroid may then be regarded as manipulating the amount of iodinebrought to play upon the brain cells at a particular moment of dangeror exaltation. Adrenalin increases the electric conductivity of thebrain. Nerve impulses, and with them sensations and ideas, travelfaster or flow more quickly through iodinized or adrenalinized braincells. In dangerous situations we think more rapidly and keenly, forin emergencies the blood floods the brain with extra thyroid andadrenal secretions. 

THE BODY-MIND COMPLEX

Mind, still regarded by most of mankind as something distinct andapart from the body, is thus exhibited as but part and parcel of it. Adeaf, dumb, and blind animal, deprived of tongue, and olfactory mucousmembrane, without sensations from the outside world can grow no mind, in the sense of intelligence. The sense organs of the body mediatethe primary mind stuff. Without internal secretions and a vegetativesystem there could be no soul, in the sense of complex emotion. Northose combinations of thought and emotion which synthesize attitudes, sentiments and character. The internal secretions and the vegetativesystem mediate the primary soul stuff. Mind is thus emulsified withbody as a matter of cold literal fact. The soul was once a subtletyof metaphysics. Now when mind appears soaked in matter saturated withchemicals like the hormones, therefore woven out of material threads, the independent entity created out of intangible spirit flies like aghost at dawn. 

View the outlook. Mind, the slippery phantom, now becomes controllablefor the purposes of everyday life, because we can put our fingersupon, touch, handle and change these material factors, the internalsecretions and the vegetative system. Through them we may affect thevery quality of the nerve tissue. The future of the race, the futureof human nature, depends upon the knowledge to be born of theresearches into the vast possibilities of this idea. Man, theAdventurer, the prey of Chance and Luck, will then become, indeed nowbecomes, the Captain of Fate and Destiny. 

It is, of itself, a revolution in the intellect, to conceive ofinstincts and emotions, suggestibility and contra-suggestibility, initiative and imitation, volitions and inhibitions as chemicalmatters. In all their relations, mutually reacting effects anddefects, excesses and deficiencies, the internal secretions set uppsychic echoes and reflections. When morbid and their equilibriumdislocated, we may even have phobias and neuroses. 

A man's nature is essentially his endocrine nature. Primarily, when heis born, he represents a particular inherited combination of differentglands of internal secretion. They, constituting the inventory of hisvital stock in trade, start him in life. Afterwards, food, the routineof his existence, the accidents of experience, education, disease andmisfortune, in short, environment, modify him because they modify hisductless glands and his vegetative apparatus, as well as his brain, depressing some parts, and stimulating others, and so rearranging thesystem. In particular will he be transformed as the gland is affectedwhich is the centre of the system to which the others adapt andaccommodate themselves. The inertia of the system is very great, almost absolute, and always tends to return. If he has children, hehands on his constellation of endocrines, in spite of mishaps, not atall or only slightly transformed. Sometimes, however, the experientialtransformation has been sufficiently deep, and shaken the veryconstitution of his germ-plasm. So family dispositions and traits, national and racial temperaments, are propagated, maintained andvaried. 

THE SEX INSTINCTS

Hormone reactions, as we have seen, initiate the complicated forces, processes and expressions of sex. The dictum of the founder of modernpathology, Virchow, that Woman was in effect an appendix to theovaries, has long been taken to apply to her psychic traits as wellas somatic. Her mind, like her skin, her hair and her pelvis, is aproduct of the ovarian endocrines. But these determinations are by nomeans her monopoly. Man is likewise a creation of the chemical wheelswithin wheels and springs within springs that are his glands ofinternal secretion. That he is not so obviously an appendix to histestes is due to two reasons. First, the male sex hormones have notthe instability nor cyclic rhythmicity of the female. Secondly, andperhaps consequently, his sex instincts have become overlayered withother more labile instincts, with habits and customs and necessitiesthat appear to oust the sex instinct into an altogether decentralizedposition. Moreover, it is the function of the female to be the excitorin the sex process: her subconscious, thoroughly aware of the fact, sees to it that the sex instinct stands starkly central and dominatingin her life. 

The moods of love, like the more stereotyped manifestations of sex, are dependent upon a proper supply to the blood of the internalsecretions of the reproductive organs, the gonadal endocrines. If thetestes are removed from frogs, it is found that the clasp-reflex, symptom of sex desire, is abolished. If, after an interval of severaldays, the testes' extract is injected into the frog, the reflexreappears for a few days. The hormone provoking this sex reflex ispresent in the testes only during the breeding season. In birds, the seasonal nesting and migrating instincts may be eliminated byinterfering with their ovaries. At the same tine there is a change intheir plumage toward the male type. Similarly, the males, when theirsex endocrines are cut off, will change their psychic nature as wellas physically. Besides owning his flag-waving comb, his spurs andbrighter feathers, the rooster struts to attract the female, andfights aggressively with his sex competitors. When he is made a capon, he loses his spurs and comb and distinctive plumage, and in additionbecomes retiring and submissive, in short, a pseudo-hen in hisinstincts as well as in appearance. If the genital glands areextirpated from a male before puberty, the wattles remain small, paleand bloodless, no active, amorous or combative instinct emerges. Thecreature maintains a demure silence, and may even be sought by avirile male. So we may see homosexuality of a kind in the lowestanimals. On the other hand, hens deprived of ovaries tend tometamorphose in the male direction, even to acquire the male spurs, and to display the male attitudes. 

All through the animal world, in the springtime, when the pituitaryawakens or increases its secretion, and so stimulates the sex glandsto augmented activity, emotions of sex and their expression areprovoked by the inner stirring. When the nightingale warblespassionately and the mocking bird gurgles provokingly, when the robinfills its scarlet breast and the starling floats in ecstasy throughthe perfumed air, when the pigeon coyly woos its mate, and thebutterfly flirts with the dazzling multicolors of its wings, whenall the marvelous devices of sex attraction in nature, selection andcourting, mating and reproducing are pondered, who but must wonder atthe infinite possibilities of reaction of the sex hormones? All is forlove, and all is because of the love in the blood that is manufacturedunconsciously by a few hidden cells. 

EXPRESSIONISM AND EXHIBITIONISM

We need a detailed examination of the various forms of expressionart has differentiated into, in its relation to exhibitionism and aseffects of the circulating libido-producing substance of the gonads. Sex exhibition differs in man and woman because of the differentlycombined internal secretions that are their substrates. The male'sattitude, aggressive pursuit, is instigated by the compound adrenaland gonad endocrines. The female's various emulsions of coyness anddisplay are motivated by posterior pituitary and gonad hormones inalliance. 

It is a dogma to state that the internal secretions of sex do notbegin to function until after puberty. Some children manifestexhibitionism with a certain independence of environment. Before adolescence a good many girls act like tom-boys, and aredistinguishable externally from boys only by their clothes. But othersdisplay signs of sex differentiation that are to be traced back toan awakening interstitial gonad action. Some boys have no interestwhatever in sex. Others will show an intense curiosity spontaneously, a curiosity which perhaps may be explained as a larval precocity, dependent upon the minimum of sex hormone production by the gonads. Close observation of the correlation of somatic and psychicdevelopment in extreme examples of these children corroborates thisview. Jonathan Hutchinson has described full-busted children ofLondon already boasting of their affairs. Indeed, as education andenvironment affect the body (in so far as they influence it as awhole) by exciting or inhibiting the glands of internal secretion, sex-arousing stimuli from without must be considered to evoke theireffects as stimulants of the latent puberty glands. 

At puberty, when the sex glands bloom, and the complex of the sexinstincts is activated, exhibitionism manifests itself in a host ofguises and disguises. Femininity in a woman, the womanly woman, or theeternal feminine, may indeed be defined by the degree of somatic andpsychic exhibitionism she presents. A woman who has a delicate skin, lovely complexion, well-formed breasts and menstruates freely will befound to have the typical feminine outlook on life, aspirationsand reactions to stimuli, which, in spite of the protests of ourfeminists, do constitute the biologic feminine mind. Large, vascular, balanced ovaries are the well-springs of her life and personality. On the other hand, the woman who menstruates poorly or not at allis coarse-featured, flat-breasted, heavily built, angular in heroutlines, will also be often aggressive, dominating, even enterprisingand pioneering, in short, masculinoid. She is what she is because shepossesses small, shrivelled, poorly functioning ovaries. Between thesetwo types all sorts of transitions exist, according as the otherendocrines participate in the constitutional make-up. But no betterexamples could be given, off-hand, of the determining stamp of theinternal secretions upon mind, character and conduct. 

INSTINCT AND BEHAVIOUR

The sex instinct, analyzed as an endocrine mechanism, provides theclue to the understanding of all instinct and behaviour. If thepost-pituitary regulates the maternal instinct, then its correlates:sympathy, social impulses, and religious feeling, must be alsoinfluenced, and so is furnished another example of a chemical controlof instinctive behaviour. McDougall, once of Oxford, now of Harvard, introduced into psychology the idea of the simple instinct as a unitof behaviour, regarding the most complex conduct as a compounding ofinstincts. The instinct itself he analyzed into three elements: aspecific stimulus-sensation, an emotion following, all ending in aparticular course of muscular reaction. Translated into endocrineterms, what happens may be pictured as a series of chemical events. 

When the activity of a ductless gland rises above a certain minimum, its hormones in the blood sensitize, as a photographic plate issensitized, a group of brain cells, to respond to a message fromthe outside world, with a definite line of conduct. There is aregistration by the brain cells of the presence of the specificstimulus. Then there is communication by them with the endocrineorgans. As a result, some of them are moved to further secretion, and others are paralyzed or weakened. In consequence of changesof concentration in the blood of the various internal secretions, tensions, movements and tumescences, as well as relaxations, inhibitions and detumescences, occur throughout the vegetativesystem--the blood vessels, the viscera, the nerves and the muscles. Each wires to the brain news of the change in it. In addition, thebrain cells themselves are excited or depressed by the new hormonesbathing them. In their final fusion, the commingling vegetativesensations constitute the emotion evolved in the functioning of theinstinct. 

To lower the new tensions throughout the vegetative system tothe normal range, the instinctive action is carried out. Thissuperficially is regarded as the essence of the instinct. As a matterof fact, it is only the endpoint of a process, the resultant of adrive to restore equilibrium within the organism. It may all happen inless time than it takes to tell about it. 

The play of an instinct may therefore be analyzed into four processes. They succeed one another as sensation--endocrine stimulation--tensionwithin the vegetative system--conduct to relieve tension. The dash isthe symbol of a cause and effect relationship. 

This equation for an instinct, based upon an analysis of the workingof the sex instinct, is the model for the analysis of all instincts, and therefore of all the compounded instincts that all human behaviourmay be resolved into. Conduct, that fascinator of the common gossipand the great novelist alike, normal and abnormal, social and asocial, in all their complexities, even unto the third and fourth generation, the Freudian complexes, is governed therefore by the same laws thatdetermine the movements of the stars and the eruptions of volcanoes. The most interesting factor in the instinct equation is the endocrine, because that is the one that is most purely chemical. 

ENDOCRINE CHARGING OF WISHES

It is _the_ distinction of modern psychology that it has establishedthe wish (craving, need, desire, libido) as the moving force in anypsychic process. The position of the wish in psychology as the forcewithin and behind the instinct may be compared to that of energy inphysics, when it was elevated to a central position in the explanationof physical processes in the nineteenth century. The concept of the_charged_ wish has illuminated all the hidden recesses and renderedaudible all the subdued murmurings of the mind. The truly novel in thecontent of the idea is the recognition of the fact that the wish ischarged. Now it could never be charged in a vacuum. That means thata wish could never be born in the brain alone. For the brain has nopower to charge itself with energy--it can only store and transmit. Ifa wish is potential energy that must be transformed into kinetic, itmust have a source. That source is the vegetative system. Without thevegetative system, the great complex of viscera in the abdomen andchest, blood and its vessels, endocrines, muscles and nerves, thebrain would remain but an intricate cold storage plant of memories, associations of past experiences. It would need no change and initiateno effort. But when the wish enters upon the scene, it is as if a deadstorage battery has been refreshed with new current. Enriched withbillions of electrons there is a stir and a movement, dynamic mind. But the dynamo is the more ancient possession of the animal, thevegetative apparatus. In short, what must always be remembered is thata wish is never cerebral, but always sub-cerebral, visceral, in itsorigins. 

The sub-cerebral makes the cerebral. Activities in the nervous systembelow the brain and especially the vegetative system, force upon itits function of the active verb. It has to be, to do, and to suffer, and then to manipulate the environment to satiate the insatiableviscera, insatiable because the local chemistry is continually raisingthe tension of one or the other of them. A physics of human behaviourbecomes possible with the aid of these concepts of endocrineregulation of intravisceral pressure, and intervisceral equilibrium, an intramuscular pressure and an intermuscular equilibrium, with thebrain as the shifting fulcrum of the system. 

The sensation of hunger, as we have seen, serves as good an exemplaras any of this mechanism of the wish. Hunger is preceded andaccompanied by contractions of the stomach of increasing intensity. Those contractions must be brought about by a substance acting uponthe nerve endings in the wall of the stomach. As it closes down uponitself, waves pass up and down. With each wave, the pressure within itrises. The exact amount of the pressure may be accurately measuredby means of a small balloon swallowed and then inflated. When thepressure rises above a certain figure, the sensation of hunger breaksinto the consciousness of the individual. We infer that certainsensory impulses sent up to the brain attain a strength that finallyforces itself into the conscious field of feeling. The sensation ofhunger varies from individual to individual because of variation inthe reaction throughout the vegetative system. Most often it is asense of movement or even an itch in the upper abdomen. Let some causeproduce a weakening or cessation of the movements of the stomach--asfear and anger--and the sensation of hunger disappears coincidentlywith the drop in the pressure within it. As the mathematicianswould say, the wish is a function of the pressure, and so of theconcentration of substance behind the pressure. 

We have in hunger the wish reduced to the lowest terms, the mostprimitive form of it. Yet we may resolve all wishes, even the mostidealistic, into the same terms. As the vegetative system becomeshabituated by repeated experience to react in the same way to the samestimulus, permutations and combinations of wishes become possibleuntil at length the inscrutable complexities of the behaviour ofcivilized man are evolved. We have to thank Von Bechterew, thegreatest of Russian physiologists, for these fundamental principles, so important for the understanding of the control of human life andconduct. 

The associated reflex, aboriginal ancestor of the involved trainof associations that constitute the highest thought, conduct andcharacter, is the unit of the system. Recall the classic examplecited. If a piece of meat is shown to a dog, his mouth waters. If nowyou proceed to ring a bell before offering the meat, his mouth willwater only when he sees or smells the meat. If, however, the ringingof the bell precedes the meat a sufficient number of reactions, a timecomes when merely the sound of the bell will cause salivation, withoutthe presence of the meat. So it is with the associated reactions ofthe internal secretions. A stimulus originally indifferent to theendocrines may, by association, the laws of which are many, come toact like a spark to the endocrine-instinct mechanism. Hence we canaccount for the subtle play of instinct throughout all thinking. 

Even objects resembling the specific excitant of an instinct onlyremotely, or in some one quality, may start its mechanism and a hostof associations bound up with it. Thus the maternal instinct maybe excited by the sight of a baby. But because a baby is small anddelicate, anything small and fine, a tiny book, a toy, a miniature, may arouse it. The object is then said to be appealing. The doctrineof association of instinctive and so of endocrine reactions enablesus to understand the feeling--tone that at any moment pervadesconsciousness as well as its content. 

Choices, the psychology of selection of food, color, friends, mates, amusements also become explicable rationally. For conflicts amongthe different components of the vegetative system are continuous andinevitable. If the pressure within a viscus has been heightened, andpersists, that is, is not disturbed by some other associated factor orinstinct, conduct results to lower the pressure to what it was beforethe instigator of the tension appeared. But if another instinct issparked, or another associated factor comes into play, another focusof increased pressure within the vegetative system is created, withanother stream of energy flowing to the brain and demanding an outlet. This clash of instincts, the struggle between different foci of thevegetative system competing for the possession of the brain, is acommon everyday process in conduct. Which will win means which willwill. And so we have an energetic basis for volition. 

Which will win appears to depend primarily upon the kind of endocrinesthat predominate in the make-up of the individual, secondarily withhis education. For it is the endocrines that are really in conflictwhen there is a struggle between two instincts. And if one endocrinesystem conquers, it must be either because it is inherently stronger, its secretion potential, that is, the amount of secretion it can putforth as a maximum, is greater (so explaining the term dominant)--orbecause a past experience has conditioned it to respond, although theopposing endocrine system does not. Fear and anger, respectively boundup with the activities of the adrenal medulla and cortex, we shallsee, provide as good exemplars as any of this process. 

The response of the ductless glands to situations varies with theircongenital _capacity_, and acquired _susceptibility_. Capacity isa question of internal chemistry, modifiable by injury, disease, accident, shock, exhaustion. Susceptibility depends upon the play ofthe forces focusing upon them that may be summed up as associations. In the ability of one endocrine system to inhibit another we have thegerm of the unconscious. Hence the modus operandi of the repressionsand suppressions, compensations and dissociations, which may unite tointegrate or refuse to integrate, and so disintegrate and deterioratea personality. 

As the personality develops, the vegetative system becomes susceptibleto the manifold associates of family, school, church and society, art, science and religion, and last but not least sex. All the differentnuances of personality are expressions of a particular relationship, transitory or permanent, between the endocrines and the visceraand muscles. Conversely, behaviour shows what a person actually ischemically; that is, what endocrine and vegetative factors predominatein his make-up. 

FEAR, ANGER, AND COURAGE

Fear and anger are the oldest and so the most deep-rooted of theinstincts. An ameba, contracting at the touch of some unpleasantobject, feels fear in its most primitive form. And anger, thedestructive passion, must have appeared early upon the scene of life. Certainly these two instincts were definitely developed and fixed inthe cells before sex differentiation and the sex instincts were bornat all. It is interesting to note this for our rabid Freudians. 

Fear and anger involve the adrenal gland. How comes it that two statesof mind so contrasted should involve the same area? The answer lies inthe bipartite construction of the adrenal. All the evidence pointsto its medulla as the secretor of the substance which makes for thephenomena of fear, and to its cortex as dominant in the reactions ofanger. 

When adrenalin is injected under the skin in sufficient quantity, itwill produce paleness, trembling, erection of the hair, twitching ofthe limbs, quick or gasping breathing, twitching of the lips--all theclassic manifestations of fear. These are the immediate effects offear because they are the immediate effects of excess adrenalin in theblood upon the vegetative viscera and the muscles. The perceptionby associative memory of these effects of adrenalin, the sensationsarising from the organs affected, constitute the emotion of fear. Flight follows by muscle prepared for flight, for the disturbance ofthe inter-muscular equilibrium tenses the flexor muscles, the musclesof flight, and relaxes the extensor muscles, the muscles of attack. 

If, it would seem, the cortex secretion now pours into the blood, enough to more than overcome the effects of the medulla secretion, theinter-muscular equilibrium is disturbed in the opposite direction, for fight rather than flight, and anger results. Or if the corticalsecretion pours in an overwhelming amount of its secretion from thefirst into the blood there will be no fear, but anger immediately. Habitually charging and fearless animals like the bison, bull, tiger, or lion have a relatively larger cortex in their adrenals. Habituallyfleeing and fearful animals, like the rabbit, have a small cortexand a wide medulla in their adrenals. The reinforcing action of thethyroid is important. The adrenal medulla reinforced by the thyroidmakes for terror, the adrenal cortex reinforced by the thyroid makesfor fury. 

Some people are not easily frightened, others are more readilyfrightened, and still others are of an extremely fearful nature. Itdepends upon the proportion of adrenal cortex to medulla secretion inthem. And their reaction to fear stimuli is a pretty good measureof the ratio. These formulations apply more particularly to fear ingeneral and anger in general. But even in the least fearsome, i. E. , an individual in whom cortex dominates medulla, there may befear--complexes, dating back to events and times when medullaovertopped cortex, especially childhood. So in the coolest people, certain persons, objects, episodes, may send a wave along an old lineof nerve cells and paths which lead to the adrenal medulla, and soflood him with fear, terror or even panic before his usual cortexresponse occurs. Impressions during the early years of childhood, probing of the unconscious by various methods, have been shown to bethe most potent in this respect. Sometimes the episode goes furtherback than childhood, and one must assume an inherited conditioningof the vegetative and endocrine systems. An animal leaping upon anancestor in a forest during the night might account for the panic fearsome people experience when alone in the dark, that nothing of theirchildhood history may account for. 

In women, the adrenal medulla naturally tends to overtop the cortex, because the latter makes for masculinity. Besides, the recurringcycle in the ovary, making the corpus luteum, evolves an additionalstimulant to the medulla, through its irritating influence upon thethyroid. Then the influence of the post-pituitary is anti-adrenalcortex. So that, on the whole, a number of endocrines work to renderwoman naturally fearful, as we say. 

Courage is so closely related to fear and anger that all are alwaysassociated in any discussion. Courage is commonly thought of as theemotion that is the opposite of fear. It would follow that couragemeant simply inhibition of the adrenal medulla. As a matter of fact, the mechanism of courage is more complex. One must distinguish animalcourage and deliberate courage. Animal courage is literally thecourage of the beast. As noted, animals with the largest amounts ofadrenal cortex are the pugnacious, aggressive, charging kings of thefields and forests. The emotion experienced by them is probably angerwith a sort of blood-lust, and no consideration of the consequences. The object attacked acted like the red rag waved at a bull--it hadstimulated a flow of the secretion of the adrenal cortex, and theinstinct of anger became sparked, as it were, by the new conditionof the blood. In courage, deliberate courage, there is more thaninstinct. There is an act of volition, a display of will. Admittingthat without the adrenal cortex such courage would be impossible, thechief credit for courage must be ascribed to the ante-pituitary. It isthe proper conjunction of its secretion and that of the adrenal cortexthat makes for true courage. So it is we find that acts of couragehave been recorded most often of individuals of the ante-pituitarytype. Photographs are obtainable of thirty-four winners of theCongressional Medal of Honor for extraordinary bravery in the Warwith Germany. Of these twenty-three exhibited the somatic criteria orhormonic signs of the ante-pituitary type. A prerequisite for adequateante-pituitary function is a normal secretion of the interstitialcells of the reproductive glands. Cowardice is said to be a feature ofeunuchs. 

THE PITUITARY AND INSTINCT

We have seen that, more than any other gland or tissue of the body, the post-pituitary governs the maternal-sexual instincts and theirsublimations, the social and creative instincts. A great deal ofevidence is in our possession concerning the disturbances of emotionaccompanying disturbances of this gland, and controllable by itscontrol. It might be said to energize deeply the tender emotions, andinstead of saying soft-hearted we should say much-pituitarized. For all the basic sentiments (as opposed to the intellectualizedself-protective sentimentalism), tender-heartedness, sympathy andsuggestibility are interlocked with its functions. Its secretion mustact upon the great basal ganglia, at the base of the brain, whichcontain the nerve cells and fibres that are the centers of emotionalcontrol and co-ordination. 

The ante-pituitary has been depicted as the gland of intellectuality(to use that term for lack of better). By intellectuality we meanthe capacity of the mind to control its environment by concepts andabstract ideas. The frontal lobes of the brain are the central officesfor higher thought. Their cells are the most complex, have the mostnumerous branches and association fibres. They store the fruits ofabstract thinking, mathematics, for example. The anterior pituitary isin the closest relation and contact with them. Its secretion is tonicto them. Now the instinct that is the forerunner of intellectualityis the instinct of curiosity, with its emotion of wonder, and itsexpression in the various constructive and acquisitive tendencies. Studies of intellectual men, and of those with a keen instinct ofcuriosity and a constructive-acquisitive trend prove them to beante-pituitary dominant in their make-up. The administration ofante-pituitary extract to some defectives increases intellectualactivity and self-control. The future of intelligence may expecta great deal from the newer chemistry of the secretions of theante-pituitary. 

Two most important instincts, therefore, which in the complexity oftheir sublimations have created most of the institutions of society, the maternal and the intellectual, are connected directly with aproper function of the pituitary endocrines. So it happens thatdisturbances of these instincts, reaching far into the normal andintellectual spheres of the mind, are definitely connected withdisturbances of the pituitary. As we shall note in reviewing theessentials of the pituitary-centered or pituito-centric personality, the personality governed by the fluctuations of activity within thepituitary, people with injured, diseased or mechanically limitedpituitaries (because of the smallness of the bony case enclosing them)exhibit defects and perversions of conduct and intelligence directlyattributable to affections of the very instincts and functionsthe pituitary governs. Children with small, mechanically crampedpituitaries lie and steal, are bed-wetters, have poor control overthemselves, and a low learning capacity. 

THE THYROID AND INSTINCT

The chemical mechanism of the instincts described: sex libido, passionand jealousy in relation to the ovaries and testes, fear and anger inrelation to the adrenals, sympathy and curiosity in relation to thepituitaries, suggests that a similar explanation will hold for thedynamics of the other instincts. In the closest relation to thethyroid appear the instincts first isolated, so to speak, by McDougallas the instincts of self-display and self-effacement, accompaniedby emotions of pride and shame respectively. In certain states ofexcessive thyroid activity there is an extra stimulation of theinstinctive display of the person which may go on to boasting, mania and exhibitionism. On the other hand, in states of thyroidinsufficiency, depression is produced, which may go on to melancholia, a desire to be alone, to hide, to sit apart and even a tendency toaccuse the self of various uncommitted crimes and sins. In the formof cyclic insanity known as the manic-depressive psychosis, maniaalternates with depression, as if the personality were dominatedwholly in turn by one or the other of these two instincts of the ego. There is a good deal of evidence that behind them is a correspondingfluctuation in the amount the thyroid secretes into the blood. Amongthe thyroid-centered attitudes toward the self gyrate more than inany other type. Egomania and megalomania occur most often in thyroidunstable individuals. 

ENERGY AND SENSITIVITY

In his classic Inquiries into Human Faculty, Francis Galton laid downsome fundamental considerations concerning energy and sensitivityas mental traits. Energy he defined as the capacity for labor, anddeclared it to be the measure of the fullness of life or vitality. Statistical study by him of men of genius and their ancestors showedthem to be endowed with a large amount of energy. It has been said tobe the absolute prerequisite of genius. Now if there is a single factthat has been well established by investigations of the internalsecretions, it is that the energy quantum of an individual is afunction of and determined by his thyroid. The more thyroid he has, the more energetic will he be--the less thyroid the less energetic, and the lazier. The thyroid-centered individual, of the excess thyroidtype, actually burns up more food and produces more heat than theordinary organism. He burns himself up faster in general. 

When the thyroid sends more secretion into the blood, more thyroxin, it accelerates all the functions and activities of the organs. Tea andcoffee produce loquacity because they stimulate the thyroid. Peoplewith thyroid dominant constitutions talk fluently, rapidly, andcontinuously. Their energy makes them doers, actors rather thanspectators. They get up early in the morning, are on the go all daywithout surcease or fatigue, go to bed late, and often suffer frominsomnia. 

Thyroid deficients, however, are definitely the opposite. They arequite conscious of the limited reserve of energy at their command. Also that they need plenty of refreshing sleep. Early to bed and lateto rise remains the leading maxim of health for them. In addition theyfind it necessary to sleep during the day. Forty winks or more inthe afternoon makes a good deal of difference to them. Taciturn, inarticulate, lazy, slow, tired, are the adjectives applied to themby their friends as well as by their enemies. All because of aninsufficient or inefficient supply of the thyroid's iodine to theircells. The mobility of energy in an organism is a measure of theamount of active iodine in it. The physiologic synonyms for "energeticand lazy" are "well-iodinized" and "poorly iodinized. "

Sensitivity, the ability to discriminate between grades of sensationor acuteness of perception is another thyroid quality. Just as thethyroid plus is more energetic, so is he more sensitive. He feelsthings more, he feels pain more readily, because he arrives morequickly at the stage when the stimulus damages his nerve apparatus. The electric conductivity of his skin is greater, sometimes a hundredtimes greater, than the average. Conversely the thyroid deficient typehas a low discriminative faculty. Galton has recorded that idiotshardly distinguish between heat and cold and that their sense of painis so obtuse that some of the more idiotic seem hardly to know what itis. Cretins may moan but never shed tears. 

Energy and sensitivity in an individual should direct attention to thethyroid element predominating in his composition. Lack of energy andinsensitivity to the degree of thyroid insufficiency in their make-up. 

MEMORY, JUDGMENT, AND POISE

In between sensitivity and energy, the sensation and the reaction, comes a passage of the stimulus through the gauntlet of the storedpast experience of the individual known as memory. Many hypotheseshave been advanced by philosophers, psychologists and physiologists toexplain the phenomenona of memory. To conceive of memory materiallyat all one must admit some sort of memory trace as the basis for thepersistence of memory. This memory deposit facilitates the occurrenceof the chemical reaction constituting the memory along the same paththe next time. Forgetting then consists in a disappearance of thesememory traces or deposits. Forgetting is greatest in the first hourafter remembering, more than half of the memory trace being lost inthat time. Comparison of the curve of forgetting, and the curveof diffusion of a colloid like gelatine from its solution, into asurrounding medium, shows them to be exceedingly similar. Forgettingmay be explained by some such loss of the memory trace or deposit intothe blood continually flowing by it. 

The internal secretions influence the amount and duration of thememory deposits. The thyroid appears to be essential to the _layingdown_ of the memory trace. Cretins have poor memories on the retentionside and so cannot learn. The memory of thyroid insufficients iswretched. In the extreme grades, the memory for recent occurrencesbecomes completely lost. Iodine and thyroid increase the electricconductivity of the brain, so that the memory trace must be depositedmore easily in those who have an excess of thyroid. Removal of thethyroid produces a degeneration of nerve cells and their processes, and associative memory becomes difficult or impossible becauseconduction from cell to cell is interfered with. If sufficient thyroidis fed in excess, brain conduction may be so facilitated that epilepsymay result upon slight irritation. 

On the other hand, the pituitary seems to be related to _preservation_of the memory deposit. In conditions of disease of the pituitary, loss of memory for past experiences is more marked. As regards recentexperiences, they are better held, although in a sort of subconsciousmanner, recoverable when the condition improves or is cured. But thegreatest difference between the thyroid and pituitary effects uponmemory exists as regards material: the thyroid memory appliesparticularly to perception and percepts, the pituitary to conception(reading, studying, thinking) and concepts. 

Judgment is another mental process that often intervenes betweensensation and the energy-reaction. It involves memory and associationof experiences. Behind it is an attitude as much as there is in anemotion or the arousing of an instinct. Beliefs and reasonings arecomplex judgments. They form the units of the intellectual process. 

There is an element of speed in judgment on reasoning as in perceptionand memory. And as in the latter, the thyroid determines the velocity. Quick thinking, as we call it, means good thyroid action, and slowthinking deficient thyroid action. The other element in judgment, accuracy, is influenced by the ante-pituitary. During adolescencethere is physical growth which consumes most of the secretion of theante-pituitary. After adolescence, after the early twenties, whenphysical growth has ceased, the ante-pituitary secretion sensitizesthe cells of the brain to mental growth. The reaction potential ofthe ante-pituitary, that is its inherent, latent ability to supply amaximum of its endocrine for the nerve cells of the frontal lobes, isthe best-known chemical determinant of intellectual genius. It makesfor the greatest co-ordination of experience, knowledge, information, tastes and problems into one harmonious whole. And curiously, not onlydoes it cause a fusion of intellectual material: it creates a desirefor and a love of such material. 

We should expect to find extraordinarily well-developed ante-pituitaryaction among eminent philosophers and men of science, and we do. Adequate action of it is present throughout the range of normals whoevidence sufficiently ripened judgment as they progress throughlife. The ability to profit by experience, and to make more and moreaccurate judgments as one grows older implies at least a maximumefficiency of it. This maturation is not at all universal. Even aftermiddle age, after forty and fifty years of reasoning, some individualsretain the juvenile mind of their youth. Like the Bourbons, theyhave learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Their ante-pituitaryinsufficiency often coupled with a post-pituitary excess, and otherinstabilities and disequilibriums in the endocrine system, render themimmature morons, compared with what might be expected of them fortheir years. They are the people who are old enough to know better. For the same reasons, inhibition and emotional control are poor inthem. 

Besides the ante-pituitary, in the evolution of judgment, and thejudgment faculty, due stress must be laid upon the influence of theinternal secretion of the testes or ovaries, the product of theinterstitial cells. Although the probability is that the effectsare indirect, through a stimulation of the ante-pituitary, the factremains that, in a child, memory may be marvelous and judgment poor(such memory is possibly purely thyroid in its determination). Withthe advent of the gonads upon the scene, judgments become the centreof the play's plot undoubtedly. The intelligence of eunuchs andeunuchoids is in general low. The skull and brain of castrates, animaland human, is smaller than the average. Gall, the physiologist whopopularized ideas concerning the meaning of the protuberances anddepressions of the head in relation to faculty and character, early inthe nineteenth century, was the first to prove this. Among historiccastrates, eunuchs, not a single example of great intellect, of thecreative type, is known. On the contrary, the native gifts of the mindwere destroyed. Thus Abelard, who was punished with castration by hisuncle for his love affair with Helöise, never composed a verse ofpoetry thereafter. 

IMAGINATION AS AN ENDOCRINE GIFT

That brings us to the consideration of imagination as influenced bythe endocrines. The physical conditions of exercise of the imaginativefaculty have not been sufficiently investigated. Alcohol has long beenknown to act as an evocant of strange images. The hallucinations ofdelirium tremens are the results obtained in extreme intoxication. Astrangely imaged flow of consciousness, the imaginative state, mayalso be evoked by morphine and cannabis indica. There is no doubtthat the brain cells may be made to combine in the fresh, novel, andunfamiliar associations that are recognized as unreal. 

Francis Galton, pioneer student of the conditionings of human faculty, left an interesting study of the visualising capacity, so far as itcould be attacked by the statistical method. Two of his conclusionsare worth repeating for our purposes. One is that the power to imagineis poor in philosophers and men of science. The other that it ishigher in the female sex than in the male. We have seen that thephilosophic, scientific, intellectual mind, the capacity to abstract, and think in terms of abstractions, is definitely dependent uponproper secretion by the ante-pituitary. In woman, the post-pituitaryis generally predominant over the ante-pituitary. Though we are inneed of a series of studies of the endocrine traits and composition ofmen endowed with high imaginative qualities, and so are at a loss, wehave indications of an endocrine control of the state of consciousnesswe speak of as the imaginative. 

Most of the evidence accumulated in the examination and treatment ofmorbid conditions characterized by a restless, incoordinate activityof the brain cells points to excess of the post-pituitary secretion asthe cause, or as one of the most important causes. The thyroid and theadrenal medulla also exert their influence. But the strongest appearsto be the post-pituitary. Phobias, fears which obsess the mind, anxiety neuroses, suspicions, hallucinations, delusions, nervousness, all expressions of what we may sum up technically as the imaginativestate of mind, occur and occur frequently, associated with othersymptoms of posterior pituitary overactivity. Persons in whose make-upit rules are more liable to imagine disturbances of their mentality, or exhibit a well-developed imaginative streak. Normal states ofoveractivity of the post-pituitary such as occur in some women duringthe menstrual period and pregnancy, and in some men as part of theendocrine cycle of their everyday lives, are accompanied by increasein the susceptibility and vigor of the imagination. Whether thefeeding of excess post-pituitary would lead to a stimulation of thetendency or ability to imagine is still to be decided. But it isknown that quieting the post-pituitary by various means will causea depression of the faculty, and eliminate its pathologicmanifestations. 

Psychologists distinguish between the constructive imagination thatexpresses itself in an ordered activity and the unbalanced fanciesof the fearful neurotic for example. The post-pituitary confers thelability of the underlying state of brain in all of these imaginativetincturings of consciousness. The constructive imagination, one of thefew truly precious gifts of a personality, is probably the expressionof a certain balanced activity of the ante-pituitary and thepost-pituitary. 

MOODS AND THE ORGANIC OUTLOOK

The lability the post-pituitary confers upon the combinations ofperceptions and conceptions, grouped as the imagined, extends tothe ruling mood that may be spoken of as the organic outlook. Post-pituitary in excess, without compensation or balancing by one orsome of the other endocrines, is associated with an instability ofmood and the organic outlook. Concomitant is a defective self-control. Typically, one sees the effects in the mental abnormalities of womenduring the premenstrual period. A number of them have their pituitarybalance upset then, with an overtopping of the ante-pituitary by thepost-pituitary. Irritability, a sub-hysteria, or an actual hysteriamay emerge in the usually most placid characters. A quiet wife andmother may go for her husband, curse and mortify him, even strike andbeat him. She may slap her children at that time and no other. It iswell known that most of their crimes are committed by women during themenstrual period. So are the suicides. Deterioration of mentality andcharacter so often observed during the menopause, with its apathies orexcitements, melancholia or mania, the fits of weeping or gaiety, theloss of grip upon reality, the complete change in mood and temperamentthat reflect the transformation of the organic outlook, demonstrateclearly the overwhelming influence of the endocrines upon theattitudes of the self toward the self. 

It is possible to speak of thyroid moods, adrenal moods, ante-pituitary or post-pituitary moods, gonadal moods. Each ofthese is the echo in the mind of cells stimulated or depressed, by concentration or dilution in the blood of particular internalsecretions. Restlessness and excitement can be produced experimentallyby feeding thyroid. Vague anxiety, depressive fancies and fears, imaginative overactivity can be removed by inhibiting thepost-pituitary. Hypersecretion of the ovary will cause a sexualsusceptibility and a mood of genital obsession, capable of the mostremarkable sublimations and perversions. 

CHAPTER IX

THE BACKGROUNDS OF PERSONALITY

The question of moods and sublimations once raised introduces theproblem of the relation of neuroses, nervous disorders without anorganic disease basis, and mental abnormalities, to the endocrinesystem. Obviously, in view of all the influences exerted by theductless glands upon every organ and function of the body and mind, and their intermediary, the vegetative nervous system, a relation mustexist. Observations accumulated, some of which have been referred toin the preceding chapters, prove the complete, though complex, realityof such a deduction. 

The history of attitudes toward nerve and mental disorders is aremarkable illustration of the vicissitudes of ignorance playing withwords. The Greeks, swayed and dazzled as they were by the magic ofwords which they discovered, yet never permitted themselves to befooled by them. As an explanation for the phenomena of hysteria inwomen, that benign mental disorder par excellence, they had the theoryof a wandering about of the womb in the organism as a cause. Thatprovided an image of something material happening as an explanation. With the triumphs of anatomy after the Renaissance, that naïve viewhad to be discarded. In its place the humoral theory held sway, withits good humors and its bad humors, and their bilious, lymphatic, nervous and sanguine admixtures. But that, too, went the way of allflesh. During the first half of the nineteenth century, a popularphrase, "nerves, " paraphrased by practitioners of medicine asneuroses, then came into vogue as the efficient cause of thesetroubles. "Nerves" indeed today have filtered everywhere into thecommon consciousness. 

Because of the irritant effects of light, food and social conditions, America has come to swarm with neurotics of every type, especially thesexual. A rich field was created for cults of treatment, which springup like weeds periodically all over the country. We have seen how theAmerican, Beard, was inspired by the idea that "nerves" represented aloss of tone, a flabbiness, weakness and softness of the nerves, tocoin the word neurasthenia. Nerve exhaustion he believed was the causeof the nerve weakness. Weir Mitchell, another American, introduced therest cure combined with overfeeding as a treatment for it. 

An analytical French neurologist, Charcot, was not to be satisfied bywords of Latin-Greek derivation. Insisting upon the significance ofthe individual mental workings of each case, he and his pupil Janetbegan to unravel a tangle which has led to the present revolution inpsychology. For Freud, Jung and Adler took up the story where Janetleft off. 

Janet elaborated the ideas of a subconscious and an unconscious, adissociation of the components of the mind, and a splitting ofthe personality. Lumping the phenomena of amnesia, somnambulism, hypnotism, anesthesia, obsession and hysteria into the grand group ofmental dissociations and disintegrations, he achieved a unificationnever considered possible before him. Suggestion as a mode of cure wasalso emphasized and elaborated by him to an undreamed-of degree. 

Freud, in 1895, studying a case of hysteria with Breuer, had attemptedcure by the method of free association, attempting to get the hystericto pour out her mental life. Not succeeding, and his interest arousedby her continual references to her dreams, he discovered that by meansof those dreams he could tap the subconscious and unconscious inregions hitherto inaccessible. For in the dreams, ideas, persons, andexperiences appeared that never came upon the stage of the conscious. From that finding he developed the concept of repression, i. E. , therelegation of a painful experience into the unconscious, and keptimprisoned there by the censor. Also how there it became the complex, which, like a stage manager, never appeared before the footlights ofthe conscious, but determined its content just the same by inhibitionor stimulation of any character or scene to be enacted upon it. 

A complete critique of Freudianism cannot be attempted here. But inrelation to the endocrine system as controllers of nerve functionin health and disease, a valid criticism can be made. Firstly, theFreudian jargon, its technicalities and explanations, are metaphors. Some may regard them as justifiable descriptions of mental processes. But it certainly can be urged against them that they provide us withno idea concerning what is happening in the cells of the body andbrain as explanation for the event, normal or abnormal, supposedlyexplained. Words like sublimation or transference are figures ofspeech and nothing else. Secondly, they ignore totally the powers ofthe vegetative apparatus, the viscera, muscles and secreting glandstogether, as originators and determiners of the wish and itsadventures. 

How utterly different, from the point of view of the physiologist, thetwo explanations are as pictures, can be seen from a single example. The idea of repression, to the Freudian, means the pushing downinto the subconscious of some experience. Pushing down is a processcontrolled by the laws of physics: it involves the concepts of matterand force. Hence, the expression, as a description of a psychicepisode, is a metaphor pure and simple. From the standpoint of theprocess of repression as pictured by the student of the vegetativeapparatus, the term signifies a real bottling up of energy. For therepression means actual compression of muscle, the muscle containedin the viscera. And the repression means a real interference withthe release of energy, which remains bound up, tugging for roomfor expression as much as a spring tightly coiled in a box. In theproduction of that tension an endocrine has often been decisive. Theendocrine nature of the individual may decide whether a subconscious, i. E. , visceral or vegetative tension, is to come into being, liveor die, in the face of a given situation. If thereby, a permanentdisturbance of the equilibrium between the components is broughtabout, a neurosis, expression of an unsatisfied vegetative tension, follows. 

It has been hailed as a brand new discovery by those following thelatest in psychology that the subconscious and the unconsciousconstitute a more essential component of the personality than theconscious. As a matter of fact, common practice has recognized thefact, if not the mechanism and its significance, for ages. It is notwhat people say or do--it is how they say it: that is how the truereactions of personality are recognized instinctively even by animals. Tone and gesture (when not acted or posed) are accepted as symbols andsymptoms of states of the inmost sancta sanctorum that words and witnever give entrance to, nay disguise and block. Tone and gesture asrevelations of the Inner-Me, the True-Me or Intra-Me if you will, are so potent because they are direct expressions of the vegetativeapparatus. The curl of a lip, the flicker of an eye-lash, the twitchof a shoulder are the overflow of energy cramped in the increasedintravisceral pressure, determined by increased outflow of endocrinesecretion. Wittingly or unwittingly we interpret the little signs asmessages from the deepest self, which they truly are. 

NERVOUS BREAKDOWNS AND SHELL SHOCK

In civil life, the complex of symptoms Beard jumbled together asneurasthenia, when associated with a loss of self-control, so that thesufferer is incapacitated for the duties of everyday life, has becomethe popular "nervous breakdown. " A sanitarium appears to be one of thenecessary components of the condition. It is the last act, the climaxof "nerves. "

During the War of 1914-1918, thousands of cases of functionaldisorders of the nervous came to be grouped under "Shell Shock. "The psychic phenomena in the wake of concussion of the brain due toexplosives suggested the term, and its application to affections ofself-control, or dissociations of the personality, with paralysis, blindness, speechlessness, loss of hearing and so on. The War neurosis(including those arising in home service) is still a topical subjectbecause thousands of mentally disabled soldiers are alive. 

In view of what has been said concerning the endocrine mechanism ofthe instincts and the vegetative apparatus, it could be predicted thata number of these nerve casualties of peace and war would be caused byan upset of the equilibrium between the glands of internal secretion. A study of war neuroses by the great Italian student of theendocrines, Pende, confirms this assumption. As emphasized, theinternal secretions are like tuning keys, and tighten or loosen thestrings of the organism-instrument, the nerves. War for the soldier, or the civilian combatant as well, sets the strings vibrating, andwith them the glands controlled by them. Excessive stimulation ordepression of an endocrine will disturb the whole chain of hormones, and the vegetative system, and their echoes in the psyche. The nervousdisorders of war that have been lumped as shell shock or war shock maybe looked upon as uncompensated; airings of the endocrine vegetativemechanism, as dislocations of parts and processes that are reflectedoutwardly as ailment or disease. 

AN ENDOCRINE NEUROSIS

An exquisite example of an endocrine neurosis, that is a disorder ofnerves and brain dependent upon an upset of the equilibrium betweenthe internal secretions due to a trying experience, was furnishedrecently by the reactions of three naval officers lost in the snowwilds of Canada through a balloon adventure. The cases aroused a gooddeal of interest at the time, and the details were reported by thenewspapers as if they were the episodes of a serial mystery story. 

The three officers started out late one fine evening from RockawayAir Station in a balloon for a practice trip. Atmospheric conditionssuddenly changed, they became lost in the clouds, and finally landedsomewhere in the Canadian wilderness. The commander of the ballooncrew, Lieut. A. , 23 years old, was the youngest of the three; theoldest, Lieut. B. , being 45, and the third man in the thirties, Lieut. C. 

According to the testimony given at the Court of Inquiry heldafterwards, two hours after they abandoned the balloon and startedstruggling through the snow, B. Became tired and complained of hisfatigue. B. 's fatigue increased, and two days later became so greatthat the party had to stop for an hour and build a fire in order topermit him to rest. However, an hour proved too little: and in anotherhalf hour he was falling and fainting. 

Letters written by C. To his wife and gotten hold of by reportersdeclared that B. At this juncture passed into a semi-sane state, inwhich he accused himself of a number of sins, and volunteered tocommit suicide, so that the others would not be burdened by hisweakness. Also, that they might use his body to fortify themselves. A. Discussed with C. The advisability of taking B. 's knife away fromhim. Living on their carrier pigeons, they continued on, moved by adesperate hope of finding someone. B. Had several fainting spellsafter drinking water traced by moose tracks. 

Luck favored them, and they encountered an Indian who guided them toa place called Moose Factory. Here they wrote the letters home whichreached their wives and the daily press before they themselvesreturned to civilization. A great hue and cry was raised by thenewspapers about their plight. Newspaper correspondents vied with eachother for the honor of being the first to meet them and get theirstory. 

They arrived at a collection of houses named Mattice. A. And C. Proceeded ahead and found instructions for them not to talk. C. Wentback to B. , who was in a shack with the correspondents full of thestory of the letters. B. Became enraged and struck C. Who retained hisself-control. 

Differences were patched up, and the three returned together to NewYork. There the medical examination of the three showed that the fourdays in the wilderness had left its deepest effects upon the physiqueand mind of B. In a few days he developed an attack of tonsillitis, with fever, and a mental disturbance described by the medical officeras exhaustion psychosis. He believed this condition to be the resultof severe exhaustion, prolonged anxiety, worry, and extreme exposure. Extreme restlessness and irritability, confusion of thought andan undefined perplexity, all the prominent symptoms of exhaustionpsychosis, making him hyperactive and inclined to acts of violence, were in evidence. 

The physique, character and reactions of Lieut. B. Are what interestus in the case. The pictures of him published, and the structure ofhis skull, face and teeth, his hair and other physical traits point tohis being an adrenal-centered type, of the unstable variety, so far ashis internal secretion make-up is concerned. As we shall see in thenext chapter on the different kinds of endocrine personalities, the unstable adrenocentric (convenient name for the class) ischaracterized by rapid exhaustibility because under conditions ofstress and strain, the reserve of the gland is consumed. The adrenalglands, we noted in a preceding chapter, are concerned with themaintenance of muscle and nerve tone in emergencies. They are theglands which, during crises especially, control the production andsupply of energy to the various organs and tissues called upon tofunction to the utmost in emergencies. When the adrenals fail, as theydo readily in these labile adrenocentrics, it is as if the adrenalswere cut out of the body. And it has been repeatedly shown thatextirpation of the adrenals is immediately followed by degenerationand breakdown of the brain cells. 

These facts explain the reactions of Lieut. B. The acute call upon hisadrenals made by his dangerous situation probably soon exhausted themof their content of reserve secretions. Overwhelming fatigue with lossof muscle tone followed. The changes in the brain caused him to talkas he did in the wilderness. Returned to safety, the news that hisreputation was under fire because of C. 's letter brought out anotheradrenal characteristic: the excessive instinct of pugnacity, easilystimulated, with its emotion of anger and the tendency to violence. What is spoken of as a quick temper is an adrenocentric trait. Returned to New York, an infection, tonsillitis, attacked him. Infections in adrenocentrics use up the content of the adrenals asrapidly as physical exhaustion or emotion. So the tonsillitis, whichin another type of individual would have been combatted continuouslyby the adrenals and so passed by as a mere sore throat, presented himwith a high temperature, and the brain disturbance described by themedical officer as exhaustion-psychosis, with again a tendency toviolence. In short, the history of his adventure is the history of hisadrenals under stress and strain. It illustrates the mechanism of atypical endocrine neurosis. 

THE UNCONSCIOUS AND THE VISCERA

In the chapter on the glands of internal secretion as an interlockingdirectorate, certain generalities were stated as the laws of thegovernment of the organism's life by them in association with thevegetative apparatus. It was put forward as a fundamental revision ofthe theory, hitherto accepted, of the limitation of mind to the braincells. We think and feel not alone with the brain, but with ourmuscles, our viscera, our vegetative nerves, and last but not leastour endocrine organs. In short, we think and feel with each and everypart of ourselves. 

Among these pristine factors determining the content of consciousness, the endocrines are most important, because they alone to start with, of all the other factors, are different in each and every individual. They are what render him unique at birth, even though he looks thecounterpart of millions of other babies born at the same time. Theyconstitute his inner destiny. As he grows, the external factors, social experiences, climate, accidents, and disease modify andcondition the reactions and complexity of the endocrine system. Asthese modifications and associations are of the greatest import forthe final elaboration of the personality, composing as they do theelements of the unconscious which confers the unique stamp of normal, abnormal, supernormal, or subnormal, it is worth while now to reviewthe most general of the determining laws. Man is an energy phenomenon, both conscious and unconscious, with the energy emanating from theendocrine-vegetative mechanisms. So it becomes possible for us, by their aid, to analyze the conscious, the subconscious and theunconscious with the terms long current in the analyses of physics. 

1. Man is an energy machine which, though it is constantly losingenergy as a whole; consists of parts constantly accumulating energy(as a result of inherent chemical reactions accelerated by theabsorption of food). This process of local accumulation of energyassociated with general loss of energy may be observed even in theameba, in the form of stored reserve food material. Evolutioncreated a system of organs, the viscera, as specialists in energyconservation, utilization or transformation. 

For intercommunication and interaction between the viscera two systemswere elaborated: a younger system of direct contacts, the nerves, and nerve cells, through which influences could be conducted for thestimulation, acceleration, retardation or inhibition of an energyprocess in them; and the older, the endocrine gland association, forthe production of chemical substances to act as messengers to be sentfrom one viscus to another, and also to the nerves, through the bloodor lymph which bathe all the cells. They could affect only one orcertain organs, because by selection only the chosen organ or organsknew the code, as it were. The chemical system is much the oldersystem, and preceded the nerve system by aeons of time. The wholesystem, viscera, visceral nerves and the endocrines gradually unitedinto a complete autonomous organism within the organism, and as suchfunctions as the vegetative apparatus. 

EVOLUTION OF THE ENDOCRINES

2. In the course of evolution, variations occurred in all threecomponents of the apparatus, the viscera, the nerves, and theendocrines. Now variations in the viscera and the nerves areessentially grossly physical and quantitative. That is, there may be abigger stomach or a smaller stomach, larger nerve fibres or smaller. And as Life always has worked with a large margin of safety, andalways played for safety first as regards quantity, these variationshave not become of much significance for the history and destiny ofthe animal. 

But variations among the endocrines made a tremendous difference. Tohave very much thyroid and very little pituitary, much adrenal and notenough parathyroid meant a great deal to the Organism as a whole, as well as to the vegetative apparatus. For states of tension andrelaxation, activity and inactivity in the nerves and viscera would bedetermined by these variations in the ratio between the variants. Thevegetative apparatus in its virginity, say in the new-born infant, maybe said to have its development primarily determined by the reactionpotentials of the endocrine part of it, that is the latent power ofeach gland to secrete at a minimum or a maximum, and the balancebetween them. 

EDUCATION OF THE VEGETATIVE SYSTEM

3. Training or education involves, beside other effects, a trainingof the endocrines, and hence of the entire vegetative apparatus, torespond in a particular way to a particular stimulus. Experience islike the introduction of new push-buttons, levers, and wheels into themechanism. All learning which calls out or arrests the functioning ofan instinct, must, from what we have learned of the chemical dynamicsof instincts as reactions between hormones, nerves and viscera, affectthe vegetative system. When there is a conflict between two ormore instincts, between pressures of energy flowing in differentdirections, there may be compromise and normality, or a grinding ofthe gears and abnormality. 

Where does the brain come in, in all this? As the servant of thevegetative apparatus. To call it the master tissue is manifestlyabsurd, when it can only be the diplomatic constitutional monarch ofthe system. It can, in fact, act only as the great central stationfor associative memory, as only one of the factors implicated ineducation. 

The most powerful educative agents of the vegetative apparatus of ahuman being are the other humans around him. And they comprise themost powerful of the external effectors of education, for better, forworse. The training and education of the endocrine-vegetative systemis the basis of all social rules (Habit, Custom, Convention, Law, Conscience). An unresolved discord, a continued conflict among theparts of the vegetative system, in spite of such education, is thefoundation of the unhappiness of the acute or chronic misfits andmaladjusted, the neurotic and the psychotic. 

THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF THE UNCONSCIOUS

4. Another vastly important law that governs the content of theconscious and the unconscious, and resultant behaviour is the factthat the nerves and nerve cells of the vegetative apparatus, thenerves leading to the viscera and the endocrine glands, like the solarplexus, are affected by stimuli of lower value than those which arousethe brain cells. In the metaphorical language of the old psychology, the threshold value, that is the strength or loudness of stimulussufficient to make itself felt or heard, is less for the vegetativeapparatus than for the brain. So we begin to glimpse why an emotionseems to be experienced before the visceral changes that reallypreceded it, but pressed their way into consciousness later. Thisgives us a clue to the unconscious as the more sensitive and deeperpart of the mind. 

More than that, it supplies us with a physical basis for theunconscious which will explain much of the observed laws ofits workings. It provides a reason for the apparent swiftness, spontaneity, and unreasonableness of what is called intuition. And itmay show us a source for a good deal of the material of dreams anddream states. 

We have said that we think and we remember, not alone with the brain, but with the muscles, the viscera and the endocrines. So do we forgetnot alone with the brain, but with the muscles, the viscera, theendocrines and their nerves. The utmost importance of muscle attitudesin remembering has been established in the experimental laboratory. 

It is one of the great services Freud rendered to psychology (and one, by the way, largely responsible for the acceptance of his doctrinesby the disinterested intelligence) that he showed that a speciesof forgetting is nothing casual, but active and purposeful, amanifestation of the life of the unconscious. However, though hisdescription of the process was correct, he left it to occur in avacuum. As a matter of fact this forgetting consists in the inhibitionof associative memory by a process in the vegetative apparatus, soas to maintain the equilibrium within itself which is reflected inconsciousness as comfort. 

The unconscious, in short, consists of the buried associations amongthe parts of the vegetative apparatus and the brain cells. We seem tobe much nearer to grasping the nature of the unconscious, when we lookupon it as a historical continuum, a compound or emulsion of differentand various states of intravisceral pressure and tone, in thevegetative apparatus, dependent upon the balance between theendocrines, as well as upon past experiences of the viscera in theway of stimulation or depression. We forget that which is held down, literally, in the vegetative apparatus. This explanation of forgettingtells, too, why the forgotten (stored in the sub-brain, theendocrine-vegetative system) continually projects itself into andinterferes with the regular flow of consciousness, e. G. , in slipsof the tongue, mistakes of spelling, and so on: because the energybottled in the vegetative system tends to erupt into the consciousnessinto which it would ordinarily flow. 

In the evolution of the mind, there have been elaborated devicesto protect it against the vegetative apparatus. Consciousness, orawareness, must be accepted as a fundamental, primal fact, likeprotoplasm. Consciousness and protoplasm may be the complementarysides of the same coin. Whatever the truth, the fact stands outthat the oldest, deepest, most potent consciousness is that of thetraditionally despised lowest organs, the vegetative organs, the heartand lungs, stomach and intestines, the kidneys and the liver, and soon, their nerves, e. G. , the solar plexus, and the glands of internalsecretion. They invented and elaborated muscle, bone and brain tocarry out their will. Evolution has been in the direction of agreater perfection of the methods of carrying out their will. Theirconsciousness, working upon the growing and multiplying brain cells, has created what we call self-conscious mind. 

Mind, reacting upon its creator, has, in a sense, come to dominatethem, because it has become the meeting ground of all theenergy-influences seething and bubbling in the organism, andso developed into the organ of handling them as a whole, theirIntegrating-Executive. But just the same and all the time, theunderlying consciousness of the viscera and their accessories stand asthe powers behind the throne, but as what we have now learned to speakof, in relation to the Mind, as the Unconscious. 

PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE

To sum up these relations of the viscera, the endocrines, theunconscious and the mind, it may be stated as a far-reachinggenerality for the understanding of human life: that character andconduct are expressions of the streams of energy arising in thevegetative apparatus, primarily endocrine determined at birth, andsecondarily experience determined after the organism has learned toreact as a whole, as consciousness. The result of such a reaction as awhole tends to balance the disturbance of energy, so as to maintainor restore the equilibrium, or sense of harmony and comfort, whenconsciousness again disappears. This law is an attempt at synthesis ofthe labors of the psychanalysts, the behaviourists, and the studentsof the internal secretions (Freud, Jung, Adler, Sherrington, Watson, Von Bechterew, Kempf, Crile, Cannon, Cushing, Fraenkel are thegreat names of the movement). Most of the details, and all of thequantitative applications of the law still remain to be workedout. But a statement like the following of Cushing, the eminentsurgeon-student of the endocrines, that "it is quite probable that thepsychopathology of everyday life hinges largely upon the effect ofductless gland discharges upon the nervous system, " shows which waythe wind is blowing. 

In the face of these conceptions the position of the psychanalyst as apractical therapeutist becomes clearer, and the causes of his failurewhen he fails. In the first place, he deals with psychic results asprocesses, and ignores the physiology of their production. Since atrue cure of the neurosis, what he is after, is impossible without aremoval of the cause, a disturbance in the vegetative apparatus, hecannot succeed where an automatic adjustment among the viscera doesnot follow his probings and ferretings of the unconscious. In thesecond place, he disregards the existence of a soil for the plantingof the malign complexes in the individual in whom they grow andflourish. That soil is composed in part of the endocrine relationswithin the vegetative apparatus. And as we can often attack that soilmore effectively and radically from the endocrine end than from theexperience end (e. G. , repressed episodes) we may transform the soiland make it barren rock for morbid complexes, at any rate. The conceptof the endocrine-vegetative apparatus as the determinant of normaland abnormal behaviour, emotional reactions and disturbances of powershould in time cause even the most fanatic of the psychanalysts torecognize the functional basis of the mental acrostics they are sofond of dissecting. 

NATURAL ABILITY

Another achievement of the psychanalysts is the recognition of theinfluence of organic and functional inferiorities of the individualupon the history of his personality. Gross organ inferiorities arethose which are definite handicaps in the struggle for success insociety, such as heart disease. Such handicaps, however, are limitedto relatively few of a population. The raison d'être of the greaternumber of minor mental inefficiencies the psychanalyst puts down tohandicaps in the unconscious. Again he mistakes figurative imagery forexplanations. The conception of endocrine diversity in the make-upsupplies us with the rationale of the vast majority of organic andfunctional defects and inferiorities, in short, subnormalities of anygroup, large or small. 

Moreover, how would the psychanalyst explain the occurrence andinfluence of organic and functional _superiorities_ and theirtremendous influence upon the individual and society? We live in ageneration which has acquired a flair for the pathologic. Undoubtedlyit is a soul-sick generation, and its interest in sickness of themind is only natural. Just the same, whatever advances, improvements, progress, have been made (and certainly a number of the changes in hisenvironment, external and internal, must be admitted to be changes forthe better) have been made, not by natural disability, but by naturalability. What is the physiology of natural ability?

The finest study of natural ability that has as yet been composed isFrancis Galton's on Hereditary Genius. It also remains the best studyof the natural conditions of success. He showed that of the type ofman he classed as "illustrious" there occurred about one in a million, and of the type "eminent" about two hundred and fifty in a million. Of the qualities which determine natural ability of this kind, heselected inherent capacity, zeal, and perseverance as the threeprerequisites. And he states that "If a man is gifted with vastintellectual ability, eagerness to work, and power of working, Icannot comprehend how such a man should be suppressed. " "Such men(those who have gained great reputations) biographies show tobe haunted and driven by an incessant, instinctive craving forintellectual work. " "They . .. Work . .. To satisfy a natural cravingfor brain work. " "It is very unlikely that any conjunction ofcircumstances should supply a stimulus to brain work commensurate withwhat these men carry in their own constitutions. "

What is this inherent craving for brain work? What is this zeal? Andwhat is power of endurance and perseverance, the quality of stamina?How are they to be interpreted in terms of the internal secretions?

In view of what has been said of the ante-pituitary as the gland ofintellectuality, studies of intellectually gifted people having shownwell functioning large pituitaries, and of mental defectives in acertain number of cases a small limited pituitary, it is justifiableto regard the factor of inherent capacity as a function of theante-pituitary. The factor of zeal or enthusiasm points to thethyroid. Markedly enthusiastic types are thyroid dominant types. Vigoras a third factor, the ability to stand stress and strain of continuedeffort is dependent upon good adrenal and interstitial cell function. So we may say that craving and capacity for brain work plus ardor plusperseverance in its pursuit, the triplicate of natural ability, arethe reflections in conduct and character of balanced and sufficientante-pituitary, thyroid, and adrenal-interstitial contributions inthe chemical formula of the personality. In the chapter on historicpersonages analyzed from the endocrine viewpoint, we shall see thatsome of the most eminent and illustrious people of history have beenpituitary-centered. 

MENTAL DEFICIENCY

Natural ability grows in an endocrine soil of a particular kind, perhaps affected by the internal secretions much as natural soil is byfertilizers like phosphates or nitrates. Increased production followsincreased fertilization. Natural disability must vary similarly with aperversion or improper mixture, deficiency or absence of the hormonesthat combine in natural ability. 

It is assumed as a matter of course that the brain itself is there, which, to carry out our analogy, means that the crude soil or earth isthere. Sufficient quantity and adequate quality of nerve tissue mustbe regarded as prerequisite. If the brain has been damaged in any wayduring development or birth, if it has been smashed up in any way, orif it has failed to evolve the minimum number of healthy nerve cells, the endocrine influence becomes negligible. It is like attempting toinsert a key into a door which has no lock. 

It is among the specimens of normality of the brain cells that we maylook for our examples of endocrine mental deficiency. Included are allsorts of examples of feeble-mindedness varying from the moron to theimbecile and idiot, arrested brain life. The cretin is the classictype of mental deficiency due to endocrine insufficiency, curable orimprovable by the proper handling. 

Insanity, degeneration of the normal brain life, may be caused by anupset of the endocrine balance. Among the commonest manifestationsof insanity are excitements and depressions, apathies and manias, hallucinations, delusions and obsessions, all of which arereproducible under known conditions of internal secretion excess orfailure. Alternating states of mania and depression are caused in someinstances by extreme hyperthyroidism. The critical periods of life, when a profound revolution is overturning the endocrine equilibrium, puberty, pregnancy, and the menopause, are the periods of mostfrequent occurrence of insanity, when mental instability revealsendocrine instability (Dementia praecox, pregnancy psychosis, menopause neurosis). Actual insanity need not be the onlymanifestation. By far the greater number of mental disturbances dueto aberrations of the internal secretions never see an asylum or adoctor. They live more or less close to the borderline of insanity aspersons who have spells, eccentricities and peculiarities, hysteria, tics or just "nervousness. "

About two-thirds of mental deficiency is definitely inherited, aboutone-third acquired. It is the opinion of a number of psychologiststhat it is inherited as what the Mendelians call a recessive, that isas a trait which will be overshadowed, if there is admixture of normalmentality, but will crop up by breeding with another mental defective. What we know of the endocrine factors in heredity leads us to supposethat it is the mating of one marked endocrine insufficiency withanother that is often responsible for the inherited tendency tofeeble-mindedness and insanity. The effect of the hormone system uponthe vegetative apparatus may create the more obscure insanities andquasi-insanities. The direct action of the internal secretions uponthe brain cells, producing a sort of hair trigger situation withinthem, may cause the explosive discharges from them which appear asoverpowering impulses or uncontrollable conduct. The waves of feelingwhich precede them are unquestionably endocrine determined. The waveof fear a cat experiences upon seeing a dog is accompanied and indeedpreceded by an increase of the amount of adrenalin in the blood. Thepicture of fright, as observed in a so-called normal person, staringeyes, trembling hands, dry lips and mouth, corresponds to the portraitof the appearance in hyperthyroidism. In persons afflicted withuncontrollable impulses, the inhibiting hormones may not be present insufficient quantity. 

Feeble-mindedness, ranging from stupidity to imbecility, may also bea direct effect of insufficient endocrine supply to the brain cells. When there is not enough of the thyroid secretion in the blood, thetissue between the cells in the brain become clogged and thickened, sothat a gross barrier to the passage of the nerve impulses is created. We have here an illustration of internal secretion lack actuallyproducing gross changes in the brain. But without a doubt, mostendocrine influences upon the brain, at work every minute and secondof its life, are the subtle ones of molecular chemistry and atomicenergetics. We know that such mental qualities as irritability andstupidity, fatigability, and the power to recover quickly or slowlyfrom fatigue, sexual potency and impotence, apathy and enthusiasm areendocrine qualities. We know also that the thyroid dominant tends tobe irritable and excitable, the pituitary deficient to be placid andgentle, the adrenal dominant to be assertive and pugnacious, thethymus-centered to be childish and easy-go-lucky and the gonaddeficient to be secretive and shy. This brings us to the relation ofthe internal secretions to the type of personality as a whole. 

CHAPTER X

THE TYPES OF PERSONALITY

THE ENDOCRINE PERSONALITY

If a single gland can dominate the life history of an individual itbecomes possible to speak of _endocrine types_, the result of the_endocrine analysis_ of the individual. Studying endocrine traits ofphysique, life reactions, disease tendencies, hereditary history andblood chemistry, one may gain an insight into the composition orconstitution of an individual. The endocrine type of an individualis a summary of these, his behaviour in the past, and is also aprediction of his reactions in the future, much as a chemical formulaoutlines what we believe to be the skeleton of a compound substanceas deducible from its properties under varying conditions. Only, admittedly, as yet the endocrine label is but roughly qualitative andmost crudely quantitative, whereas the chemical formula is the essenceof the exact. 

However, the fact remains that though we are only upon the firstrungs of the ladder, we are upon the ladder. The horizon undoubtedlybroadens. We possess a new way of looking upon humanity, a freshtransforming light upon those strange phenomena, ourselves. Of theugly achievements of that dreadful century, the nineteenth, the mostilluminating was the discovery of itself as the _ape-parvenu. _ Yes, we are all animals now, it said to itself, and set its teeth in thecut-throat game of survival. But there was no understanding in thatevil motto of a disillusioned heart. The ape-parvenu, desperatelylonely and secretive, has still to understand himself. 

Let us be clear if we can. There is perhaps a certain presumption inthe phrase, the endocrine type. It is ambitious, and perhaps will notfulfill its promise. But it is useful because it points a parallel andan ideal. As Wilhelm Ostwald never tired of repeating, H_{2}O is acomplete shorthand record for the bundle of qualities commonly knownas water. It is an example of that highest task of mind, synthesis. It is the highest synthesis of the studies of the internal secretionsthat certain combinations of them, permutations and blendings ofthem, are responsible for those unique wonders of the universe, personalities. 

The riddle of personality! Are we at last upon the track of itsuncovering? That elusive mystery, which philosophers have wrapped inthe thousand veils of Greek and Latin words, and psychologists, evenunto the third and fourth generation of Freudians, have flounderedabout in, moles before a dazzling sun, is it to be unwound for ourinspection? Think of the human soul. What an invisible, intangiblechameleon is its true reality! Watch it, and you see something thatseems to uncurl and expand like a feather with exultation and delightand joy, to contract and stiffen into a billiard ball with fear andpride, shrewd caution and vigilant malevolence, to rear back and sparkfire like lightning with anger and temper, and to crawl and slitherwith abjection and smirking slyness, when it needs to. This multiplexThing-Behind-Life, are we really about to dissect it into itselements?

Personality embraces much more than merely the psychic attributes. Itis not the least important of the lessons of endocrine analysisthat there is no soul, and no body, either. Rather a soul-body, orbody-soul, or the patterns of the living flame. The closer tracking ofthe internal secretions leads us into the secrets of the livingflame, why it lives, and how it lives, the strange diversities of itscolorings and music and the odd variations in its energy, vitalityand longevity. Why it flickers, why it flares and glares, spurts, flutters, burns hard or soft, orange-blue or yellow. 

The medieval scholiasts, who fought as fiercely about names as nationsabout territories, divided men into the sanguine, the bilious, thelymphatic and the nervous. It was a pretty crude classification ofdifferent constitutions. The endocrine criteria, more exact andconcrete, divide them into the adrenal centered, the thyroid centered, the thymus centered, the pituitary centered, the gonad centered, andtheir combinations. 

THE ADRENAL PERSONALITIES

An adrenal personality is one dominated by the ups and downs of hisadrenal gland. In the large, the curve of his life is the curve ofsecretion by this gland, both of its Cortex and medulla. Such anadrenal personality is entirely normal, within the definition ofthe normal as something not threatening the duration of life, norcomfortable adaptation to it. So are the other glandular types. Nosharp line can be drawn between the normal and the abnormal in anycase, the borderland is wide, the transitions many. 

The skin is one of the chief clues to the adrenal personality. Therelation between the adrenal and the skin dates way back in theevolutionary scale, for adrenalin has been isolated directly frompigment deposits in the epidermis of frogs. Skin pigment bears adirect relation to the reaction of the organism to light, especiallythe ultraviolet rays, to the radiation of heat, and hence to thefundamental productions and consumptions of energy by the cells. Sothe gland of energy for emergencies writes its signature always allover the skin. 

In an adrenal personality, the epidermis is always slightly, somewhat, or deeply pigmented. The pigmentation is due to a dark brown depositlightly or thickly scattered over the skin. With the general diffusepigmentation or darkening there are often the black spots, thepigmented birth marks, or the lighter ones of freckles. The lattersignify some permanent or transitory adrenal inadequacy in the past, ante-natal or post-natal, of the individual, and presage the same inhis future. These spots have been frequently observed to appearafter an attack of diphtheria or influenza. There seems to be moretuberculosis among those who have them than those who do not. Wetherefore say that diphtheria, influenza and tuberculosis stand outas adrenal-attacking diseases, which have a greater power to kill, cripple or hurt those with defective adrenal constitutions thanothers. 

The hair of the adrenal type is characteristic: ubiquitous, thick, coarse and dry. It is prominent over the chest, abdomen and back, and has a tendency to kink. Often its color is not the expected: anItalian's will be yellow, a Norwegian's jet black. It has been statedthat most red-haired persons are adrenal types. Such persons also havewell-marked canine teeth which is another adrenal trait. They alsohave a low hair line. 

When the adrenal type has a properly co-operating pituitary andthyroid, he possesses a striking vigor, energy and persistence. With afortunate combination, he develops into a progressive winning fighter, arriving at the top in the long run every time. 

Brain work is pretty well lubricated in the well-compensated adrenaltype. Brain fag is closely associated with, if not dependent upon, adrenal fag, particularly of the cortex. Brain tissue and adrenalcortex tissue are near relatives, and a normal human brain neverdevelops without a normal adrenal cortex. The adrenal type with anhypertrophied adrenal cortex is always efficient. 

Among women, the adrenal type is always masculinoid. If physicallyfeminine--due to adequate feminine reactions on the part of theother endocrines--she will at least show the qualities of a psychicvirilism. A generation ago, such a woman had to repress her inherenttrends and instincts in the face of public opinion and law, and sosuffered from a feeling of inferiority. Nowadays, these women arestriding forward and will attain a good many of the masculine heights, commanding responsible executive positions and high salaries. Anadrenal type will probably be the first woman president of the UnitedStates. 

However, that presupposes a normal range of action of the otherendocrines. Let there be some quirk or weakness elsewhere in thechain of hormones, and instead of the successful woman, beholdthe spinsters, the maiden aunts, the prudes and cranks who neversatisfactorily adapt themselves in society. To them must be givena good deal of credit for the suffrage revolution. These unadaptedadrenals, as we may call them, once sowed the seeds, expending theirmasculinism in the struggles of the pioneers' martyrdoms, preparingthe harvest their sisters, the more adequate adrenal types, will nowreap. The unadapted adrenals of today will have to look for new worldsto conquer. 

So much for the compensated adrenal types. They are the good workers, the efficients, the kinetic successes of the driven world. They make, at a certain level, good slave drivers because they feel withinthemselves a driving force. But suppose the adrenal type becomesuncompensated, or perhaps is inadequate to the demands of life tostart with. Then the story becomes different. The perfect efficientsuperman of business or profession begins to lag. Though he is himselfin the morning, he begins to lag in the afternoon. That is when hetires. In the evening he is all in. More sleep, recreational trips, vacations slip into the rank of necessities, whereas previously theyhad been laughed at as luxuries. More minute or large moles emergein the skin, especially if the individual is of a fair type. If astrenuous effort is not made to give the adrenals an opportunity torecuperate, or if adjustment on the part of the other glands does notoccur, this stage of intermittent and remittent adrenal inadequacygives way in turn to the state of permanent adrenal insufficiency. 

The adrenal insufficient is important because he is to be seeneverywhere. Built along the same lines as the adrenal adequate andapt to be taken for him, he differs and contrasts vividly below thesurface. One may sum him up by saying that he is one variety ofneurasthenic, perhaps the most frequent variety. Cold hands and feetplague him, cold feet psychically as well as physically, for a chronicand obsessive indecision is one of his most prominent complaints. A fatigability, that goes with a low blood pressure, lowered bodytemperature and a disturbed ability to utilize sugar for fuelpurposes, is another of his chief complaints. The skin often presentsan instability of the blood vessels, so that they now react tostroking with a blanched instead of a reddened effect. Irritability, a liability to go off the handle at the slightest provocation, and aconsequent complete exhaustion that, after an outburst, sends him tobed, is conspicuous. Dismissed sometimes contemptuously as weaklings, they are accused of laziness, craziness, and haziness. In theirpsychic attempts to compensate, they land into all kinds of hot water, from which friends, relatives or luck extricate them sometimes. Theother times they go to the wall. 

The congenital adrenal deficient is a special problem. If the historyof such an individual is followed from birth, one gets a prettytypical story. The genealogy is nervous. Nervous is a word of manymeanings. But when parents confess themselves nervous, it generallymeans a mental and emotional instability of some sort. Sometimes theidea is camouflaged as high strung. In the feeding narrative of thechild, one finds not occasional incidents or episodes, but continuedtrouble, difficulties, adventures. Even after the first year or two, the nutritional chronicle is not satisfactory. Lack of appetite, lackof energy, lack of response to stimuli are its keynotes and the motifsof the later years of childhood. 

Growth is a strain. It becomes a task to make these children growand gain. Chronically below the average weight and height, herculeanefforts are made by the conscientious parents, but with small success. 

With the entry of school life and competition, the curtain rises uponthe real tragedy, a tragedy in which the avenging Fates are the usualignorance, stupidity and misunderstanding. If the teachers alone areduty-obsessed, or perhaps sadistic, the child endures the agonies ofrepeated admonitions, demotions, and punishments. However, a certainthick-skinned indifference may develop to protect the sufferer. 

If the parents are in addition ambitious, or proud, or competitive, then woe betide the victim. With their nervous dispositions, it isthe school and the tutor who are to be blamed, if not the child. Fromschool to school, from system to system, from novelty to fad, fromdoctor to doctor, from fakir to charlatan, from pillar to post, theywander in search of an education. Educational cults by the dozen havesprouted and grown fat around these unfortunates. 

The chief defect of the congenital adrenal inadequate is aninsufficiently developed adrenal cortex. That means an insufficientlydeveloped brain and nervous system. For we have seen how closely allthese are related in development. Now education can never be theeducation of a vacuum. And we have to deal here with a relativevacuum. When there are no potentialities, there can be no education. Where the potentialities are limited, education must be limited. The congenital adrenal inadequate is defined in physical and mentalenergy. Hence educators cannot drive him. Up to a certain point he canbe led, but no farther. He should not be expected to go to a college, and waste the opportunity of some one financially unlucky, but whoseendocrine system is more generously endowed. 

Not that the outlook is absolutely hopeless. Puberty, with itstremendous changes in the glands of internal secretion, when one canalmost hear the clicks and the whirring of the wheels in the internalmachinery, may transform. The unfathomed possibilities of glandtherapy are still to be probed. But the general rule remains. 

THE REACTIONS TO MODERNISM

The adrenal personalities in all their variations must be safeguardedand carefully looked after in the strained complexities of modernpost-bellum civilization. In a sense, the adrenal type is the Atlasof the twentieth century world, and small wonder that he and hisdescendants stagger beneath the burden. The adrenals are organs forthe mobilization of energy, physical and mental, for emergencies. Theyare the glands which meet shocks and neutralize the effects of shock. In the solitary animal, the everyday producers of shock are pain, fright and wounds. The adrenal mechanisms oversecrete to encounterthe enemy, and then there is a period of rest and recuperation. Man, however, with the growth of his imagination and the increase innumber and density of his surrounding herd, has become the subject ofcontinuous stimulation. In the past, this was balanced by the almostuniversal dominance of some religious belief, as an effective opiate. Concepts like Fate, Predestination, an all-guiding and all-wiseProvidence, relieved and shielded the adrenals, and acted as valuableadjuvants for the preservation of normality. 

The nineteenth century witnessed the birth and expansion of a greatnumber of new stimulant reagents, the discoveries of physics andchemistry, which, with the climax of the World War of 1914-1918, havemade for a more or less complete deliquescence of accepted religion. For the great majority there was no faith to take its place. War, pre-war, and post-war shocks have continued with their incessantpounding upon the reserves of energy. Under these conditions theadrenal personalities are bound to suffer. The other endocrine typessuffer, too, but quite differently. 

Today, anti-adrenal, anti-religious ideas are epidemic. Of these, first prize belongs to a cult of egotism fathered by the NapoleonicIdea, consciously assertive and self-conscious in Max Stirner's"The Ego and His Own, " which engendered a swarm of imitators andplagiarists. Human beings are all incorrigible egoists more or less, furtive or frank. But social and religious codes curbed the mostnarcissistic of kings and conquerors. Before Napoleon, all of themvowed allegiance and expressed submission to some sort of deity, confessed some fear of the Lord in their hearts. But the ideasof Napoleon flouted all that. The unscrupulous predatory whoput effectual scheming for the self plainly above every otherconsideration and rode rough shod over all his fellows appealedpowerfully to the latent animality of the adrenal types. Then camethe dawning awareness of capital and labor of themselves as classesfiercely opposed forever in the policy of cut-throat versuscut-throat. The labor organizations and the commercial companiesand corporations pitted themselves against each other consciously. Doctrines like "Property is but Robbery, " "Everyone for himself andthe devil take the hindmost, " the "Iron Law of Wages" and the "Factsis Facts" of the Gradgrinds were the phrases of the nineteenth centurythat assisted. Finally came the Darwinian revelation of man as theape-parvenu, which completed the disintegration of the old restraints. 

Man seemed to see himself now for the first time stark and naked. ButMan consists of many varieties, and all reacted differently tothe image in the clouded mirror. There was universal attempt atsuppression. But slowly the anti-adrenal forces infiltrated everyactivity and every soul. Like a hidden focus of infection in the body, it germinated and poisoned. A slow fever crept into life. A febrilequality tinged the acquisition of wealth, the concentration upon sex, and the desperate pursuit of the novel stimulus. 

Then, like the hand that appeared at Belshazzar's Feast, came the War, only it was a hand that stayed with a long flashing lightning sword inits grip, sweeping pitilessly among the erstwhile dancing multitudesto mutilate and destroy. A good many people, with that sturdyanimality George Santayana speaks somewhere of as a trait of mankind, set out to enjoy the War. It was a new sort of good time upon anincredibly large scale. It was an undreamed-of opportunity. Themechanisms of suppression of the mind render it incapable ofappreciating horror until encountered. And so thousands withdangerously unstable adrenals were plunged into the most tryingconditions possible. Hundreds of them, already shaken, on theborderland of instability, reacted with the phenomena of breakdownof control, lumped with a host of other phenomena, under the generalrubric of "shell shock. "

That alone was not all. If hundreds collapsed, thousands approachedthe verge of collapse. They survived and were discharged from thearmies as normal. They reappear in civil life as cases of "nerves. "Ordinarily that would mean that they would be classed as failures. Butsuch have been the psychologic reactions to the war that all kindsof compensations in the way of dangerous mental states have becomefrequent in these inadequate adrenal types. A trend to violence and aresentful emotionalism are combined with desperate attempts to spurthe jaded adrenals with artificial excitements. Consequent melancholiaand depression, the "blues, " are inevitable. A survey of drug addictswould probably show a definite percentage of this type. The sameapplies to certain petty criminals and law breakers. 

The adrenal element in the personality must be considered in everydisturbance, morbid, personal, or social involving brunette types, Huxley's dark white, Mediterranean-Iberians, red-haired persons, andeven pigment-spotted fair people. Historians have traced the earliestcivilization to the doings of a brunette people, the Sumerians, thefirst to build cities in the Euphrates-Tigris region more than fivethousand years before Christ was born. An adrenalized people onewould, expect to be the first to take advantage of possibilitiesbecause of their energy capacity. The earliest Sumerian stone carvingsof warriors exhibit an undersized skeleton compared with the largehead, broad face, a low hair line and prominent nose that would fitinto the ensemble of the adrenal type. Certain other historicalaspects of the adrenal personality have yet to be worked out. 

THE PITUITARY PERSONALITIES

The presence of two antagonistic elements in the one gland complicatesany attempt at even the most abstract analysis of a personalitydominated by that gland. The pituitary, composed of an anterior lobeand posterior lobe, supplies two fairly uncomplicated correspondingtypes, best described as the masculine pituitary type, and thefeminine pituitary type. The masculine pituitary type is onedetermined by the rule of the anterior pituitary, representingsuperlative brain tone and action, good all-around growth andharmonious general function, the ideal masculine organism. Thefeminine pituitary type has an excess of post-pituitary, withsusceptibility to the tender emotions, sentimentalism, andemotionalism, feminine structural lines. Ante-pituitary dominance ina male reinforces the general masculinity while the post-pituitarydepresses it. The post-pituitary in a woman augments her naturaltrend, ante-pituitary tending to counteract it. In other words, post-pituitary and ovary are conjunctive, ante-pituitary and ovary aredisjunctive, post-pituitary and testis are opponents, ante-pituitaryand testis are allies. 

One mechanical circumstance involved in the pituitary personalitiesmay be the determinant of the entire life history. That is theemphasized fact that the pituitary is encased in a small bony box, atthe base of the skull. The size of this bony box, and its capacity toyield to the various pressures of a pituitary enlarging to meet thedemands of the organism, will often spell happiness or misery, success or failure, genius or idiocy for the man or woman. Certainpossibilities are conceivable. All of them occur, for the developmentsof X-ray technique have rendered available almost a direct view of thesella turcica. 

In the first place, the bony box may be definitely too small to startin with. That means a small and so potentially inadequate pituitary, both anterior and posterior, potentially inadequate in that it willbecome impossible for it to grow and produce extra secretion upondemand. Handicapped thus, the unfortunate so born is doomed toinferiority and very little can be done for him. He will not developsatisfactorily. He possesses small genital organs which will notevolve properly in adolescence, or if they will not stand still, tendto revert to the opposite sex type. Then he tends to be dwarfed, fatigable, adipose. Among these types are included subjects ofobsessions and compulsions who are dull and apathetic, cannot learn ormaintain inhibitions, and so, without initiative, evolve into moraland intellectual degenerates, liable to epilepsy and the mostremarkable sex aberrations. All because a cranny of the skull, aboutthe size of a thimble, is not large enough for their dominating gland. 

If the bone of the cavity of the pituitary is softer and yielding, so that some enlargement of the gland is possible, especially of theanterior, there appear rapid growth with a tendency to high bloodpressure, great mental activity associated with frequent and severeheadaches (often of the migraine type), a combination of initiativeand irritability and a marked sexuality. X-ray examination of thesella turcica shows what is called erosion of the bone as it yields tothe pressure of the growing gland. 

The ideal sella turcica for the ideal pituitary type is a large roomin which the gland may grow and reach its maximum size and so itsmaximum function, without needing to exert pressure or destroy anderode bone in front of it, to the side of it or behind it. Thedistinctive masculine and feminine types, classed as the normal, belong to this group. Sometimes, the bone in front of the pituitarywill yield, while the one in the rear will not, and sometimes theconditions are reversed. Thus we may have ante-pituitary sufficiencywith post-pituitary insufficiency, or ante-pituitary insufficiencywith post-pituitary sufficiency, complexes which contribute to createthe grosser functional hermaphrodite types of mixed sex. 

In the average feminine pituitary type of personality, post-pituitarydominates. In a woman and to a lesser degree in a man, the generalbuild is slight and rather delicate. The skin is soft, moist, andhairless, the face is the doll or Dresden China sort, with a roseateor creamy complexion, flushing easily, eyes large and prominent. Themouth shows a high arched palate and crowded teeth rather long. Thevoice is high-pitched. One recognizes the traditional womanly woman, petite and chic, who always marries the hero in stories. She isusually fond of children, easily moved, has a good libido, and thetraditional feminine traits. When unstable, the post-pituitary type isrestless and hyperactive, craves excitement, and continual change ofinterest and scene, a new pleasure every moment. A good many of thewomen of today, who fifty years ago would have been nice sedate girlsbecause of their excellent post-pituitary constitution, havebeen irritated by the atmosphere of post-1914 into the excesspost-pituitary state, the adventurous never-satiated avid pleasurehunter, in whom the craving for stimulation will stop at nothing. F. Scott Fitzgerald portrayed an exquisite specimen of the kind in hisshort story "The Jellybean, " with a quasi-heroine of a good Southernfamily, built to be a high standard wife and mother, who drinks, swears, gambles, and finally marries on a dare. Modern post-pituitarywoman is excitement mad and thrill chasing. The worst of it is thatthe resultant personal tragedies cannot be dismissed as transientinevitables. The heredity of the internal secretions determines thatthe offspring of these women are bound to be pituitary unstable, theleast desirable of endocrine instabilities because of the concomitantmental effects. Even from the purely selfish point of view, thestandpoint of enlightened selfishness, the post-pituitary type mustbeware of excesses. For disturbances of menstruation, psychic fears, anxieties, states of suspicion and obsession, various pains are amongthe penalties. 

A period of post-pituitary excess as an effect of disease, pregnancy, or the rapid life, may be followed by post-pituitary deficiency as aresult of exhaustion of the gland. The girl or woman then becomes fatand suffers from headaches (the fair, fat and forty type) yet retainsa certain capacity for enjoyment which enables her to continue gay, happy and gentle, kind, interested. So she contrasts with the thyroiddeficient who gets fat, but also dull, stupid, even morose. 

The masculine pituitary personality, the man with a dominant anteriorpituitary gland in a roomy sella turcica with plenty of space to growin, is the ideal virile type. They are generally tall (unless thegrowth of the long bones was checked too early by a social precocityof the testes) with a well-developed strong frame, large firm muscles, and proportionately sized hands and feet. The head is of the markeddolichocephalic type, flattened at the sides, face is oval more orless, with thick eyebrows, eyes rather prominent, nose broadish andlong, lower jaw prominent and firm. Prominent bony points like thecheek bones, the elbows and the knees, the knuckle joints of the handsand feet. The teeth are large, especially the upper middle incisors, and they are usually spaced. The arms and legs are hairy. High gradebrains, the ability to learn, and the ability to control, self-masteryin the sense of domination of the lower instincts and the automaticreactions of the vegetative nervous system, the rule by the individualof himself and his environment are at their maximum in him. Theante-pituitary personality is educable for intelligence, and evenintellect, provided the proper educational stimulus is supplied. Menof brains, practical and theoretical, philosophers, thinkers, creatorsof new thoughts and new goods, belong to this group. The distinctionbetween men of theoretical genius, whose minds which could embracea universe, and yet fail to manage successfully their own personaleveryday lives, and the men of practical genius, who can achieve andexecute, the great engineers, and industrial men lies in the balancebetween the ante-pituitary and the adrenal cortex primarily. Men likeAbraham Lincoln and George Bernard Shaw belong to this ante-pituitarygroup. 

The feminine pituitary personality, in whom there is predominance ofthe post-pituitary over the ante-pituitary, occurs in men. The typeis short, rounded and stout. They have heads that seem too largefor their bodies, the general hair distribution on the trunk andextremities is poor, although that of the scalp and face is plentiful, and they acquire an abdominal paunch early. They exhibit the femininetendency to periodicity of function, their moods, activities, efficiency are cyclic, reminding one of the menstrual variations ofthe female. This rhythmicity saturates their personalities, so thatpoetry and music almost morbidly appeal to them. A number of the greatpoets and musicians are to be classified as of the feminine pituitaryspecies. Last, but not least, they are the hen-pecked lovers andhusbands. Sex difficulties are frequent in their history. 

The determination of endocrine type and tendencies, the prediction ofthe future personality, during childhood is one of the developmentsconfidently to be looked for, as our knowledge of the internalsecretions will grow. The possibilities of control loom as one of themost magnificent promises of science. Yet the high expectations fortomorrow should not depress our respect for the achievements of today. In the case of the pituitary, for instance, a hint as to the methodof approach is furnished by the tabulation of the traits of pituitarydominance and pituitary inferiority in children. 

 Pituitary sufficient and dominant: Large, spare, bony frame Eyes wide apart Broad face Teeth, broad, large, unspaced Square, protruding chin and jaws Large feet and hands Early hair growth on body Thick skin, large sex organs Aggressive, precocious, calculating, self-contained

 Pituitary inferior: Small, sometimes delicate skeleton Rather adipose, weak muscles Upper jaw prognathous Dry, flabby skin Small hands and feet Abnormal desire for sweets Subnormal temperature, blood pressure and pulse Poor control of lower vegetative functions Mentally sluggish, dull, apathetic, backward Loses self-control quickly, cries easily, discouraged promptly, psychic stamina insufficient

The pituitary personality in childhood produced by limitation of thesize of the gland, because its bony box is completely or partiallyclosed, presents typical hall-marks. He supplies the second and thirdoffenders in the juvenile courts, the delinquents and pathologicalliars of childhood, the incorrigibles, the precocious hoboes, mentaland moral deficients and defectives, the prey of the sentimentalcomplexes of elderly virgins and helpful futility all around. Notutilitarianism or futilitarianism is needed, but pituitarianism. The feeding of pituitary gland in large enough quantities to theseunfortunates may do more than ten charity organizations, with the mostpatrician board of directors complete. 

THE THYROID PERSONALITIES

The accessibility of the thyroid gland in the neck, the ease ofsurgical approach, the definite effects following its removal, andthen the miraculous marvels of the feeding of thyroid have rendered itthe centre of attack by the largest army of endocrine investigators. As a result we know more about the thyroid in childhood, adolescence, adult life and old age than about the other glands. 

In childhood, the subthyroid or thyroid deficient, the cretinoid type, the type resembling the cretin, is fairly common. The peasant's face, with the broad nose and the tough skin, coarse straight hair, theundergrowth, physical and mental, a persistent babyishness and aretardation of self-control development, make up the picture. He needsan excess of sleep, sleeps heavily, needs sleep during the day, when awakened in the morning still feels tired, and rather dull andrestless, dresses slowly, has to be coaxed or forced to dress, gets toschool late nearly every morning, does badly at the school, reactiontime, learning time and remembering time being prolonged as comparedwith the average, and is lazy at home lessons. He perspires little, even after exertion, yet fatigues easily, is subject to frequentcolds, adenoids, tonsillitis, and acquires every disease of childhoodthat happens along. 

Adolescence, the coming of menstruation, the first blooming of youthis delayed in the subthyroid. The secondary sex traits as they developtend to be incomplete and to mimic those of the opposite sex. Yet inadolescence too there may be a sudden change and reversal of the wholeprocess, a jump from the subthyroid to the hyperthyroid state. So agirl who has been dull and lackadaisical, with no complexion and everyprospect of evolution into a wall flower, may be transformed into abright-eyed woman, generally nervous and restless, high colored, andpossessed of a craving for continual activity and excitement. Skin, hair and teeth become of the thyroid dominant type. The heartpalpitates under the slightest stimulus, she perspires almostannoyingly, heat and emotion are prostrating. If such atransfiguration does not occur, the effect of the reconstructionsof puberty is to create a person with about the followingcharacteristics. 

 1. Height below the average 2. Tendency to obesity (toward middle age) 3. Complexion sallow 4. Hair dry--hair line high 5. Eyebrows scanty, either as a whole or in outer half 6. Eyeballs deep-set, lack lustre, in narrowed slits 7. Teeth irregular, become carious early 8. Extremities cold and bluish 9. Circulation poor. Subject to chilblains

Intellectually, these people vary enormously, depending upon which ofthe other glands will enlarge to compensate for the deficiency of thethyroid. If the growth of the skull has left a roomy sella turcicafor the pituitary to grow in, the intellect may be normal or evensuperior, though energy is below par. If this is not possible andthe adrenals have to predominate, a lower, more animal and lessself-controlled type of mentality is produced. 

In direct contrast to the subthyroid types is he who originally washyperthyroid. During childhood he is quite healthy, thin, but strikingrobust, active, energetic, generally fair-complexioned with nosestraight and high bridged, eyes rather "poppy, " teeth excellent, regular, firm, white with a pearly translucent enamel. These childrenare always on the go, never get tired, require little sleep. Seldomwill one of the classical children's diseases strike them, measlesperhaps, but no other. Adolescence for them, however, is more apt tobe stormy and episodic, adjustment to the new world of people andthings is much more difficult, wanderlust is acute. All an expressionof cells keyed up, charged with energy that must flow somewhere orexplode. 

The ruddy live-wire, recognized everywhere as bubbling with vitality, the life of any group, the magnetic personality may, however, beshocked by some seismic event like the death of a father or mother, or the ruin of some cherished ambition. A break in the balance of theother glands follows quickly and disablement and invalidism, which maycure itself after some years, remain stationary, or descend to theworst forms of thyroid deficiency. 

During maturity, the type are characterized usually by a lean body, or tendency rapidly to become thin under stress. They have clean cutfeatures and thick hair, often wavy or curly, thick long eyebrows, large, frank, brilliant, keen eyes, regular and well developed teethand mouth. Sexually they are well differentiated and susceptible. Noticeable emotivity, a rapidity of perception and volition, impulsiveness, and a tendency to explosive crises of expression arethe distinctive psychic traits. A restless, inexhaustible energy makesthem perpetual doers and workers, who get up early in the morning, flit about all day, retire late, and frequently suffer from insomnia, planning in bed what they are to do next day. 

Certain types of thyroid excess associated with the thymus dominantnext to be described are peculiarly susceptible to emotionalinstability. They are subject to brain storms, outbreaks of furiousrage, sometimes associated with a state of semi-consciousness. Toemphasize the analogy to epilepsy, their attacks have been calledpsycholepsy. Among the Italians especially they were watched andreported during the War, when the explosive fits were seen to take theform of irresponsible acts of insubordination or violence. 

THE THYMO-CENTRIC PERSONALITIES

During the first period of childhood, up to five, six or seven, ormore accurately, up to the point at which the permanent teeth beginto appear, every child may be said to be a thymus-dominated organism, because the thymus, holding the other endocrines in check, controlsits life. That is why up to the third and fourth years at any rate, most children seem alike. Closer observation, however, reveals pointsof differentiation and signs of the coming potencies of the otherhormones. During the second period, up to puberty, these marks of thedeeper underlying forces of the personality make themselves moreand more felt. The thymus, like a brake that is becoming worn out, continues to function in a progressively weaker fashion. Until withthe arrival of the gonadal (ovaries' or testes') internal secretion, its influence is wiped out. 

There is a definite degree of thymus activity during everyone'schildhood, unless by its premature involution, precocity displacesjuvenility. Yet even during childhood, there are certain individualswith excessive thymus action, foreshadowing a continued thymuspredominance throughout life. The "angel child" is the type: regularlyproportioned and perfectly made, like a fine piece of sculpture, withdelicately chiselled features, transparent skin changing coloreasily, long silky hair, with an exceptional grace of movement and analertness of mind. They seem the embodiment of beauty, but somehowunfit for the coarse conflicts of life. In English literature severalcharacters are recognizable as portraits of the type, notably PaulDombey, whose nurse recognized that he was not for this world. Theymay look the picture of health, but they are more liable than anyother children to be eliminated by tuberculosis, meningitis or evenone of the common diseases of childhood. 

It is after puberty, when the thymus should shrink and pass out ofthe endocrine concert as a power, that the more complex reactions ofpersonality emerge when the thymus persists and refuses to or cannotretire. The persistent thymus always then throws its shadow over theentire personality. To what extent that shadow spreads depends uponthe strength of the other glands of internal secretion, their abilityto compensate or to stay inhibited. Whether or not the pituitary willbe able to enlarge in its bony cradle seems to be the most importantfactor determining these variations. If there is space for it to grow, at any rate normally, the individual may pass for normal, althoughhe will have difficulties throughout life he may never understand, particularly in sexual directions. If the pituitary is limited. Partially or completely, the thymus predominance is more prominentand fixed, and the abnormalities become obvious, both of person andconduct. 

The anatomic architecture of the latter thymo-centric personality isfairly typical. The reversion in type of the reproductive organs, theslender waist, the gracefully formed body, the rounded limbs, the longchest and the feminine pelvis strike one at the first glance. Thetexture of the skin is smooth as a baby's, and sometimes velvety tothe touch. Its color may be an opaque white, or faintly creamy, orthere may be an effect of a filmy sheen over a florid complexion. Little or no hair on the face contributes to the general feminineaspect in the more extreme types. They are often double jointedsomewhere, flat footed, knock-kneed. 

In women, the external manifestations of a thymo-centric personalitymay be limited to thinness and delicacy of the skin, narrow waist, rather poorly developed breasts, arched thighs and scanty hair, with scanty and delayed menstruation. Or there may be obesity, withjuvenility, if there is a repression of the pituitary secretion forone reason or other. 

In their reactions to the problems, physical and psychic, of everydaylife, the thymo-centrics are distinctly at a disadvantage. In thefirst place, muscular strain, stress or shock is dangerous to thembecause they have a small heart, and remarkably fragile blood vessels, which renders their circulation incapable of responding to anemergency, or at least definitely handicapped. In infancy, they maydie suddenly because of this, either for no ascertainable cause atall, or because of some slight excitement like that attending someslight operation, a fall, or a mild illness. During the run-aboutepoch they are unable to cope with the necessities of an activechild's existence in playing with other children. Puberty andadolescence are specially perilous to them for they may endeavour tocompensate for an inner feeling of physical inferiority by goingin strenuously for athletics and sports, and so risking a suddenhemorrhage in the brain, producible by the tearing of a blood vessel, as if constructed of defective rubber. Reports published in thenewspapers from time to time of children or young men instantlykilled by a tap on the jaw in a boxing contest, or some other trivialinjuries are doubtless samples of such reactions in thymo-centricpeople. 

As an illustration of the conduct aberrations of the thymo-centricpersonality during adult life, the following extracts from a newspaperreport of a suicide are worth quoting. 

"An autopsy made yesterday by Dr. Benjamin Schwartz, first assistantto Dr. Charles Norris, Chief Medical Examiner, removed any mysterythat surrounded the death on Saturday night by pistol bullets of Dr. José A. Arenas and the wounding of 'Miss Ruth Jackson' and IgnatioMarti. 

"Dr. Schwartz said that his post-mortem examination had convinced himbeyond doubt that the dead physician-dentist had killed himself afterhe had tried to take the life of the young woman with whom he hadlived and of the youth who was his successful rival. 

"'Besides that, ' Dr. Schwartz said, 'my report to the police willinclude a statement from the young woman to me that she always hadunderstood that Dr. Arenas had killed some one in Havana, Cuba, beforehe came to New York. 

"The autopsy left no doubt that Dr. Arenas was a case of statuslymphaticus (thymus-centered personality). I made a most completereport because of the scientific value of the autopsy. 

"'This confirmed my first deductions after seeing the body on Saturdaynight in the doctor's furnished room with alcove bedroom adjoining. You will remember that as soon as I had seen him I revealed that hewas wearing corsets. 

"'These cases of status lymphaticus are intensely interesting. In themthe blood vessels are very small, and the lymphatic clement is greatlyin excess. They die suddenly, from ruptures of blood vessels. Manyof them are degenerate. Most of them are criminals. All of them areliable to commit crimes of passion. Among them are found a largepercentage of drug addicts. 

"'Miss Jackson, in the hospital, confirmed my scientific theory thatthe dead man was not normal. She was perfectly frank in her statement. She said she had left her husband, Elmer Schultz, an automobilesalesman in Toledo, several months ago and had come to New York. Shesaid she had lived with the doctor for some time. 

"'About ten days ago she left him to live with Marti, a healthy, normal lad. Before she went from the doctor's room she destroyed thosecolored collars that were found beside the body. She cut them withscissors. But that was after, so she states, the doctor had destroyedstockings of hers by cutting them. 

"'She told me in the hospital today, and with every appearance oftruth, that she had met Arenas in the subway at the station onSeventy-second Street and Broadway on Friday night and that she hadasked him when she could come and get her clothes. He said, accordingto her story:

"'Come to the house tomorrow afternoon--but come with Marti. '

"'She said that she and Marti went there according to this invitation:that first the doctor showed her the cut collars and told her that shewould get her clothes back in perfect condition, and that the nextthing she knew she had been shot. She couldn't remember much afterthat. 

"'I believe that both she and Marti have told a perfectlystraightforward story and the autopsy is proof of it. 

"'There were six bullets in the doctor's pistol to be accounted for. One, in an undischarged cartridge, still was in the weapon. Thatleaves five. One struck "Miss Jackson" in the right chest squarely infront, and penetrated the flesh about one inch. If there had been anypower at all behind the missile it would have gone right through, pierced a lung, caused a hemorrhage, and the chances are that "MissJackson" would have died. That leaves four bullets. 

"'One more struck Marti in the left upper chest. It passed through thepocket there, and the skirt, grazed the skin, and then bounced over tothe right hand side in front. It was a most amazing case of a boundingbullet. I was particularly careful about examining its course becauseat first I was suspicious of the stories that were told by Marti and"Miss Jackson. " Now I know they are true. 

"'But anyone might have been puzzled by the queer antics of themissiles from the pistol of South American manufacture that the doctorused. If it had had any penetrating power--or rather if the bulletsthat it sent out, had any real kick behind them--the chances are thatboth "Miss Jackson" and Marti would be dead now. 

"'Two bullets, it will be remembered, entered the doctor's left chest, quite close together. Well, one nicked the heart and lodged betweenthe lung and the heart. It didn't cause any more damage than amosquito bite. 

"'The second bullet went through the soft flesh of the chest, but itstruck a rib and bounded back out again. That bullet was picked upbeside the body. 

"'After these vain attempts to send a bullet through his body to afatal spot, the doctor apparently shifted the weapon to his righttemple and pulled the trigger for the fifth time. Then the fifthbullet, driven likewise by a very weak charge of powder, pierced theskull at a point where it was thin and tore into his brain. Its lackof power, however, is shown by the fact that I found it this morningin the brain tissue. 

"'In all my experience I have never seen anything so queer. It soundsalmost like a dream--a man trying to kill with a pistol that shootsbullets that either stop after striking soft flesh or bound out of thebody into which they are fired. But it is true; I have had all of thebullets in my hand. 

"'They are all accounted for. They are all of the same sort. Thereis no reason to doubt that they are all from the same weapon, aninstrument without manufacturer's name, and of a design that thepolice say is unfamiliar to them. 

"'The dead doctor was a distinct type, and his tragic end was one thatshould not surprise anyone who has any knowledge of such cases. Thecourtroom was thronged with friends of the dead physician-dentist, whonot only is reported to be of a wealthy family of Bogota, Colombia, but generally is credited with many charitable works in the uptownSpanish colony here. '"

The distinct type to which the first assistant to the chief medicalexaminer of the city referred is the thymo-centric personality(status lymphaticus is another technical name for it), we have beenconsidering. The persistence of the thymus after adolescence makes foran arrest of masculinization or feminization, the end-point arrivedat by the processes of puberty. That is, a partial castration takesplace. Now, as the experiments of Steinach upon the transplantation ofovaries into males deprived of their testes and of testes into femalesdeprived of their ovaries have demonstrated, the removal of theinterstitial cells of one sex assists enormously in arousing theopposite sex traits that have been latent, homosexuality. In athymo-centric, tendencies to homosexuality and masochism appear. And so all the remarkable after-effects of those processes that theFreudians have so lovingly traced: the father complex in men, theinferiority complex, and the feminoid complex in general. 

The feminoid complex introduces again the character of the functionalhermaphrodite, the mixed male-female. The sex index will certainlycome in time as a measurement of sexuality. But until then some moreavailable classification of sex tendency is necessary. Includingsex intergrades, one may divide sex types into six classes:male, _male_-female, male-_female_, female, _female_-male, andfemale-_male_. The sex intergrades, the four hyphenated classes, nearly all have some degree of persistent thymus. If its influence ispartial, the emphasis is before the hyphen, upon the ostensible. Ifits influence is unchecked, the emphasis is after the hyphen upon theapparently latent sex. The sex difficulties produced in these peopleby the conflict between their conscious sex and their subconscioussex, the sex duel in the same mind, Siamese twins pulling indiametrically opposite directions, are comprehensible only from theviewpoint of the internal secretions. 

Homosexuality, in one form or another, frank or concealed, hauntsthe thymo-centric and spoils his life. The persistent thymus, like avindictive Electra, stalks the footsteps of its victim, its possessor. He wishes to live, according to society's remorselessly rigidexpectations, for virility and happiness. But his thymus conditionforces him also to live for femininity and misery. That homosexualityis not purely a psychic matter, of complexes and introversion, asthe newest psychology would have us believe, has been proved byobservations of its development in animals with internal secretiondisturbances, acquired or experimental. Thus it has been recorded thata male dog showed a large goitrous swelling of the thyroid in theneck, with a rapid heart, staring eyes, the loss of flesh and fat andthe nervousness of a hyperthyroid condition. Therewith he became anabsolute homosexual. Observations on the primates along the samelines have been made. In goitrous hyperthyroids thymus persistence iscommon. 

What complicates his sex difficulties, and makes social adjustmentalmost impossible or completely impossible, is that his pituitaryfrequently cannot react to assist him. Often, as emphasized, itis bound in by bone on all sides and neither ante-pituitary norpost-pituitary can adequately secrete for his needs. So socialinstinct and the capacity for inhibition, the ability to controlhimself conceptually and somatically, are poor. As a child it isdifficult to train him along the lines of the elementary habits andcustoms. He is into late childhood a bed-wetter, and steals and liesquasi-unconsciously. 

His mother realizes soon that he cannot be made to acquire a sense ofresponsibility either for himself or for others. She becomes afraid tolet him go into the street because of his inability to take care ofhimself, to acquire the right attitude toward street cars, autos, strangers, in short, danger. She dreads to take him to places becauseno sooner would they be out of them, than she would discover that hehad taken something that did not belong to him, quite as a matter ofcourse. He will fabricate stories with no motive, fabricate themout of whole cloth for the pure fun of it. In a word, moralirresponsibility is the keynote of the volitional traits of thethymo-centric personality from childhood up. 

With so much against them, physical inferiorities, mental defects, moral lacks of every sort, it is little wonder that the thymo-centricsdie young. Infections hit them badly. The cases of flu that went offin twenty-four hours belonged to the type. Fulminant meningitis, pneumonia, diphtheria, scarlet fever, the varieties that are supposedto kill in twenty-four to forty-eight hours because of the terriblevirulence of the attacking microbe, are probably so malignant onlybecause the organism attacked is a thymus subject. 

In the alcohol and drug habitué wards of hospitals as well as inmedicolegal cases of degenerates, gunmen and other criminals, the characteristic conformation and diagnostic stigmata of thethymo-centric are often encountered. Life treats them badly. Misunderstood and misjudged, they are the hopeless misfits of society. If the pituitary and the thyroid can enlarge to compensate for theirdefects, they may become the queer brilliants, the eccentric geniusesof the arts and sciences. Should they not, mental deficiency anddelinquency are their portion. Epilepsy, then, is sometimes their modeof escape from the terrors of an utterly foreign world. Should theysurvive all other hazards, suicide may still be their most frequentfate. A study of 122 cases of suicide by one observer showed that thestatus lymphaticus was practically constant and often pronounced. 

Certain of them, after a stormy life in the twenties, become adaptedto their surroundings in the thirties because the pituitary graduallyemerges and becomes dominant in their personalities. They are thenrecessive thymocentrics. An increase in size, a broadening, togetherwith a greater mental tranquillity and stability, accompany theadaptation. Historically, the thymocentrics who combined brilliancyand instability played a great part as some of the famous adventurersand restless experimentalists. 

THE SEX GLAND CENTERED OR GONADO-CENTRIC PERSONALITIES

(The Eunuchoid Personality)

Among the individuals whose personality is dominated by their sexglands the physiognomy, physique and life reactions are so distinctivethat no better examples exist of our main thesis: that the whole lifeof man is controlled primarily by his internal secretions. Thesegonado-centric types are not all necessarily sex gland deficient, asthe term eunuchoid implies. They may be rather gonad unstable with acorresponding instability of the entire endocrine system. 

About the face of the eunuchoid the striking feature is theincomplete, irregular, or absent hair development. Below thirty it ischubby and ruddy, and rather childish in its texture; after thirty, there is an effect of premature senility: the skin is yellowish, leathery, and wrinkled as the faces of old women are wrinkled: theupper lip is traversed by vertical wrinkles, and wrinkles come aroundcorners of the mouth. The expression is juvenile, effeminate orplaintive. 

Invariably the voice is higher pitched than the usual masculine tones. It may be gentle and subdued, like a genteel female's, or strident andrasping. Occasionally it is a pleasant high tenor. The Adam's apple, poetic popular name for the thyroid cartilage, is never prominent, because it is not ossified, as it should be in the normal male. 

Tall and slender, or generally undersized, the muscles are softand flabby as a woman's. The hands and feet are small and graciletypically. Viewed in profile, the lines of the body are feminine. Thebreasts may reach almost the size of the female's and there may be awell-marked area of pigmentation around the nipple. The hair growthunder the shoulders and on the lower abdomen tends to be scanty and toapproximate the opposite sex in quality and distribution, as do thereproductive organs themselves. 

These traits of physiognomy and physique indicate functionalhermaphroditism in the underlying feminoid constitution. The feminoidconstitution appears again in the supposedly masculine. The feminoidconstitution should not be confused with the infantiloid constitution. The former, the gonado-centric personality, is a digression of growth, a deviated evolution of the individual because of the conflictingforces, some masculine and some feminine, in his make-up. Theinfantiloid constitution is one of arrested development, and maycenter around the arrested function in childhood or adolescence ofany one or a number of endocrine glands. Yet the two may resemble oneanother pretty closely, at times. A cretin imitates the extreme gradeof infantiloid constitution. The infantiloid is a sort of enlarged andlengthened child. The feminoid is ostensibly a man, with a good dealof woman in him. The infantiloid is a quite general type, but ofcourse when typical is a freak, recognized and treated as such. Howfar the eunuchoid may deviate from the normal is suggested by thefollowing description of one. 

"Face rounded, moon-like, chubby, devoid of hair. Eyes puffed. Lipsprotruding and fleshy. Cheeks round and thick. Nose little developed. Skin thick and of clear color. Disproportion between the size of headand body. Hair of scalp fine. Brows and lashes scarce, trunk elongatedand cylindrical. Limbs thick and plump, tapering from the root to theextremities. Good fat layers over the entire body. Reproductive organsthose of a little boy. Infantile mental state: light-heartedness, naïvete, timidity, easily evoked tears and laughter, promptly arousedbut fugitive wrath: excessive tenderness, but unreasonable dislikes. "

An almost wholly mental infantiloid state or one purely physicalmay occur. Certain rather large Tom Thumbs belong to the group. Ineveryday life we see doll creatures, overgrown children, on everyhand. Mental measurements of any large group of population reveal aremarkable percentage of it as below the mental age of 12. Juveniletraits and juvenile mind, separate or combined, should always suggestthe possibility of the infantiloid constitution of one type ofthymocentric also. 

The eunuchoid or feminoid personality is also found often amongartists. One must carefully distinguish the two because the ensembleof characteristics of the one may easily stimulate the other. Yetfundamentally they are as far apart as the poles. The infantiloidtype never rises above the subnormal, which is its habitat, while thefeminoid type (or masculinoid, in woman) often produces an abnormalpersonality which rises above the normal. The infantiloids become theslaves and the weaklings of society, the Mark Tapleys, and the TomPinches, while the eunuchoids have created splendid literature andimmortal music. 

The life reactions, and especially the sex reactions of thegonado-centric, are as complex and difficult as those of thethymo-centric. Straightforward homosexuality and the eunuchoidconstitution have always been intimate. The homosexuality of thethymo-centric is more subtle and disguised, often buried under thestronger masculine component of the personality. 

Homosexuality as a cult has appeared correlated with the production ofthe functional hermaphrodite by artificially creating the eunuchoidtype of constitution. Among the Aztecs, homosexuals were producedin quantity for religious purposes by a deliberate fostering of theeunuchoid constitution. They called them the Mujerados. Their methodconsisted in making a healthy man ride horseback constantly, until anirritable weakness of the reproductive organs ensued, and a paralyticimpotence followed. The exhausted testes would then atrophy, and thevoice ring falsetto, muscular tone and energy diminish, inclinationsand habits become feminine. The Mujerado lost his position in societyas a man, assumed female clothing, manners and customs, and to allintents and purposes was treated as a woman. Their large breasts weresaid to be capable of lactation. Their only reward was the high honorpaid them as religious consecrates. 

Among the Phoenicians there was a similar sect, devoted to the worshipof Astarte. Known as the Galli, they were men who had transformedthemselves into the closest possible resemblance to women. At alltimes they were prepared to engage with members of either sex insexual relations of the most depraved kind. They lived in idleness asprostitutes, cultivating and extending their skill in sex perversionsas specialists. Their initiation into their professional careers wasa part of a religious ritual. During the revels of great festivals, apprentices to the trade, wrought up by certain traditional songs andmusic, would be hypnotised into a frenzy, run amuck, throw off everygarment, and, snatching up swords, deliberately placed in convenientspots, castrate themselves at one blow. In a wilder hysteria, screaming loudly, the self-made eunuchs would then run through thestreets holding the severed organs high above their heads. At last, faint through loss of blood, they brought their madness to its climaxby hurling the organs in their hands into the nearest houses, soforcing the owners to take them in, and provide them with femalewearing apparel, and the other feminine accoutrements of war. Henceforth, this manner of dress was not to be changed. The physicalchanges followed. The hair of the face was lost, the breasts enlarged, the voice became high-pitched, and the other type-characters of theeunuchoid complex appeared. 

These constitutions thus may be either congenital or acquired. Individuals apparently normal during childhood and adolescence maybe transformed. Injuries to the reproductive glands, sometimes theslightest bruises, may lead to atrophy, and a change of personalityfollows in less than six weeks. Mumps may achieve the same resultsbecause of the inflammation of the gonads that may accompany or followit. 

Whole family and races may show some of the signs of the eunuchoidconstitution for generations. According to Darwin (Descent of Man)"the development of the beard and the hairiness of the body differremarkably in the men of distinct races, and even in different tribes, and families of the same race. On the European-Asiatic continent, beards prevail, until we pass beyond India, although with thenatives of Ceylon they are often absent. .. . Eastward of India beardsdisappear, as with the Siamese, Kalmuks, Malays, Chinese, andJapanese. Throughout the great American continent the men may be saidto be beardless: but in almost all tribes a few short hairs are apt toappear on the face, especially in old age. .. . " Hair being an adrenalcortex trait, it is to be inferred that hairless families and racesare more eunuchoid, and possess less of the adrenal cortex secretionthan the more hairy. 

Whatever the exceptions--and there have been eunuch generals inhistory--Marces, Chancellor of Justinian, who beat the Goths atNocera, and Ali the Gallant who commanded the Turkish Army after theinvasion of Hungary in 1856--the eunuchoid generally runs to type inhis mentality and his sexuality. He is an introvert, his personalityis shut in, he isolates himself from the world. 

The lower eunuchoids exhibit a curiously child-like personality. Naïvely confiding, communicating to all comers all their joys andsorrows, they ask diffidently for confirmation of their statements, and they pass quickly from tears to laughter. About sexual mattersthey are extremely timid. A moral innocence pervades their speech andconduct. Usually they have no true conception of crimes of jealousyor passion. The occupations they go in for are those withoutresponsibility away from crowds or observation, such as ship cooks, stewards, and so on. They marry to find a home, without the object ofestablishing sexual relations. When they are asked whether they thinktheir wives will be pleased to look at the matter in the same light, and be contented to live with a man upon such conditions, they arepuzzled or perplexed, as if they had never thought seriously aboutthe matter before. Their simplicity has even extended to proposing totheir wives to seek gratification from some other man. Naturally, suchan arrangement often proves unsatisfactory, and desertion follows. 

Concerning the children sometimes the offspring of these unions, scepticism as to the identity of the father is decidedly permissible. Still in some cases the best of evidence exists that fertility occurs. The vitality of the children then is subnormal and the mortalityrate high. The eunuchoid tendency is transmitted. Variations andtransitions of every kind are found among the undersexed eunuchoidpersonalities, depending upon the quality and degree of the secretionslacking. 

When there is an excess of these sex secretions, a turbulent, tempestuous, sexually sensitive temperament, that may go on tosatyriasis or nymphomania, is created. It has been shown that dovescan be rendered overfeminine in their behaviour and characteristicsby injections of ovarian material. Oversexed types of personalitytherefore may exist as well as undersexed. 

COMBINATIONS AND PERMUTATIONS

The types of personality sketched--the thyrocentric, thepituitocentric, the adrenocentric, the thymocentric, thegonadocentric--are really prototypes, the great kingdoms ofpersonality, to which individuals can be assigned, by hall marks whichfacilitate their classification. They may also be described as thepure endocrine types, which include a minority of a population. Butthe majority consist of dominant mixtures, hyphenates, groups whichare the species and varieties of the greater classes. Combinations andvariations of control among the adrenals and thyroid, pituitary orthymus, and so on, occur, with effects that are sometimes additive, reinforcing a particular trait of the person, and at othersconflicting, and neutralizing. Quantitative variations of the samesecretion may occur periodically in the same individual, whichexplains the multiplicity and complexity, the inconsistency andcontradictions of conduct in a man or woman at the different episodesand crises of life, to a certain extent. 

There should be a stable balance between the various endocrines, thestability expressing itself in what we are pleased to call the normal. There should also be a balance between the antagonistic elements inthe same gland; for instance, the pituitary. The pituitary, builtof two distinct portions, the anterior and the posterior, is inequilibrium when the two are nicely adjusted. But the accidents andvicissitudes of life (pregnancy for example) will upset the balance. And so there will result changes of physique, conduct and character. Like possibilities apply to all the other glands of internalsecretion. In our ability to exercise a control over thesedisturbances of balance, to be developed in the future, lies oneof the great hopes for a chemical perfectability of human life andnature. 

NATURE'S EXPERIMENTS VS. MAN'S

The kinds of personality described, as prototypes and variants and thefundamental facts supporting the view that they are the reaction typesof the human beings we meet in everyday life, represent simply abeginning of the work to be done. Putting into our hands a newpowerful searchlight that penetrates the interiors of body and soul, afresh attitude toward the complicated problems of Man in society growsimminent. The normal and the abnormal become illuminated with aneffect as if our retinas were suddenly to get sensitive to theultraviolet rays to which we are now blind. An apparatus is put in ourhands which shows us not only a static condition at a given moment, but the whole life process of an individual, normal or abnormal, hispast and his future. 

Upon that fetich of the biologists, the struggle for existence, thestruggle for survival, the struggle for possessions and satisfactions, for happiness, victory and virility, in short, for success, as successis measured by the biologists, a searching spectroscope can play, witha yield for our understanding and control of life, that will standcomparison with the astronomer's analysis of the stars. Toward theprocess of adjustment and adaptation, of the environment to theindividual, as well as of the individual to the environment, attitudeswill change from _hopeless acquiescence in the inevitable to acomplete self-determination of the self and its surroundings. _ Theadventures of the personality, strung along as the episodes of hiscareer, his friendships and sex reactions, his mishaps and diseases, and the final fate or fortune that overtakes him, be he normal, subnormal, supernormal, or abnormal, begin to become comprehensible, and hence controllable. 

CHAPTER XI

SOME HISTORIC PERSONAGES

THE INTERNAL SECRETIONS IN HISTORY

According to the views, facts and guesses concerning humanpersonality, as a body-mind complex dominated by the internalsecretions, outlined in the preceding pages, biography, and humanhistory as the interaction of biographies, become capable ofinterpretation from a new standpoint. If human life, in itsessentials, is so much the product of the internal messenger system wespeak of as the endocrines, then biography should present us with anumber of illustrations of their power and influence. What is theevidence that, as Huxley anticipated, "the introduction into theeconomy of a molecular mechanism which, like a cunningly contrivedtorpedo, shall find its way to some particular group of livingelements, and cause an explosion among them, leaving the restuntouched, " and the multiplication of such cunningly contrivedmechanisms, were responsible for those personalities, magnificentchemical compounds, with whose adventures historians are concerned?

THE CASE OF NAPOLEON

As a unique will and intelligence, Napoleon Bonaparte the First mustbe classed as one of the Betelegeuses of the race. H. G. Wells hascalled his career the "raid of an intolerable egotist across thedisordered beginning of a new time. " "The figure of an adventurer andwrecker. " "This saturnine egotist. " "Are men dazzled simply by thescale of his flounderings, by the mere vastness of his notoriety?""This dark little archaic personage, hard, compact, capable, unscrupulous, imitative and neatly vulgar. " There are other opinions. The Man of Destiny was worshipped by millions. Napoleona bringfortunes today. Interest in the man as a man has multiplied with everyyear. And certainly no one can deny him the quality of individualityin its most exaggerated form. 

In the second place he belongs among the moderns. Modern science andmethods of observation have had their chance at him, and have left aconscious record of their results. Napoleon was the central figure ofhis time, and was watched by trained medical eyes during his life, and after his death. Protocols of the examination of his body areaccessible, and Napoleonic specimens, preserved by fixing agents, may still be viewed at the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, England. Dr. Leonard Guthrie has worked up the material at hand ina report which he presented to the historical section of theInternational Congress of Medicine, in London in 1913. I propose torelate his findings to some other facts and the general principlesroughly sketched in this book. 

There are a number of word portraits of Napoleon extant. But for ourpurposes certain of the notable features of his face and physique areto be considered. The first characteristic that struck everyone abouthim was the matter of his height. He was definitely sub-average, at death being about five feet six inches in height. As has beenemphasized several times, deficiency or excess of growth will alwaysdirect attention to the pituitary. His sharply outlined features anda powerful lower jaw, combined with oddly small plump hands, longstraight black hair, and dark complexion, all point to the pituitary, with a secondary adrenal effect. His pulse was slow, according toCorvisart, his personal physician, rarely above 50 to the minute. Hissexual life, his libido, was abnormal. Curiously explosive in theirappearance and manifestations were his sexual impulses. They "besethim on occasions which were sometimes inconvenient, and a peculiarityabout them was that they subsided with equal suddenness if notimmediately gratified, or if meanwhile something occurred todiscourage his attention. All women were to him 'filles de joie. 'Sexual rather than social attractions in women appealed to him. "He was never in love, never possessed of permanent affection ortenderness for any woman. This explosive periodicity of the sexuallife, "with a tendency to compression of it to the merely physical, "is another mark of some pituitary-centered personalities. 

Two other phenomena that persisted throughout his life throw lightupon his endocrine constitution. One was trouble with his bladderwhich he told Antommarchi, another physician, bothered him as long ashe could remember. Irritability of the bladder was so pronounced thathe could not sleep for more than a few hours at a time. After battles, the trouble became worse so that it interfered with his riding. Constitutional difficulties in urination have been connecteddefinitely with the function of the pituitary. The other pituitarydisturbances which tinctured his life were certain "brain storms, "attacks of vomiting followed by "stupor verging on unconsciousness"brought on by outbursts of temper, physical overexertion, mentalstrain, or sexual excitement. It has been shown that such epileptictendencies are present in subjects of pituitary disease, particularlythose with pituitary instability. In Napoleon's case the brain attacksmay have been crises of pituitary insufficiency in a hyper-pituitarytype. This supposition is borne out by the headache which followedthem, the headache of an oversecreting pituitary compensating fora defect in its formation. During his prime, his intellect wasmathematical, logical, and rational, and remarkable for a prodigiousmemory. Such an intellect is the product of an extraordinaryante-pituitary. That he never permitted feeling to interfere withthe dictates of his judgment, a quality which rendered him themost unscrupulous careerist of history, must be put down to aninsufficiency of the post-pituitary. What post-pituitary does to thebrain cells and the organism as a whole to render them susceptibleto sympathy and suggestion, the social sublimations of the maternalinstinct, with its offsprings of religion and art, we have seen. Napoleon lacked a chemical trace of the religious instinct, hissympathy was nil, and his conquests were made possible only because hewas blind to the suffering and misery his greed for glory and dominiongenerated. Post-pituitary insufficients of this type, patent orconcealed, gradually become corpulent as they grow older. Theincreasing corpulency of Napoleon was commented upon by all observers. 

A student of his make-up, and acquainted with present developmentsconcerning the internal secretions, given an opportunity to observehim as we have when he was alive, and at the height of his success, would have had every reason for classing him a pituitary-centered, ante-pituitary superior, post-pituitary inferior, with an instabilityof both that would lead to his final degeneration. Besides, hisinsatiable energy indicated an excellent thyroid, his pugnacity, animality and genius for practical affairs a superb adrenal. Given thekind of pituitary he possessed, with its great intellectual potentialenergy and the relation between the two parts which would further theobjects of an intellectual machine, plus a remarkable thyroid andadrenal, plus the military education Napoleon had, and the characterof the Revolution into which he was plunged, and we have theconditions out of which his career emerged as inevitable. 

That it was his pituitary which first failed him, rather than thethyroid or adrenal, which might have, is demonstrated by a number ofconsiderations. Before he made himself Emperor, it was noticed that hewas becoming fat, a pituitary symptom. A comparison of portraits atdifferent stages of his rise and fall shows an increasing abdominalpaunch, and a laying down of fat in the pituitary areas, around thehips, the legs and so on. The beginning of weakness in judgment thathe was to exhibit soon in the invasion of Russia manifested itself atthe same time. His keen calculating ability attained the peak of itscurve at Austerlitz, Jena and Friedland. Thereafter, the descentbegins. A rash, grandiose, speculative quality enters his projects, and divorces the elaborate coordination of means and end from hisplans. That his thyroid energy capacity did not fail him is indicatedby the fact that at St. Albans he would ride for three hours at theend of the day to tire himself sufficiently for sleep. That hisadrenals were not affected is indicated by the brutality whichremained characteristic to the end of his life. 

The findings after death confirm the view of him as an unstablepituitocentric who succumbed to pituitary insufficiency toward thelatter half of his life. We possess the account of the postmortem byDr. Henry, who performed it. "The whole surface of the body was deeplycovered with fat. Over the sternum, where generally the bone is verysuperficial, the fat was upwards of an inch deep, and an inch and ahalf or two inches on the abdomen. There was scarcely any hair on thebody, and that of the head was thin, fine and silky. The whole genitalsystem (very small) seemed to exhibit a physical cause for the absenceof sexual desire, and the chastity which had been stated to havecharacterized the deceased (during his stay at St. Helena). The skinwas noticed to be very white and delicate as were the hands and arms. Indeed the whole body was slender and effeminate. The pubis muchresembled the Mons Veneris in women. The muscles of the chest weresmall, the shoulders were narrow and the hips wide. " In other words, the typical feminization of the body which accompanies pituitaryinsufficiency was found. He died of a cancer of the stomach. Butbefore his death there were noted the mental transformations thatsucceed deficiency of his central endocrine. Apathy, indolence, fatigability, and frilosity were what impressed his associates at St. Helena. The deterioration of his mentality was also exemplified in hisliterary diversions, the "Siege of Troy" and the "Essay on Suicide. "The puerility of these productions, as well as of his conduct, asulking before his captors, and the decline of his physical energy, once a bottomless well, all point to the same conclusion. 

The rise and fall of Napoleon followed the rise and fall of hispituitary gland. No better illustration exists of the fundamentaldetermination of a personality and its career by an endocrine, aside from other factors of education, environment, accident andopportunity. Without the sort of endocrine equipment he was born with, however, none of the other factors would have found the material towork upon. Born, say, with more of a posterior pituitary than he had, which would have rendered him more sensitive to the sufferings of hisfellow-creatures, if nothing else, and the forces of the Revolutionprobably would have swamped him from the very first moment of hisemergence at Toulon, when the whiff of grape-shot, symptom of aninexorable, merciless intellect and will, started him upon the roadthat led to the Napoleonic Era. Destiny is always ironic. For thedeficiency of the internal secretions which made him eligible forglory was responsible as well as for his downfall. 

EPILEPSY AND MIGRAINE IN GENIUS

In the annals of genius, there occur a number of instances of thosewho suffered from attacks that have been diagnosed epilepsyor migraine. Because their ailment was associated with theirextraordinary ability, they attracted an attention that concerneditself not at all with the circumstance that genius has also beenliable to measles, scarlet fever, and so on. Epilepsy and migrainecertainly occur in people of no supernormal gifts, and often indegenerates and subnormals. Yet the fact remains that these affectionsof the nervous system, so terrible to feel and to behold, haveafflicted the finest brains of the race. 

About forty years ago the idea established itself that epilepsy, exhibiting itself in one form or another as "fits, " and migraine, thesevere periodic sick headache, were interconvertible manifestations ofthe same underlying morbid process in the brain. Nothing in the wayof a concrete cause, attackable on the material side, was elicited bythis generalization. Then the investigations of the pituitary in thelast decade produced evidence of epilepsy-like and migraine-likesymptoms in sufferers from tumors or other enlargements of it. Reasoning back, cases of epilepsy and migraine began to be examinedfor evidences of involvement of the pituitary in their troubles. These accumulated rapidly. The physiognomy and physique of thepituito-centric were discovered in them. The phenomena noted inNapoleon's case were often present: lowering of the pulse, chilliness, and an increased irritability of the bladder. In women the attackoften coincides with the menstrual period, a typical time of endocrineunbalance. Finally X-ray examinations of the sella turcica, the bonylodging of the pituitary, clinched the matter: it often appearedsmall, or enlarged, with erosions of the bone, signifying a desperateattempt of the gland to grow, and meet the needs of the organism. Thecomplex of appearances called migraine now becomes understandable. There are a number of factors, such as fatigue, intense cold, or highsugar food like chocolate, which will cause an engorgement of thegland with blood and swelling of it. But they do not concern us now. Intense mental occupation, concentration as the popular term has it, acts as a patent excitor of the attack. 

Brain work drives more blood into the brain and the gland. Besides, mental activity is accompanied by increased function of theante-pituitary, if intellectual, or of the post-pituitary ifemotional. Brain work then causes a temporary enlargement of thegland. If, now, the bone container of the endocrine is too small topermit of much swelling, the bone will be pressed against or even worninto. This means headache, severe, easily going on to the kind knownas sick-headache. The nerves which move the eyes in various directionslie next to the pituitary. If, in its expansion, it moves sufficientlyoutward, it may press upon, irritate them or paralyze, and so evolvevarious eye disturbances in association with the headache. No one canoverrate this conception of migraine, for a number of men of geniushave suffered from sick-headache and eye symptoms. 

As for epilepsy, the problem is more complex. One has to rule outfirst those who have organic destructive disease of the brain. Butthey are out of our field: genius predicates at least an intact brain. Of the others a number may be interpreted upon an endocrine basis. Atleast they will, in their physiognomy, physique, mentality, conductand character, document the glandular constellation under which theylive, and a proper understanding of which is necessary for them to behelped. One frequently seen is the thymo-centric, with small enclosedsella turcica. The latter fact explains the occurrence of theepilepsy. Periodic variations in the secretory tides of the otherendocrines, the ovaries, the thyroid, and so on, may determine theonset of the attack of "fits. " The point is that when epilepsy plays aconstant part in the life history of a man of genius, we are justifiedin assuming a disturbed balance among his hormones, and so a reasonedpicture perhaps of the foundations for the erratic in his behaviour orhis productions. 

THE NEURASTHENIC GENIUS

The fin de siècle intelligentsia of the nineteenth century were quitestirred up by a publication of Max Nordau on "Degeneration, " in whicha number of revered artists and intelligents were held up to publicscorn as degenerates and neurasthenics. So wrought up were they, infact, that Bernard Shaw was moved to compose a defense entitled "TheSanity of Art. " In spite of the Great Vegetarian's dialectics, itremains to be explained why a certain species of creative ability hasbeen combined with the fatigability, variability and general wretchedirritability of every organ and tissue in the body which taught themthat they were sensitive souls imprisoned in the flesh. Going fromdoctor to doctor as from pillar to post, from this medical creed tothat hygienic cult, lucky to escape the worst, often landing upon thebosom of New Thought for succor. We have noted in previous chaptersthe relation of neurasthenia to the glands of internal secretionin general, and to adrenal insufficiency in particular. A closerexamination of neurasthenic genius will show it to consist essentiallyof a pituitocentric in whom for one reason or another, congenital (thepersistence of the thymus) or acquired (shocks, accidents, diseases)there has been failure of the adrenals, thyroid or the interstitialcells, about in the order of their occurrence. 

THE CASE OF NIETZSCHE

Friedrich Nietzsche is about as good a case as there is on record of agenius blasted by migraine. The originality and force of his mind, aswell as the articulate music of an imaginative poet, places Nietzscheamong the philosophic elect of the race. Showing that he was anunstable pituitary-centered of a certain type will throw light uponhis malady, as well as upon his life and work. 

In a set of volumes, entitled Biographic Clinics, Dr. George M. Gouldof Philadelphia contended that the ill health of a number of men andwomen of genius of the nineteenth century was due to unconnected eyetroubles. In attempting to bolster up his thesis he has collectedbiographic material useful to the student of personality. He neverappears to have asked himself what was behind the eye trouble. Theevidence relating to Nietzsche's endocrine personality is derived fromsome of the data he collected, as well as from the two volume life ofthe philosopher written by his sister, and the other biographies ofhim extant. 

To reconstruct the endocrine formula or equation of Nietzscheinductively, one should analyze first the information availableconcerning his parents and relatives. His grandfather was aconservative bourgeois of a superior type, who was the author oftreatises designed to narcotize the forces of rebellion of his time. What he was like physically, no epitaph declares. His father was aclergyman. A description of him reads . .. "tall and slender, with anoble and poetic personality, and a peculiar talent for music . .. Short-sighted. " That ranks him at once as a pituito-centric. The mother was dark and had a fiery temper and came of a familydistinguished for the powerfully built anatomy of its members. Inthe heredity of Nietzsche, the father appears therefore to supplya pituitary predominating element, the mother an adrenal-pituitarypredominating element. 

Nietzsche himself worked strenuously at the intellectual life (after20, when he probably stopped growing, and the brain tonic action ofthe ante-pituitary could manifest itself). Early distinction rewardedhim with a professorship in philology at 24. One of Prussia's warsof conquest entangled him, and presented him with diphtheria. Afriendship with Richard Wagner marked the turning point of his life, and the point of departure for his works on the most fundamentalvalues of human life. Meanwhile, attacks of sick-headache of varyingdegrees of severity made him miserable periodically--they came aboutevery two weeks and lasted two to three days--and left him wretchedand exhausted. At last, at 44, a species of stroke terminated hissufferings, causing him to lose his speech and memory, and thenceforththere was progressive deterioration, physical and spiritual, withrepeated attacks. 

In the sister's biography there are several good photographs andreproductions of sculptures of Nietzsche at different ages. Anexamination of the frontispiece picture, which shows him in profile(profile views are the best for physiognomy), as well as of the bustof Nietzsche by Donndorf, exhibit the most striking traits of thehead. To the student of internal secretions, the most prominentfeature of the face, emphasized by both the camera and the artist, is the remarkable prominence of the supra-orbital arches, the bonyprotuberances from which the eyebrows spring. This is a definitepituitary character. The eyebrows themselves are luxurious and slopeto meet, the bony development of the face as a whole is sharp andclean-cut, the skull tends to be long and narrow and the chin issquare. All these point to a pituitary-centered personality. It is tobe regretted that we have no picture or record of Nietzsche caughtsmiling, which would have preserved the state of his teeth for us. Atany rate, considered as checks to my interpretation, his physiognomyand physique, the nature of his genius and the attacks which finallyruined his life, all fit into the conception of him as one whose lifecentered, like Napoleon's, around what was happening in his sellaturcica. 

The attacks of sick-headache, diagnosable symptomatically asmigraine, were so devastating that in 1883, after the printing of hismasterpiece, "Also Sprach Zarathustra, " he wrote "My life has beena complete failure. " Extracts from his letters, collected by Gould, provide some idea of his suffering. In 1888, just before his stroke, he said, "I have in my eyes a dynamometer of my entire condition. "

The history of Nietzsche's eye trouble makes it probable that notsimply a defect in his eyes themselves, but a deeper condition behindthem was responsible. Up to the age of 15 he was a model scholar. Essential eye defects of refraction should make themselves felt duringchildhood. Then, with adolescence, he changed. Adolescence is oneof the red-letter epochs for the pituitary, when its growth andenlargement precedes and stimulates the ripening of the sex cellsin the reproductive organs. Until adolescence ended and physicaldevelopment ceased, his intellectual interests were nil, and he wasparticularly backward in mathematics. Colds and coughs, and recurringpains in the head and eyes bothered him (colds and coughs are frequentin those whose pituitary expansion is limited by the bony sellaturcica to any extent). After his puberty, migraine definitely becamehis demon companion. Following the diphtheria in the army (whichmust have damaged his adrenals), the attacks grew much worse, andcomplaints about them more bitter because the pituitary now, inaddition to its own burden, had to compensate for the insufficientadrenals. So "his frequent illness made him more and more a subject oftreatment and commiseration. .. . If only my eyes would hold out . .. It seems to me at the age of 30 as if I had lived 60 years . .. Veryfrequent sufferings of stomach, head and eyes . .. Acidity oppressesme, and everything except the tenderest food becomes acid. .. . I cannotdoubt that I am the victim of a serious cerebral disease, and thatstomach and eyes suffer only from this central cause . .. Half-deadwith pain and exhaustion. " In December 1888, he fell, had to behelped home, lay silent for two days, then became loud, active andunbalanced. The attack was preceded by the drinking of much water. 

The specific quality of the Nietzsche genius also directs attention toa pituitocentric, to a pituitocentric in whom both ante-pituitary andpost-pituitary are extraordinarily well-functioning, but are in astate of unbalance in which the post-pituitary gets the upper hand. Now, as we have seen, the post-pituitary makes for that instabilityof association between the brain cells which must be at the bottom oforiginality and creative thought, as well as of phobias, obsessions, hysterias and hallucinations. Persons in whom the post-pituitarypredominates have a lively fancy and are liable to suffer from thetricks of association. Nietzsche, as we have noted, was poor inmathematics and in the calm cool proportioned forward march ofscientific thought in general. His most brilliant ideas came to him inflashes and gleams. That is why so much of his work has come down tous in the form of aphorisms and paragraphs. He was, essentially, apoet among the metaphysicians, which again favors the conception ofhim as a pituitary-centered with a dominant post-pituitary. Yet hisincisive critical faculty, as well as his love of music, also documentthe supernormal ante-pituitary. 

To sum up, the physique and physiognomy of Nietzsche, his migraineattacks and the later fate which overtook him, his likes anddislikes, his tastes, abilities and accomplishments followed from hiscomposition as one pituitary-centered, with post-pituitary domination, a superior thyroid, and inferior adrenals. 

DARWIN AS A NEURASTHENIC GENIUS

Charles Darwin, as the author of the "Origin of Species" and thegreatest revolutionist of the nineteenth century, has naturally hada great deal of attention paid to his life and personality. Yet notuntil the publication of his Autobiography and his son's Reminiscenceswas it generally known that he suffered from chronic ill health formost of his adult life. Dr. W. A. Johnston, in an article in the_American Anthropologist_, 1901, has marshalled a number of availablefacts, to sustain his thesis that Darwin was a victim of neurasthenia. Now neurasthenia, it is now accepted, is simply a waste-basket word, corresponding to the class miscellaneous in a classification of anygroup of real objects. And, as has been emphasized in precedingchapters, most neurasthenia rises upon a disturbed endocrinefoundation, most often, an insufficiency of the adrenals. That is, adefect in the chain of co-operation, balance and compensation amongthe internal secretions is the basis for the weakness of the nervoussystem the term neurasthenia is supposed to explain, actually onlynames. Darwin's case was pretty certainly that. 

There can be no doubt that Darwin had an abnormal fatigability, a lackof stamina and endurance in mental as well as physical applicationwhich plagued him from the late twenties to the sixties. As a child, he was strong and healthy, fond of outdoors, and though underrated byhis teachers, noted to be possessed of intense curiosity, especiallyconcerning natural objects. At school he was a fleet runner andcultivated a habit of long walks. Then he was surely no neurasthenic. Three years which, he himself afterwards said, were worse than wasted, at Cambridge, were filled with shooting, riding and hunting. His goodhealth lasted until the time he probably stopped growing at 21 or 22. Thereafter his troubles began. 

What was Darwin, so far as his endocrine composition was concerned?In the first place his father was a variety of pituitocentric, of thepost-pituitary inferior type, six feet two inches tall, exceedinglycorpulent, and, in the eyes of his son, the sharpest of observers andthe most sympathetic of men. He wished to make a physician out of hisson in order to carry on the medical tradition of the family: ErasmusDarwin was a physician before him. His son, however, showed noinclination for so learned and confining a profession and had tobe reproached by his father in these immortal words: "You care fornothing but shooting dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be adisgrace to yourself and all your family. "

Cambridge came after Edinburgh, as he was rushed from medicine intothe clergy. But in vain. A friendship struck up with a naturalist, Henslow, settled his career for him. Henslow heard of a trip ofgeneral exploration the ship _Beagle_ was to take and recommendedDarwin as naturalist. The captain at first would not hear of theproposal because of Darwin's nose, a typical pituitary proboscis. Buthis prejudices were overcome, and Darwin sailed. 

It was upon this voyage that Darwin made himself the greatestnaturalist of all time, and at the same time infected himself withthe virus of neurasthenia. At Plymouth, while waiting for the ship tosail, he complained of palpitation and pain about the heart, probablydue to a transient hyperthyroidism, brought on by excitement. Duringthe voyage, which lasted five years, he was afflicted often bysea-sickness. A ship-mate relates that after spending an hour with themicroscope he would say "Old Fellow, I must take the horizontal forit" and lie down. He would stretch out on one side of the table, thenresume his labors for a while when he again had to lie down. Alreadyfatigability had to be fed with rest. A serious illness that Darwinclaimed affected every secretion of his body acted probably as theexhausting drain upon his adrenal potential. 

The return to England was the date of onset for a record of continuousillness, aggravated by his marriage, apparently, for his miseryincreased progressively after it. So much so that he was forced toleave London altogether so as to avoid the strain of social life, eventhat of meeting his scientific friends or attending scientific societymeetings fatiguing him to exhaustion. After such occasions there wouldbe attacks of violent shivering, with vomiting and giddiness. It wasnecessary for him to impose upon himself an absolute régime of dailyroutine. Any interference with it upset him completely, and made itimpossible for him to do any work. Early morning was the only time forphysical as we; as mental exertion. Evening found him thoroughly usedup, with every move an effort. Insomnia made him its prey. A curioussensitiveness to heat and cold distressed him. In 1859, when the"Origin of Species" appeared, he wrote to a friend that his health hadquite failed, and that indigestion, headaches, with a looming hopelessbreakdown of body and mind made his life a burden and a curse. Thetwenty years of research he devoted to the problems of evolution wereone long torture. For sixteen more years, during which he worked uponand produced immortal classics of biology, he was the most wretchedand unhappy sufferer from neurasthenia. His life was a continuousalternation of small doses of work and large doses of rest. So hewas enabled to publish twenty-three volumes of original writing andfifty-one scientific papers. Living a sort of quasi-sanitarium life, with the rules and regulations of one undergoing a rest cure forthirty-six years, he thus accomplished infinitely more than themillions who have led the strenuous life. That he thus survived, as agenius, among the perils of an intellectual nature in an environmentfor which his adrenals sentenced him to destruction, must be put downin large measure to the ministrations and good sense of wife andchildren who supplied him with the endocrine energy he lacked. Allthese details I have given in the attempt to analyze the internalsecretion constitution of this great man of genius, to establish thathe really suffered from inadequate function of his adrenal glands, forthe symptoms of chronic though benign adrenal insufficiency coincidein their mass effect with the story of his life. He was not a goodanimal, as Herbert Spencer declared was a first sine qua non of thesuccessful life. He was a poor animal, the poorest of animals, becausehe possessed poor adrenals. What saved him was his congenitallysuperior pituitary (the nidus of genius) and the overacting thyroid, which combined to compensate to some extent for his fundamental lack. According to his son he rose early because he could not lie in bed, and he would have liked to get up earlier than he did. 

What other hints have we that in spite of his fatigue disease he wasa pituitocentric? The record of his physique and physiognomy, documentary and that left in portraits and photographs. He was talland thin and his frame was naturally strong and large. Face was ruddy, and his grey eyes looked out from under deep overhanging brows andbushy eyebrows. The ears were large and prominent, the hair straight, the nose broad and well developed. All these are distinctive pituitarytraits. The photograph of him taken by Maull and Fox in 1854 shows hischin to be the square firm kind that goes with the ante-pituitary typephysique. (This photo is the frontispiece of the collection of essaysentitled "Darwinism and Modern Science, " edited by A. C. Seward andpublished in 1909). Charles Darwin, we may say, then, lived thelife of one with a hyperfunctioning pituitary, the anterior portiondominating the posterior, a thyroid excess, and an adrenal muchdeficient, the combination settling the fate of a grand intellectin an invalid. It is interesting to note that an extant portraitof Erasmus Darwin, Darwin's distinguished grandfather, shows apituitocentric, but with a rounder head and a fatter face, which pointto a predominance of the post-pituitary over the ante-pituitary. Correspondingly, he was more speculative and poetic intellectuallythan his grandson, and more irascible and imperious in his moods. 

After 1872, when Charles Darwin was sixty-three years old, a markedchange for the better occurred in his health. For the last ten yearsof his life the condition of his health was a cause of satisfactionand hope to his family. "He was able to work more steadily with lessfatigue and distress afterwards. " This is probably to be explained asfollowing the gonadopause hi him--the cessation of activity of theinterstitial cells. After this event, the adrenals in the male nearlyalways function more efficiently, and well being is improved eventhough the blood pressure often rises coincidently. In the relativevigor of that decade we have another bit of evidence that the adrenalshad much to say over Darwin's life. 

EPILEPTIC GENIUS

 He had a fever when he was in Spain And, when the fit was on him, I did mark How he did shake: 'tis true, this god did shake His coward lips did from their color fly; And that same eye whose bend doth awe the world, Did lose his lustre: I did hear him groan. 

 --Julius Caesar. 

Epilepsy, the "falling sickness" or "fits, " is generally associatedwith a deterioration or degeneration of mentality, and an inferiorpersonality is frequently an ingredient. Progressively increasing dataaccumulate to incriminate more and more a disturbance of the endocrinebalance, on the side of multiple deficiencies, as the basic mechanismat the bottom of a good many of them. Concurrent studies reveal thatabnormalities of the thyroid, the parathyroids, the ovaries andtestes, and even the thymus exist behind the attack. Investigation ofthe content of the consciousness of the different kinds of epilepsiesfrom this point of view will doubtless bring to light some interestinginformation. There is much to be done for the epileptic with this newmethod of approach. 

Epilepsy, just the same, may occur in men gifted with the sort oftranscendent ability called genius. Mohammed, Lord Byron, Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, to name a few cases, are famous instances. The point to besettled is whether epileptic genius, that is epilepsy with superiorability, occurs most often in pituitocentrics, the epilepsy beingsymptomatic of a pituitary struggling against barriers, tuggingagainst bonds. As mentioned, in such cases epilepsy appears as thetwin brother of migraine in genius. Should that be established, we should have more evidence for the pituitary dominance of mostspecimens of intellectual power. As a case in point let us take themost famous of the epileptic geniuses--Julius Caesar, "When the fitwas on I marked how he did shake; tis true, this god did shake. "

According to Plutarch, Julius Caesar was of slender build, fair-complexioned, pale, emaciated, of a delicate constitution(reminding us of Darwin), subject to severe headache and violentattacks of epilepsy. In view of the work of Cushing, the concurrenceof "severe headache and violent attacks of epilepsy" is sharplysuggestive of a pituitary origin for both. In his seventeenth yearhe was already engaged to be married, which proves his precocity. Anoveractive, erratic pituitary could here also be held responsible. Soon after he was proscribed by the dictator Sulla, and the first ofa series of epileptic convulsions is recorded. Shock tries thepituitary, as well as the adrenals. 

His sexual libido was of the quality that stimulated his soldiers tosing celebrations of his exploits. The first woman he was engaged tobe jilted. Cornelia, his first wife, he divorced on the ground that"Caesar's wife must be above suspicion. " Matrimony committed twicethereafter landing him in the divorce court, he devoted himself toliaisons, one with Cleopatra. This sexual hyperactivity was probablyanother pituitary trait. 

The compound of intellectual and practical ability he realized wasof the rarest. It meant a most delicate balance between hisante-pituitary, post-pituitary, adrenals and thyroid. He was anorator, politician, historian, conqueror, and statesman. That histhyroid functioned well can be deduced from a career which involvedmore than three hundred personal triumphs as recognition from hisnative city. On horseback, riding without using his hands, he wouldoften dictate to two or three secretaries at once. The masculine loveof glory and ambition, expression of a well-working ante-pituitary, was combined with the effeminate echoes of an equally well-evolvedpost-pituitary. No prima donna was more concerned with the care ofher skin, complexion and hair than he. The analogy extends even tosuperfluous hair which he had removed, not by the modern electrolysis, but by depilation with forceps and main force. The attendants athis bath would polish his epidermis, for his satisfaction, until itresembled alabaster or marble. 

Caesar was not the kind of great man that Darwin was, and onlya rather muddled careerist because he had too much adrenal andpost-pituitary. But he was pituitocentric of a certain type. Wepossess no authentic portraits or busts of him to go by. But the bustin the Museum of Naples, for which he probably sat (some, H. G. Wellsamong them, will not accept this), presents the sort of face that isoften seen in pituitary epileptics, and the features and skull of apituitocentric: long, large, well-modeled head eyebrows prominent, with tendency to meet, aquiline nose and strong chin. 

In these three, Napoleon, Nietzsche and Caesar, we have malepituitocentrics, exhibiting diversities of life and tastes because ofdifferences in the co-working endocrine glands in their makeup. Weshall consider now a female pituitocentric who presents the strangestcontrasts in physique, physiognomy, conduct and character, dependentupon a variation in the balance between the two portions of thepituitary. 

THE LEGEND OF FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

All biographies consist of prevarications and all autobiographiesof fiction. That summing up of a mass of literature over whichindustrious students have ruined their eyes, held good until after theWar, when things changed. Then Mr. Lytton Strachey, at one fell blow, and with one magnificent masterpiece, hurdled the old idols andestablished a new standard of deliberate accuracy in print. In his"Eminent Victorians" he set the pace for the host of those who havebeen stimulated by his good example, like Lady Margot Asquith. 

Of the four Victorian respectable worthies Strachey has dissected asruthlessly as the anatomist a post-mortem, his portrait of FlorenceNightingale, the founder of the modern science and art of nursing, ismost interesting because it provides data of the utmost value tothe student of the endocrine basis of human personality. In theconventional two-volume biography of this superwoman, she is picturedas an intellectual saint, stepped from a stained glass window upon herwonderful visit to a clay-smeared earth. The biographer, presentingall the ins and outs of her body and soul as he has, makes her livebefore us with a fresh vitality that is startling. 

The species of life Florence Nightingale lived, involving as it didstruggle with a masculine world, and conquest of it, implies theexistence in her of certain masculine traits and marks, for the normalfeminine psyche is submissive rather than aggressive toward itsenvironment, human and otherwise. Belonging to a family in the highestcircles, it was upon the table d'hôte of her destiny that she shouldbecome a regulation debutante, careeristina, and successful wife andmother. Instead, she chose to question the whole routine of the lifeof her class, and in her diary she records her doubts and cravings, and her revolt against what is assumed by her family and friends to bethe normal course of existence for her. The attitudes and questioningsin these passages, the religious feeling displayed, are distinctlymasculine. Most easily could the following, for instance, pass ashaving been written by a man: "I desire for a considerable time onlyto lead a life of obscurity and toil, for the purpose of allowingwhatever I may have received of God to ripen, and turning it some dayto the glory of His Name. Nowadays people are too much in a hurryboth to produce and consume themselves. It is only in retirement, insilence, in meditation that are formed the _men_ who are called toexercise an influence upon society. " In a note-book she puts May 7, 1852, as the date upon which she was conscious of a call from Godto be a saviour. Now the vast majority of women who have remainedspinsters at 32, in spite of considerable personal attractions andhigh natural ability, are visited by waves of emotional fervor for ade-personalization of the self. But in the case of the subject, asStrachey has so well shown, the call was pursued with a self-willed, pitiless, unscrupulous determination, worthy of Satan himself upon themost ferocious evil bent. In its pursuit indeed she became what herlatest biographer has called a "woman possessed by a Demon. " Allnecessary, not alone because if she had been meek and mild she wouldhave existed in futility, but because of the high percentage of themasculine endocrines in her composition. It is most regrettable thatwe have no statement of the findings of a gynecologic examination ofher. That she was almost consciously masculine may be inferred notonly from the way she bullied Lord Pannure and worked to death herdearest friend with the angelic temper, Sidney Herbert, who was soamiable that he could be driven by one who wrote: "I have done withbeing amiable. It is the mother of all mischief. " She could alsowrite, "I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took anexcuse. Yes, I do see the difference now between me and _other men_. When a disaster happens, I act, and they make excuses. "

Lytton Strachey has painted superbly all this in his essay. But for ushis most significant passage is the following: "When old age actuallycame, something curious happened. Destiny, having waited patiently, played a queer trick upon Miss Nightingale. The benevolence and publicspirit of that long life had only been equaled by its acerbity. Hervirtue had dwelt in hardness, and she had poured forth her unstintedusefulness with a bitter smile upon her lips. And now the sacrednessof years brought the proud woman her punishment. She was not to dieas she had lived. The sting was to be taken out of her: she was to bemade soft; she was to be reduced to compliance and complacency. Thechange came gradually, but at last it was unmistakable. "

"_There appeared a corresponding alteration in her physical mould. _The _thin, angular_ woman, with her haughty eye, and her acrid mouth, had vanished, and in her place was the _rounded, bulky form_ of a _fatold lady_, smiling all day long. Then something else became visible. The brain which had been steeled at Scutari was, indeed, literally growing soft. Senility--an ever more and more amiablesenility--descended. "

We have here an absolutely typical pituitary history, with anothercase of pituitocentric natural ability. What happens when pituitaryhyperfunction or superiority becomes underfunction or inferiority isprecisely as Strachey has described so cleverly of the "ministeringangel": the acrid, thin and keen degenerate every time into theamiable, fat and dull. Just as Napoleon was transformed by themutations of his pituitary, so was the Saint with the Lamp. And inboth instances the contrasting modifications, from one extreme ofglandular function to the other, supply us with the clue to the secrethand of their inner being and becoming, which worked upon the twistsand turns of circumstance about them as a sculptor upon clay. 

The official biography by Sir Edward Cook contains three portraits, representing three different stages, which bear out the pituitocentricthesis of her personality and life history. One as she was at 25, andpictured by Mrs. Gaskell: "She is tall; very straight and willowy infigure; thick and shortish rich brown hair; very delicate complexion. .. Perfect teeth . .. Perfect grace and lovely appearance . .. She isso like a saint. " The face is long and oval, of the post-pituitarykind. Then gradually the ante-pituitary gained an ascendency in theconcert of her internal secretions, so coloring her life with itsmasculine tints, and altering her face as well as her disposition. Thephotograph of her taken when she was 38 shows a quadrangular outline, and all the acridity that impressed Strachey. The last picture of her, a water color drawing made in 1907, shows a round visaged old dame, who might be the peasant grandmother of two dozen descendants. Littlepatches of red over the cheek bones remind one of myxedema andindicate that toward the very end of her life her thyroid failed heras well as her pituitary. So that our biographer relates: "Then byRoyal Command, the Order of Merit was brought to South Street, andthere was a little ceremony of presentation. Sir Douglas Dawson, aftera short speech, stepped forward and handed the order of the insigniato Miss Nightingale. Propped up by pillows, she dimly recognizedthat some compliment was being paid her. 'Too kind--too kind!' shemurmured; and she was not ironical. " In the days of pituitary andthyroid hyperfunction we may be sure she would have been causticallyand penetratingly ironical. 

THE EXPLANATION OF OSCAR WILDE

The case of Oscar Wilde, as one of the high tragedies of EnglishLiterature and Life, attracted the attention of the whole world in itsheyday, and even today evokes controversy. As a literary figure andartist, the poet of the Portrait of Dorian Gray, and "De Profundis, "belongs without a doubt to the immortals. As a convicted criminal, whoserved for two years at hard labor in Reading jail, and afterwards, a prey to chronic alcoholism, died in obscurity in Paris, he stillremains a subject of whispered conversation in private, and his crimea taboo to the public, mentionable only at the risk of arousing theterrible odium sexicum of the prurient majority. Oscar Wilde was ahomosexual of a certain type. In view of the previously laid downconsiderations concerning the endocrine genesis of homosexuality, howare we to explain him, and his natural history?

As with the other exemplars of genius examined we need here, too, togain some insight into his "internal secretion heredity. " His father, Sir William Wilde, was a surgeon. Photographs of him show the longand broad face of a pituito-adrenal centered individual, witha corresponding duplex incarnation in the face, the upper halfstrikingly spiritual, the lower curiously animal. 

He was active, practical and eminently successful. His wife recallsFlorence Nightingale, in face, figure and conduct (people who arebuilt alike as regards their internal secretions are those whom werecognize as similar physically and psychically). She, too, was apituito-adrenal, and in so far resembled her husband. But as in awoman ante-pituitary and adrenal superiority make for masculinity, she must be classed as a masculinoid type of woman. She was sociallyaggressive, and took part in the revolutionary movement of her time inIreland. Thus we find that Oscar Wilde was the result of a mating ofinternal secretions acting in the same direction. The process might becompared to parthenogenesis. 

It is on record that when enceinte his mother often expressed thewish that her child be a girl. When a boy was born, she was immenselydisappointed. To compensate for her disappointment, she brought him upa good deal like a little girl. She had him dressed in girls' clothesat an age when most boys are violent destroyers of clothing. She wouldhang massive jewelry upon him, for the delight of playing with theresultant stage picture as a satisfaction for her discontenteddesires. In the light of modern psychology, and our formulization ofher endocrine status, we must put down her conduct to a suppressedhomosexual craving. Had her son been built along the lines of strongemphatic masculinity, her influence, though vicious, would probablyhave found no congenial soil, and would have died out altogether afterhis contacts with the outer world, beginning with school. No matterhow she would have conditioned his vegetative system temporarily, his internal secretions, released then from compression, would haveasserted themselves and determined his fate differently. However, itis quite possible that if such had been the case Oscar Wilde, theaesthete, the paradoxer, the disciple of Walter Pater and Baudelaire, would have stayed in the land of the to be born. I mean that thenwe would not have had Oscar Wilde, but another person, genius orcommonplace, who also might have borne the name of Oscar Wilde. 

That was not to be. The singular assortment of endocrines that mingledtheir activities to make Oscar Wilde shaped a personality which wemust classify as the thymocentric (thymus-centered). Why this shouldbe so is an interesting question. Pituito-adrenal plus pituito-adrenalof his heredity should make two pituito-adrenals according toelementary arithmetic and the rule of three. A cancellation of the twofactors of the equation rather than addition seems to have occurred. The result was a persistent thymus superiority, with an instability ofthe other two main glands involved. 

How do we know that Oscar Wilde was a thymocentric? Because in hisfullest development he exhibited all the earmarks of the thymuspattern. We possess a number of good pictures and descriptions of him, as he was really a contemporary, and would probably be alive todayif he had been put in a hospital for proper treatment instead of inprison. An excellent description is that of Henri de Regnier's: "Thisforeigner (Wilde) was _tall_, and of _great corpulence_. A _high_complexion seemed to give still greater width to his clean shavenface. It was the _unbearded_ (glabre) face that one sees on coins. The_hands_ . .. Were rather _fleshy_ and _plump_. " The points of immediateinterest are the height, the complexion and the beardlessness. Oneclassic variety of the thymocentric is tall, has a baby's skin, andhas little or no hair on the face. A passage from a narrative writtenby one of his warders confirms the last condition decidedly. "Beforeleaving his cell to see a visitor, he was alway careful to conceal, asfar as possible, his unshaven chin by means of his red handkerchief. "Bristles on the chin, with little or none on the cheeks, is theinference. It is important to stress the thymocentric significance ofthis glabrosity of the face. Another sign to be put in italics was thequality of his voice. It has been described as a beautiful tenor, whenhe had it under perfect control, and high pitched and strident whenunder the influence of passion or temper. Such a voice would be theproduct of a larynx remaining partly or completely in the infantilestate, as in a woman's. That, and the large breasts he is said to havehad, point again to the thymus-centered constitution. All inall, there can be no doubt that Oscar Wilde was a case of statuslymphaticus, the technical name for the thymus-centered personality. 

As happens in a number of thymocentrics, his pituitary must haveattempted to compensate for the endocrine deficiencies always presentin them. The exceptional size of his head was a pituitary trait. Finding, possibly making, plenty of room for itself to grow, for someunknown reason, in an extraordinary fashion, it reinforced the love ofthe beautiful that is part of the feminine post-pituitary nature, withan intellectual ability and maturity that was at first all-conquering. In the face of a society organized for pure masculine and purefeminine types, disgrace and disaster at last overtook him with almostthe ruthlessness of natural selection wiping out an unadapted sportsuddenly cropping up in an environment. In prison he suffered fromsevere splitting headaches, which were probably due to changes in hispituitary. Described as being directly over the eyes, they haunted himuntil his death, and may have had a good deal to do with the absintheaddiction he acquired. 

THE TREATMENT OF GENIUS

The problem of Oscar Wilde raises an ethical question that stillremains to be finally answered. Granting that all of society shouldone day see him and his kind as a peculiar and specific constitutionalproduct of an odd intermixture of internal secretions, what shouldbe done with him and them? It is easy to play with words like"degenerates. " But still, we do not condemn imbeciles, idiots ordefectives, or other substandard, subnormal creatures to the prisons. For the sake of the good opinion society would maintain of itself, it sends the latter nowadays to hospitals, sanitaria, or theirequivalents, where protection for itself without punishment for themmay be practised. But is confinement, or even treatment the solution?For we have to consider what society would lose by cutting suchabnormals off from itself, and them from its stimulations. A numberof artists have been built like Oscar Wilde, musicians in particular. Without them, would there not be a great gap, a yawning absence, inthe world's culture?

Modern diagnosis and modern therapy might have done a great deal forNapoleon, Nietzsche, Julius Caesar, Florence Nightingale, Oscar Wilde. Were they alive today, and willing to submit themselves to scientificscrutiny, the X-ray would tell us of the state of the pituitary andthymus in them, chemical examinations of the blood the condition ofthe thyroid and adrenals, detailed investigation of the body and minda flood of light upon their maladies as well as their personalities. Therapy might have relieved Napoleon of his attacks, and so, haltingthe creeping degeneration of his pituitary, made Waterloo impossible. But then, would we have had the Emperor at all? Would there have beenenough of that instability that drives on the genius to his goal?Nietzsche might have been relieved of his headaches, and Caesar ofhis epilepsy--but then, would not--with correction of the underlyingstreams of activity on the part of the other glands of the internalsecretion to compensate--their peculiar superiority and distinction, and the fruits of their lives as by-products, have been destroyed. Florence Nightingale, too, might have been a softer and more humanperson. But then would she have revolutionized the practice ofnursing? Oscar Wilde possibly might have been made over into aheterosexual. But then would not the world be the poorer without "DeProfundis, " let us ask? To state the problem in the most generalterms: how much abnormality are we to tolerate (I speak, of course, ofmalignant abnormality, and disregard benign abnormality altogether)for the sake of the valuable that is concomitant? How much are weto stand of that which degrades the germ-plasm while it raises themind-plasm of the race? The Flowers of Evil. Destroy or modify theroots, change the seed, and the buds will bloom, if at all, notorchids, but dull brown commonplaces. 

What means may be licensed for the attainment of a worthy end isperhaps the broadest aspect of the problem. The instruments of Man'sascent to divinity may arouse his instinctive repulsions, dislikes, and destructive passions. The study of the internal secretions isputting and will put the most powerful apparatus for the control ofthe abnormal into our hands. What are we going to do with them?

It does not follow that because we are beginning to understand thenormal that we are to establish one fixed absolute standard of thenormal. In view of all the possible mixtures, permutations andcombinations of the endocrine glands, that may construct anindividual, it is possible to conceive a million types of normals. For normality means harmony, the harmonious equilibrium between thehormones, which tends to continue itself, because it does no harm toitself. So there are all sorts and conditions of men and women whoare classed as normals. We need create no inquiry into the value ofraising the subnormal to the normal level. It is when we come toconsider the possibility of lowering the supernormal (in certainrespects) to the normal, that we pause and hesitate. Traditionalmorality assists not, but hinders us here. 

Whatever the race may ultimately decide, it is safe to predict that itis now somewhat possible, and will become more and more possible, toregulate or even check the ills of genius, without interfering withits highest evolution and expression. For example, Bernard Shaw, totake a living man of genius, is pretty visibly a pituitocentric of thewell-balanced variety. He has the height, the facial features, thehands, and the sort of mentality that run together in his endocrinemake-up. He also has the headaches. It is quite probable that feedinghim pituitary gland extract in the proper dosage would relieve him ofhis headaches. A process might be started in his pituitary, however, that would diminish its extraordinary output which has assistedto make his brain so brilliant. The possibility, nevertheless, is excessively remote as the pituitary predominance in him is sooverwhelming, that nothing short of surgery, nature's or the medicalgraduate's, could really affect that overmastering eminence. The timewill come, though it is not yet by a long, long road, when we shallbe able to intervene, and perhaps meddle, in nature's most intimateplans. The right of the power to modify, like the power to kill, willbe defined and limited by common agreement before that goal will bereached. 

CHAPTER XII

APPLICATIONS AND POSSIBILITIES

The knowledge that the shape and action of a man's body as well ashis mind depend on the internal secretions inspires the hope of theemergence of a hitherto inconceivable controlling power over humanlife in the future. For in the wake of chemical discovery there hasalways come chemical control. The nature of chemical research, thenecessity for clear thinking, accurate measurement, and experiencein the actual handling of materials, the fundamental tradition andtechnique of the science, have made and will make the practicalapplications about which we today may only speculate. What the studyof the internal secretions suffers from, at the beginning of the thirddecade of the twentieth century, is insufficient appreciation of itsmeaning for mankind. It is true that there are thousands of workersscattered throughout the world contributing their mites to the generalstore. They increase yearly, almost daily, and their achievements, in spite of an uncritical enthusiasm in some quarters and asemi-charlatanism in others, have been and continue magnificent. Butthey are pecking at a mountain which requires organized, massive, engineering organization for its blasting. 

The crying need is for an international institute, endowed andequipped for investigation upon the proper scale, with all theavailable appliances and methods already worked out and at hand. Suchan institution would possess the right chemical laboratories forthe making of blood analyses, metabolism examinations, and tests ofendocrine functions. There would be X-ray machines and experts toradiograph the pituitary, pineal and thymus glands when possible. There would be psychologists to carry out intelligence tests, determine emotional reactions, and group mental aberrations, deficiencies and defectives. There would be statisticians, trained inbiometrics, to criticize and compare data obtained. There would beanthropoligists to note and measure variations in angles and curves, ratios and quotients of the external conformation of the body. Internists would record the history and status of the organs andviscera. There would be librarians to collect, abstract and collatethe vast, accumulating literature. In short, the mystery ofpersonality, the most marvelous, complex, and variable process in theuniverse, would be attacked and at length penetrated systematicallyand persistently, with the ideal of absolute control of itscomposition as the goal in view. 

The nature of the researches? They would be infinite in their varietyand significance. Their practical by-products, dropped in the pursuitof knowledge by the scientist, as Atalanta's lover the golden applesin his race, to assuage the scent of the hard-headed business man, would be profitable enough for any country in peace or war, to payfor itself ten times over and at compound interest. A volume could befilled with suggestions for interesting and promising investigations. But we may glance at some of the immediately useful aspects that mightexercise those concerned with the everyday life of men, women andchildren. 

THE ENDOCRINE EPOCHS OF LIFE

There is no more famous classifications of the epochs of lifethat mark off the milestones of the individual's evolution thanShakespeare's Seven Ages. So different is he at those different stagesof his development, so changed his body and mind that it has become apart of popular physiology that we are entirely made over every sevenyears, and that no cell in the organism lasts longer than that. Thetradition certainly does not apply to the brain and nervous system, for the number of brain cells is fixed at birth, and cannot beincreased, only decreased, because they are too highly specialized toreproduce themselves. 

What transfigures the individual as the years go by is no simple wearand tear of the tissues, nor the replacement of old cells by new. Itis the rearrangement of relationships among the ductless glands, theshifting of influences from the predominant to the subordinate, andvice versa, in the constellation of the internal secretions, thatdetermines the unfolding of the personality. The transformations raisedoubt sometimes as to the reality of personal identity. What actuallyhappens in the changes from childhood to adolescence, from adolescenceto maturity, and so on, is the sloughing of one internal glandulardominance for another. 

Growth, as a general name for the mutations, the ensemble of somaticand psychic differentiation, from year to year, passes through fiveepochs that are standard for the normal. The normal is the being whoharmonizes with his environment, and yet reacts with it because ofrecurring needs within him. His endocrine equation settles what isunique and different in him. But the gland which flourishes during theepoch as its time of triumph, when it has its day, determines whatmakes him like his fellows. 

From this point of view it becomes permissible to speak of the fiveEndocrine Epochs. Similarities and resemblances of mind and bodybetween people at a given period of life, childhood, youth, maturitymust be put down to their common government by the salient endocrineof the epoch. So one may list:

 Infancy as the epoch of the thymus Childhood as the epoch of the pineal Adolescence as the epoch of the gonads Maturity as the epoch of whatever gland is left in control as the result of the life struggle. Senility as the epoch of general endocrine deficiency. 

Infancy as the epoch of the thymus explains why, in any givengeographic locality, the babies look alike and act alike. Specialistsin the observation and treatment of infants have noted that not untilafter the second year is any tendency to differentiation discernibleto any extent among them. It is only after the second year, orsomewhere around that time, that the child begins to individuate, anddistinct individual traits and a personality manifest their outlines. The thymus is the great inhibitor of all the glands of internalsecretion. By its checking activity upon the other members of theendocrine system, the thyroid and pituitary in particular, it givesthe baby time to grow in bulk, which is its chief business during thefirst two years of its existence. It quadruples its birth weight. Thebrain and nervous system complete their growth in mass by the end ofthe fourth year. Recall the experiments of Gudernatsch working withtadpoles, who showed that feeding with thymus produced giant tadpoleswhose metamorphosis into frogs was inhibited, while feeding thyroidproduced frogs the size of flies. Differentiation occurred without thepreliminary increase in mass usual. As differentiation and bulk thusappear antagonistic, at least at the beginning of growth, the functionof the thymus, at a maximum during infancy, seems then to be torestrain the differentiating endocrines, until sufficient materialhas been accumulated by the organism upon which the differentiatingprocess may work. 

After the second year, the thymus begins to shrink. That is to say, officially its involution begins. Careful dissection will demonstratesome thymus tissue even in a normal subject up to the fourteenth year. This refers to the average normal, for the large thymus may continuelarge and grow larger after the second year in the type of individualdesignated in a preceding chapter as the thymocentric. 

If the thymus retrogresses after the second year, what takes its placeas a brake upon the forward driving impulses of the other endocrines?We have every reason for assigning that rôle to the pineal. Itperforms its service mainly, in all probability, by inhibiting thesex stimulating effect of light playing upon the skin. Since it isespecially a sex gland inhibitor, the thyroid and pituitary becomefreer to exert their influences than under the thymus régime. And sowe find that it is after the second year that thyroid and pituitarytendencies manifest their effects. The Pineal Era, from the secondto the tenth to fourteenth years, remains to be investigated from anumber of viewpoints interesting to the parent, the educator, andthe student of puericulture. Precocity is directly related to earlyinvolution of the pineal. For just as the thymus involutes at thesecond year, the pineal atrophies before the onset of adolescence. 

Adolescence is the period of stress and strain throughout the somaticand psychic organism because of the volcanic upheavals in the sexglands. The history of the individual is dominated by them up totwenty-five or so, when maturity commences in the sense of a relativesex stability. They continue to exert a powerful pressure throughoutmaturity. But life episodes and crises, diseases, accidents, andstruggles, experiences of pleasure and pain, as well as climaticfactors, settle finally which endocrine or endocrines are left incontrol as a consequence of the series of reactions the period ofmaturity may be analyzed into. 

THE INTERPRETATION OF SENILITY

Senility inevitably follows maturity, not as night follows day by amathematical necessity, but because of the process of degenerationwhich ultimately overtakes all the glands of internal secretion, dominant as well as subordinate. Just why the degeneration must occurno one can say. Injury to the endocrine organs of one sort or another, ranging all the way from emotional exhaustion to bacterial infection, is the reason usually considered sufficient. Just why recuperation andregeneration do not preserve them in the elderly as they do in youthis a problem to be solved when we understand the laws of regeneration, at present almost totally beyond our control. Some say that it is amatter of the wear and tear of our blood vessels, those rubber-liketubes which transport food and drainage with nonchalant equanimity toall cells as long as they last. In the classic phrase: a man is asold as his arteries, ergo his ductless glands will be as old as theirarteries. And the age of arteries is simply a matter of wear and tear, the resultant of the function which is universal among molecules. Arteriosclerosis, the hardening of arteries, might be the whole story. 

But there are certain experiments and considerations which ratherconfute that easy explanation, or at least make clear that the mysteryis not so simple. The work of Steinach, a Viennese investigator, hascontributed most to the elucidation of the nonarterial factor insenility. No one has asserted more loudly the importance of theinterstitial cells that fill in the spaces between the tubules of thetestes in the male, and the follicles of the ovary in females. Ratshave been his medium of study, for they are most easily procurable, live fastest, breed, and withstand experimental and operativeprocedures better than any other animal. 

An old rat is like an old man in his dotage. His bald, shrivelled skincovers an emaciated body. His eyes are dimmed by cataracts and hisbreathing is labored and difficult because his heart muscle has lostits tone. Huddled in a corner, life to him has become concentratedinto the desire for a little food, and immobility. If now, somethingis done to his sex apparatus, a marvelous transformation may beeffected. That something no one could predict. It consists in slittingthe genital duct, which leads from the germinal cells to the exterior. After the operation, the germinal cells, which grow into thespermatozoa, atrophy and disappear, since they can no longer function. As if released from some restraint, the interstitial cells, however, multiply enormously. With their multiplication, the miracle ofrejuvenation is performed. 

After some weeks the sluggish currents of being in the rat, which hadslowed down as a preliminary to stopping altogether, flow fast andfurious. Waves of new chemical substances inundate his cells. And theyrespond like the fields that border the Nile after the annual flood. All his tissues, skin, muscle, nerve, even bone, are restored. Avitality is created which makes him bound and dart like a youth of hisspecies. In due time, though, senility returns. It is as if a storagebattery, recharged, runs down and becomes dead again. Slitting thegenital duct of the other testis, causing its interstitial cells tohypertrophy and multiply, repeats the effects of the first experiment. The organism responds again to the new waves of vitality that vibratethrough it. That it is recharged is demonstrated again by a revival ofsex appetite and sex activity. The female which had become an objectof indifference is reinstated as a creature to be sought and pursued. The second period ends in its turn. And now entirely new interstitialglands, in the form of fresh testes removed from a young animal, aretransplanted into the body of the old rat. Once more youth returns. But now it burns itself more quickly than even before. An acuteexhaustion of the mind appears first. Then all the other phenomena ofold age steal back upon the old rat, and senility, firmly establishedin the saddle, rides him to the end. 

THE POSSIBILITIES OF REJUVENATION

Whatever other deductions may be extracted from these experiments, they prove beyond a doubt the existence of an endocrine factor in theprocess of aging, as well as an arterial. They also demonstrate thatthe internal secretion of the sex glands, well advertised as it hasbeen as the Elixir of Youth that Ponce de Leon, and Brown-Séquard withso many others, pursued in vain, is not the whole story. For if itwas, the duration of the new youth should be another span of life, whereas in actuality it is only a fraction of that time. This fact, together with a number of others, make clear that while the gonads maybe the jeune premier of the drama, the vitality of the plot dependsupon the other endocrines. Since old age is an exhaustion, permanentand irreparable of _all_ the members of the ductless glanddirectorate, the reason becomes clear for the temporary quality of therejuvenation effected by the procedures of Steinach. 

Practically, then, the question at once arises: which of the glands inparticular are involved? There is first that ubiquitous agent in thesystem, the thyroid. Chemical analysis of it has shown that theiodine content decreases with the age of the individual, and becomesspecially low after forty. It is after the menopause in women thatmyxedema, the disease of complete degeneration of the thyroid, and ofthe physical and mental faculties, is most frequent. The thyroidof old people exhibits, in varying degrees, signs of a similardegeneration. Thyroid feeding, properly controlled, will clear upcertain of the deteriorations of mind and body observable in the aged. The grossness of the features lessens, a number of the pains go, muscular endurance increases, memory and intelligence do not remindone so forcibly of the old dotard in his second childhood. Of coursethe improvement at present achievable is only relative. But in theprematurely aging, decay invading a half accomplished maturity, marvels have been achieved at times with feeding of the gland. 

The pituitary, too, begins to retrogress after the period of maturity. And an early retrogression means a short maturity. In women, the onsetof an obesity, and coincidently, of a lazy and dull morale, coincideswith this declension of the pituitary powers. All the glands ofinternal secretion, in fact, shrink and shrivel as old age advances. Only, as in other relationships, the predominating endocrine stampsits signature more visibly upon the documents of decadence than theothers. Pituitary types, as said, get fat and slow, thyroidal becomebulky and stupid or thin and sour, the adrenal dark, shrunken andforever tired of life. So type emerges, even in all-around glandulardeficiency. 

The problem of rejuvenation is the problem of recharging, or replacingall of the glands of internal secretion, at least the most important, the thyroid, the pituitary and the adrenals, as well as the gonads. Longevity is perhaps largely a matter of preventing, or postponingtheir wane. Beside, there is the prophylaxis of bacterial infections, and their all embracing corrosions--which, too, have an endocrineaspect. 

Persistence of youth or juvenility may be manufactured by nature intwo ways. There may be a persistence of early glandular predominances. We have seen what happens to the thymocentric. That a pineal-centeredjuvenile or infantile type exists may be safely predicted. Nature'sonly other mode of securing perpetual youth seems to be by prolongingthe time allotted to the sex gland crescendo. 

As for the golden age of maturity itself, what humdrum people andpoets have despised as middle age, the margin of reserve of the rulinghormone is a quantity almost malleable in our hands, but still to beregarded with respect as a hard cold proposition by the physiologist. In general, the continuance of any stage of development means themaintaining of the glandular administration peculiar to it. So thechubby debonair irresponsible whom nothing can touch is happy in thepossession of a pineal uncorrupted by the years, while the genius whocan turn out his best work at sixty-five must thank his pituitary forstanding by him to the end. 

THE SCIENCE OF PUERICULTURE

There is a specialty now growing in the womb of science which in itsown good time will come to fruition as the study of the child's needsor puericulture. Even today there exists a scientific basis for theformulation of the principles upon which every child should be broughtup. Though we have had marvelous results from the campaigns to lowerinfantile mortality, most of what has been done has been medical inits interest, and so largely negative in its accomplishments. Theremoval of the causes of evil no doubt gives the good its opportunity. But how to raise a child, endowed with satisfactory ancestral stuff, as a Grade A normal or supernormal, still remains to be erected intoan exact science. 

A number of attempts have been abortive in this field. Why they havefailed to arouse the ardor of the parent has puzzled some of thepioneers. Child-culture as the foundation of all systems of educationhas continued more or less of a hope rather than an achievementbecause of a lack of appreciation of the different constitutionalvarieties of children. A certain amount of attention has been lavishedupon children needing special attention, those mainly suffering frominsufficient development of one sort or another. In the last decade orso, an endeavour to focus upon the exceptional child, exceptionalin intelligence or some special creative endowment, has started aninteresting movement. All of them have suffered from the fallacies andtroubles of the pure psychologist who would handle mind as an entityin a vacuum. 

A realization of the different physical and psychic educationalneeds of various children will arrive only when we see them as builtdifferently. Just as shoddy and silk, cotton and wool, alone or incombination, all possess different qualities as wearing material, sodifferent children have varying capacities for the wear and tear ofeducation. The endocrine classification of the human race, appliedto children, will here yield a harvest to the educator and to thecountry. Nothing is more evident than the diversified nature of theneeds of the various internal secretion types, once they are realizedas such. 

The history of a thymocentric type, for instance, is predictable fromthe very first few months of his life. Difficulties in feeding, inhabit formation and adaptation, in the reaction to infections, insocial play and so on, one may expect for him. The course of eventsfor the other endocrine types also follow laws of their own. It willbe above all in the _understanding_ of children, their make-up, reactions and powers, that the biologist will achieve some of hisfinest triumphs. 

The educator will have to take account of the state of the pituitaryin estimating the normal intelligence, or influencing the abnormal orsubnormal intelligence. As well will he have to consider the thyroidin the child whose conduct is refractory, even though his proficiencyin his studies is excellent. And the condition of the adrenal will beascertained in the types that tire easily, and that seem unable tomake the effort necessary or desirable. Periodic seasonal and criticalfluctuations in the equilibrium among the hormones will have to betaken into account in the explanation of what have hitherto been putdown to laziness, naughtiness, stupidity, or obstinacy. 

A child's capacity for education, essentially its capacity for thehighest and most productive kind of life, is limited by inherentfactors. These factors are two: the quality of the nerve tissue, itsability to make a number of associations, and the quantity of theinternal secretions, measured by the maximum obtainable in a givensituation. These inherent factors explain, too, why children bornand bred in virtually the same environment show the most extremedifferences in educability. That the differences are inherited wasmade evident by Galton's finding that the chance of the son of aneminent man exhibiting eminent ability was 500 times as great as thatof the son of a man taken at random. 

Every baby, then, is born with a combination of nerve cells andductless glands which determine its capacity for mental development, that might never be realized, but could never be exceeded. If, in anyfamily, minor differences in educability are observed, they can beput down to disturbance of these two factors occurring after thefertilized germ cell had started to divide and reproduce itself. Butany marked falling off in either the nervous or endocrine factors hasto be considered pathologic, due to an impairment of them by adverseenvironment. 

Recent studies have amply established that the proportion ofcertifiable mental defectives, and of a much larger class, thesubnormal but not certifiable class, is progressing by leaps andbounds. It is perhaps the most absurd frailty of our present systemof education that it takes almost no account of innate differences ineducability. To spend money upon the teaching of these children alonglines where they are unteachable is not only waste pure and simple, but crime, for it deprives the educables of their just due. 

These, of course, are the crude and simple lines upon which the finerand more complex evolution of the endocrine problems of the schoolchild will build. The fine art of education itself is crude and grossand simple compared with what it might be, even as a beginning. Thescience of education has yet to begin, as the offspring of thatscience of the future, to which knowledge of the internal secretionswill contribute no little, the science of puericulture. 

VOCATIONAL EDUCATION

It is difficult, indeed, to avoid becoming merely enthusiastic uponthe possibilities of the applications of the endocrines to theeducational domain. Happiness for the average individual consists ofa double success--success in his vocation (chosen or forced upon him)and success in his sex life. A certain hue and cry has been raised inthe last few years concerning the vast and overwhelming importance ofsex in the happiness and even in the successes of a man's everydaylife. And no doubt there is a relation. Sublimation plays its part inthe explanation of vocational idiosyncrasies. The fact, however, thatperfect success in sex may occur with absolute failure in the career, however, splits the problem for good into its realities: a physiologicaspect as well as a psychologic. 

So, as school education will have to take serious account of endocrineanomalies and possibilities, will the institution which selects andtrains for a career. Vocational misfits have aroused the ardor of ourefficiency experts. And again, the sweeping psychological attack hasbeaten its head against the stonewall of ignorance of constitutionalpredispositions and tendencies of material. The attempt to erectpsychologic types for vocational selections could never make muchheadway because it could only flounder in a swamp of metaphors, product of the vices of its methods. Not that anyone would wish todiscard at all the psychologic mode of approach. But no science, inthe sense of accurate examination, was possible, in the matter ofclassification for vocation, without the insight into the physiologyof the candidate that the analysis of his endocrine formula willprovide. 

One need not dilate upon the value of such an examination. Civilization has not yet learned how to pick its personnel. And soartists and scientists, philosophers and politicians, financiers andreligious leaders, arise and survive by the operation of the laws ofprobabilities and chances, rather than by any intelligent selectionand cultivation of material. The case, indeed, is simply a subdivisionof the vast subject: haphazard muddle in the conduct of life. A cryhas been raised for the superman, and a cry has been raised for amethod of anthropometry. For the lack of these two, it has beensaid, all governments have been doomed to defeat. The study of theendocrines will by no means supply a panacea. But as it will furnish ameans of approach to the determination of how men and women are built, and why they are built differently, no one can gainsay the tremendousadvantages to the nation that will proceed to classify its populationaccordingly, and know its strength and weakness in terms of the actualgenerators of success and failure. 

Suggestions have been offered in the preceding pages of concreteapplications of endocrine knowledge to the understanding of behaviour, of the genius and commonplace, criminal and Puritan. And in thechapter on historic personages, we tracked some of the story indetail. This vein when explored will quarry untold riches. It has beenobserved that financiers of mark, like great musicians, are specialpituitary types. Also that the financiers are voracious meat eatersand the musicians inordinately fond of sweets. Differences in anteriorand posterior predominances might account for this. That we areplaying here with no phantasy is proven by the fact that we can effectchanges of tastes as well as of intellectual direction by appropriatefeeding of various glandular extracts. Just as much, indeed, as we caninfluence sex susceptibility, and the reaction to sex stimulation, bythe artificial introduction from without of the proper hormones. 

FATIGUE AND INDUSTRY

In industry, business and profession, the biologist will come more andmore to be called as consultant. Labor unions as well as the largeemployers of labor, and their employment managers have given muchthought to the problem of fatigue. Just what fatigue is, why differentindividuals tire at different rates, why some are constructed formonotonous routine while others must have constant variety and change, the relation to accidents and to quantity output, are a few of themajor lines of inquiry upon which the endocrines obviously have alarge bearing. To the employment manager, labor turnover and theselection of personnel are adjacent fields of research. 

Fatigue as an endocrine deficiency--a depressed state of one ormore of the glands of internal secretion, abolished when its normalfunctioning is restored--is a general principle from which departuresof exploration of sub-problems will proceed. An endocrine organ willsecrete at a certain rate. When it is stimulated excessively, it willeject extra amounts of its secretion. How long the period of excessivestimulation may last must depend upon the secretion potential ormargin of reserve of the cells, varying from organ to organ, and fromindividual to individual. After that, exhaustion and failure follows, with the onset of the symptoms of fatigue. 

A pretty demonstration of this process has been worked out in theelectrical stimulation of muscle. If a muscle, say the biceps, isirritated by an electric current, it will contract. As the strength ofthe current is increased, the degree of contraction becomes greater. A sort of stepladder effect of increasing contractions may be thusobtained. After a time, the electric shocks cannot cause a greatercontraction, but only a lesser. And if continued, the muscle willcease to function because of fatigue. If now, when the muscle beginsto lag in its response, and its contractions to decrease, one injectsinto a vein extracts of thyroid, parathyroid, or adrenal glands, theywill immediately reinvigorate the failing contractions. The injectionsmust be made before the fatigue is carried to the point of absoluteexhaustion. It follows that these glands normally pour into thecirculation substances which counteract the effect of fatiguesubstances, and in fact make possible muscular recuperation fromfatigue throughout the day as well as in emergencies and crises. 

Fatigue, conventionally recognized, is something acute and urgent. Assuch it means a violent draining of the endocrine wells. But thereis also a chronic fatigue, which has been dignified with the name ofFatigue Disease. Bernard Shaw once asked for someone to tell himthe name of the germ causing the symptoms of overwork. That beingimpossible, he will have to be satisfied with the answer that it isnot a germ, but an internal secretion, or rather a defect of internalsecretion that is the cause. 

Whether or not the adrenals have been damaged by past experiences, and upon their capacity to respond to the necessities of an occasion, fatigue reactions primarily depend. A quotation from Sir JamesMacKenzie, most distinguished of modern English students of medicine, summarizes the matter neatly. "Abelous, and Langlois and Albanese havestudied the relation of the adrenal bodies to fatigue. .. . They inferthat the muscular weakness following removal of the adrenals is dueto toxic substances. In view of our present knowledge of thephysiological action of adrenaline in its various forms, it seems moreprobable that the weakness is to be explained by the absence of thenormal tone producing internal secretions of the bodies in question. "In other words, the adrenals regulate muscle tone. They producenature's tonics for weary tissues. The chronic lassitude of thousandsof our generation, suffering from "that tired feeling, " may be putdown to chronic adrenal insufficiency. 

It requires no superlative imagination to see that an adrenal poorsubject does not belong upon a job that involves muscle stress over along period, or indeed fatiguing conditions of any sort. Nor that athyroid poor individual is not the best choice for a position thatdemands a keen, alert body and mind. In the selection of executives, the nature and stamina of the pituitary will undoubtedly be taken veryseriously in the near future. 

A certain hocus-pocus concerning character reading, a pervertedrevival of the ancient phrenology and physiognomy, has invaded theemployment territory in America as the newest charlatanism. The studyof the internal secretions, including blood and X-ray examinations, will surely assist the demand for a truly scientific estimateof constitution and character that can be relied upon in theclassification and distribution of personnel. 

THE PROSPECTS FOR PUBLIC HEALTH

By their effects upon the endocrines, public health influences likefood, clothing, sleep and overpressure and last but not least, _disease_, the so-called diseases of childhood, possess a tremendousimportance in limiting the output of the educable. They act tosubtract from and so to lower the rating, the capacity of thegerm-plasm. Most material and vital of these influences are the commondiseases of children, for they strike directly at the glands ofinternal secretion. 

Measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, mumps, and the others have longbeen accepted as providential visitations for sins known or unknown. That children had to have them and were better off when they had themhas become part of the tradition of the laity, fostered by the lazyignorance of previous medical generations. But today we are beginningto ask ourselves why children must have these endemic infectionsof their age. The pathologist goes farther and asks the reason forcertain apparent immunities. He asks why the little boy who sleepswith his brother sick with scarlet fever does not contract thedisease, even though not protected by a previous attack. 

Determining why susceptibility to a special disease in a particularcase exists will constitute the greatest line of advance for theunderstanding and prevention of disease, and so the perfection ofpublic health. In the last influenza epidemic countless physicianswere puzzled by the spectacle of men and women in the pink ofcondition carried off in twenty-four hours while puny associates wereeither passed over, or pooh-poohed their colds. Pathologists havespent their energies fruitfully upon the infectious causes of disease, the microbes and parasites especially. But now, having solved most ofthose problems, the vital question of why an organism permits itselfto be attacked is pushing itself to the front. Why a peculiar ailmentselects its victim, why the bacillus finds a fertile soil, is theneglected problem, which must be solved before the abolition ofdisease and its carriers will be remotely conceivable. 

Long ago, Hippocrates, revered founder of the art of medicine, recognized that there was a specific affinity of disease forindividuals with more or less the same characteristic somatic andpsychic traits and trends. Tuberculosis, for instance, was noted forits frequency in long-skeletoned, thin persons, remarkably optimistic. And the plethoric, choleric nature of the sufferer from gout hasbecome proverbial. Before the era of the great bacteriologicdiscoveries of the eighties and nineties, the concordance of esotericracial and personal markings was a great help in diagnosis to thephysician. For he realized, though he sometimes credited it to hisclinical intuition, that it was a certain type of personality that wasliable to the specific disease. 

But personality and its reactions, normal and abnormal, are determinedby the endocrines. So we should find that particular infectionsrun with special internal glandular predominances. For the picturepresented by an infection, temperature, rash, prostration, are thedetails of the general reaction of the organism in the face of anew situation, the presence of a powerful, destructive invader. Information has accumulated that the invader is powerful anddestructive, as well as selective, because of endocrine deficiency ofone sort or another in the body it has attacked. Work of a number ofinvestigators has indicated that an individual's susceptibility or itsreverse, resistance, is intimately subjected to the derangements orharmonies of the endocrine system. 

Comparison of the endocrine type and the disease assaulting hasyielded an even more interesting principle. Knowing the state of theinternal secretion reservoirs enables us to predict the liability tocertain of these infections of childhood. Diphtheria has been found tooccur most virulently among adrenal poor individuals. Moreover, theyare left poorer in adrenal afterwards. It follows that they would beassisted by the feeding of adrenal. Mumps is a sickness that sometimespermanently injures the gonads: the testes or ovaries. The thyroiddominant, whose system is rich in thyroid, will rarely suffer from anyof the common diseases of children--if at all, from measles. Op theother hand, those who have every infection of the period, and who, astheir mothers say, seem to get everything, are those whose systemis thyroid poor. Thyroid poverty is a splendid enticement to theuniversal microbe. The thymocentric stands all diseases poorly. Thepituitary type is more liable to epidemic meningitis and infantileparalysis, typhoid and scarlet fever. 

The public health officer of the future will be armed with a newweapon in his fight against the spread of an epidemic. He will be ableto classify the endocrine traits of the population exposed, and toadvise a course of glandular feeding for the types specially liable. The Schick test for diphtheria susceptibility is an illustrationof one method of approach to the problem of the epidemiologist insettling who needs protection. The endocrines will assist him in thegreat body of diseases for which no immunity test is at hand. Shouldanother influenza epidemic come along, for instance, the properhandling, from the endocrine standpoint, of the thymocentrics andthe related adrenocentrics would help considerably in lowering themortality. 

Endocrine types have other tendencies, which when studied andcontrolled, will decimate the great assassins of middle age: heartdisease and kidney disease, with accompanying degenerations of theblood vessels and circulation. The adrenocentric tends to get up ahyperacidity of the stomach and a high blood pressure, besides certainforms of diseases of the lungs. The thyrocentric is predisposed toheart disease, as well as intestinal disturbances. The pituitocentricis liable to periodic and cyclic upsets in his health. 

Narcotism, the craving for narcotic or stimulant drugs, and itssubvariety, alcoholism, has been found most often among thethymocentrics. Any type of endocrine inferiority, interfering withsuccess in life, may lead to the habit of drug addiction as one wayout. But the blood and tissues of the thymocentric appear to becomehabituated to the narcotic stimulant more easily than the other types, and so to demand it with a physical imperative comparable to the foodor sex urge. Among artists, philosophers and statesmen, on the otherhand, actively productive and so contrasted with criminals anddegenerates drug addiction has frequently been a mode of endocrinecompensation. That is, the drug produced temporarily the effects ofthe internal secretion lacking or insufficient. Thus the effects ofcocaine may be compared with the effects of thyroid. But while thereis a normal mechanism for thyroid detoxication, the cocaine or heroinderivatives mark the tissues permanently with their scars and deformthe personality. 

THE HYGIENE OF THE INTERNAL SECRETIONS

All these protean expressions of endocrine determination may now beginto be looked upon with the hopeful and optimistic attitude of him whounderstands cause and effect and can control. The advances made in thelast ten years in the practical manipulation of the ductless glandsfrom without, the introduction of glandular extracts by feeding orinjection, and the modification of their structure and function bysurgery, the X-ray and radium, and other procedures, enable usto regard more confidently the problems hitherto accepted as theinsoluble and intricate handiwork of Fate. Fate may have woven thepatterns of our being. But as we commence to probe the machinery andto examine the looms more carefully, we begin to understand why thewheels creak, and why there are seconds and odd lots in the product aswell as the rare and precious firsts. Moreover, we are learning how tohandle the machinery ourselves. The abdication of Fate can thereforebe confidently expected in due time. 

However, we have yet to begin, and we can begin with prevention. Thetheory of Adler, that some organ inferiority is responsible for muchunhappiness in life has received much advertisement in conjunctionwith the doctrines of the Freudians. It is a theory of little scopewhen applied to the eyes, ears, heart and so on because only a smallminority of the cases are of that kind. But as we have seen, adeficiency of an internal secretion, an endocrine inferiority, reverberates throughout all the cells. Not only the mind, but all ofthe members of the organism must strain and co-operate to make up forthe break in the balance. 

Endocrine inferiority is indeed the most frequent organic inferiority. And we may explain a number of mental types upon that basis. Thus theinferior gonado-centric, who has something wrong with his reproductiveorgans, will evolve in one of two directions. If his adrenal andthyroid are of poor quality, he will become the secluded introvert, shut off from the interests of normal life. He will enter theborderland of insanity if pituitary difficulties supervenes. If, onthe contrary, the adrenal, thyroid and pituitary are present ina certain proportion, he will become the active, aggressive, never-resting, keen, and relentless fanatic reformer. A woman who isgonad deficient with a superior adrenal will suffer from virilismand specialize in the extreme tactics and mythology of the feministmovement. A number of life reactions are classifiable as the strivingsof endocrine inferior individuals to overcome their sense ofinferiority. The unconscious vegetative system and the system ofconsciousness are both modified by the weakness of a link in theglandular chain. 

What, therefore, is to be recommended in the prophylaxis of thenatural deterioration of the wells of life, the ductless glands? Foreven if we may be able to replenish them when they dry up, would itnot be better to delay their dessication? The hormones reply to everycall of life and respond in every reaction. The normal constructiveprocess of their cells remanufactures what has been lost, and theoriginal capacity to respond is restored. If, though, the rate ofdestruction and loss outruns the rate of repair and construction, theywill be permanently damaged. This is what occurs in shock, serious, severe accidents and injuries, prolonged infections and diseases, profound continued emotions, and the wear and tear of overwork. Theprevention of these excessive fatigues of the endocrine system in oneor all of its parts, and especially the prevention and enfeeblement ofthe diseases of children which injure them at a period when they aremost sensitive to injury, is the task of the endocrine hygienist. Periodic examinations, to check up the balance sheets of the hormonefactories and to measure the amount of their damage by means of bloodanalyses, will provide the most valuable method in the campaign tolengthen the productive and enjoying span of life. 

THE TREATMENT OF CRIME

Endocrine hygiene will discover no wider or more fruitful area forexploration and control than that of crime. For more than a generationthere have been attempts at a criminology, and a new understanding andcontrol of crime. In the United States a concomitant sentimentalismhas concocted measures like the honor system which, naturally failingof their purpose, have undermined confidence in the idea of scientificdiagnosis and treatment of crime. As someone has noted, to ask acriminal to promise not to misbehave, when discharged from prison, is like asking a typhoid fever patient to promise not to have atemperature above ninety-nine degrees the next morning. For a largeproportion of criminals--the percentage has yet to be determined, although the most recent police commissioner of Chicago has estimatedit at ninety per cent--punishment for a period of time and thenletting him go free is like imprisoning a diphtheria carrier for awhile and then permitting him to commingle with his fellows and spreadthe germ of diphtheria. 

Of course, the doctrine of responsibility is all tangled up with ourattitude towards and treatment of crime. Though clear thought makesmandatory the recognition of a universal cause and effect law, practical common sense has defined free will. Consent or thewithholding of consent to a given course of action has been thecriterion of responsibility. 

In practice, the limitation of responsibility will depend upon theinsertion of extraneous factors into the formula of consent. Thepragmatic test has been and will be the probability that thecorrection of the somatic or psychic condition would have prevented orwill prevent the consent to the crime. As long as no such conditionwill be demonstrable, society for its own protection will have toconfine the unfortunate individual. 

The character of the confinement, its duration, and the uses to whichit will be put should be dominated by the idea of discoveringthe unknown criminal predisposition. If crime is an abnormalityscientifically studiable and controllable like measles, courtprocedure and prison management will have to be transformed radically. There is scattered throughout the world now a group of people who areapplying medical methods to the diagnosis and treatment of crime. Theyare the pioneers who will be remembered in history as the compeers ofthose who transformed the attitudes toward insanity and its therapy. The insane were once condemned and handled as criminals are in mostcivilized countries yet. The criminologic laboratory as an adjunct tothe court of justice, like that associated with the court ofChief Justice Olson in Chicago, remains to be universalized. Whatcontribution to a more rational treatment of the criminal will thestudy of the internal secretions make?

It has been shown that the greater number of convicts are mentally andmorally subnormal. To explain the subnormality, the criminologisthas conducted and will continue to conduct investigations into theheredity and early environment of the criminal, his education andoccupation, the social and religious influences to which he wassubjected, and the intelligence test quotient. The conditioning of thevegetative system and the endocrine status of the prisoner, however, will without a doubt come to occupy the leading positions in anyinterpretation of crime in the future. 

Introspective observation of pre-criminal states of mind by so-callednormal persons reveals that in many of them there is an impairment ofreason and will power, in others an exaltation amounting almostto hysteria. What are these but endocrine states of the cells, experimentally reproducible by increasing or decreasing the influenceof the thyroid, the adrenals, the pituitary? Crimes of passion may betraced in no small part to disturbances of the thyroid. A psychologicexaminer of a Pittsburgh court, interested in the subject, has foundan enlarged thyroid in over ninety per cent of delinquent girls. Similarly, crimes of violence may be ascribed to a profound breakin the adrenal equilibrium. Criminal tendencies in women duringmenstruation and pregnancy, periods of deep-seated mutation in theinternal glandular system, have long been noted. A kleptomania, uncontrollable desire to steal, confined to the duration of pregnancyalone, has been described. We have seen how the thymocentric, especially if he possesses a small bony case for his pituitary, ispredisposed to crime. A recent study of twenty murderers in the Stateof West Virginia showed them all to have a persistent thymus and thethymocentric constitution. A study of the recidivists, those whoreturn for second and third offences, in one institution, disclosedthat a large majority had a subnormal temperature and an increasedheart and breathing rate. These are endocrine-controlled functions. Conduct, normal or abnormal, being the resultant of the conflict ofconscious and subconscious impulses and inhibitions, the internalsecretions as controllers of the susceptibility of the brain cells toimpulses and inhibitions, must be held accountable for a portion atleast of the chemical reactions behind crime. 

It is possible, by X-ray treatment of the thymus, to cause it toshrink to more normal proportions. It is possible, by feeding variousglandular extracts, to correct deficiencies or excesses of theirfunction, and so to remedy the underlying basis for a criminal career. Here and there work of this kind has been successfully carried out inselected instances. What a suitable drive upon the whole matter wouldyield in happiness to the individual and dollars and cents to society, time alone will show. 

CHAPTER XIII

THE EFFECT UPON HUMAN EVOLUTION

The ubiquitous and deep-seated influence of the internal secretionsupon life and personality comprises but a fraction of what is known, and only a hint of what is to become known. There is an endocrineaspect to every human being and every human activity, normal andabnormal, internal process and its external expression, regulatedby laws of which we are beginning to catch a glimpse. Their controlpromises us now a dominion over the most intimate and inaccessiblerecesses of our lives in a way comparable only to the control we nowexercise over the forces and energies once revered as the instrumentsof the gods--light, heat, magnetism, electricity. We have learned howto control and change our environment. We are now learning, endocrineresearch is now discovering, how to control and change ourselves. 

The story of the evolution of the two types of control has manyanalogies. When man ceased looking upon his surroundings as inhabitedby spirits of good and evil, as he conceived himself, and discoveredthat they were composed of things malleable and analysable in hishands, he became their master. When now he drops the old superstitionsabout himself as a spirit, an emulsion of a spirit of good and spiritof evil, and sees himself more and more clearly as the most complexof chemical reactions, regulated and determined as are the simpleand complex chemical reactions around him, he will begin to rule andmodify himself as he rules and modifies them. Whether or not he willultimately come to this final lucidity of thought and action, itbehooves us to consider some of the uses to which our presentknowledge might be put. 

Since every step of the daily routine or adventure, from waking tosleeping, eating, drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, working, idling, fighting, playing, feeling, enjoying, sorrowing, every shadeof emotion and nuance of mood, in short every phase of happinessand unhappiness, are endocrine episodes in the life history of theindividual, the sphere of applications is as long and broad and deepas life itself. Not only do the internal secretions open up before usthe great hope--that Life at last will cease to stumble and grope andblunder, manacled by the iron chains of inexorable cause and effect. They provide tools, concrete and measurable, that can be handled andmoved, weighed and seen, for the management of the problems of humannature and evolution. 

Every department of human life, the questions of labor and industry, science and art, education, puericulture, international problems, crime and disease, may be illuminated. War and Sex, those two masterinterests of mankind, may be understood and handled sympatheticallyas they have never before. The reactions of man alone, and man in thecrowd, will be clarified. The red thread of individuality which runsthrough the woof and warp of all human affairs will be unraveled. 

Inevitably, customs, morals, codes of procedure and practice, institutions, all those expressions of opinion which make conduct, all the currents which contrive the infinite variety of life, will betransmitted into another set of values. 

A remoulding, a remodeling will take place all along the line. Manifestly an unstable thymocentric should not be treated as acriminal, but treated in a sanitarium. A masculinoid woman needssatisfactions not vouchsafed in the old "love, honor and obey" home. How absurd it is to found codes of morality upon sermons or even thelatest psychologies. During the nineteenth century progress in physicsand mechanics overturned traditions thousands of years had painfullytoiled to erect. What is to happen when man comes at last toexperiment upon himself like a god, dealing not only with thematerials without, but also with the very constituents of hisinnermost being? Will he not then indeed become a god? If he does notdestroy himself before, that is surely his destiny. For better or forworse, we possess now in the endocrines new instruments for swayingthe individual as individual, and as related to other individuals, asa member of a type, family, nation, species and genus. 

THE BASIS OF VARIATION

The sense of likeness and the sense of unlikeness plays a decisiverôle in the diurnal schedule of the individual. His sense ofresemblance to his father and mother, his kin and clan, mark him andthem off against the cosmos as an alliance of defense and offense. Yetno matter how closely he is like them and they like him, he differsand varies, they differ and vary, with a sort of mutual forgiveness, because the amount of resemblance overtops the degree of variation. Ina paper on the "Rediscovery of the Unique, " H. G. Wells emphasized theunique quality of the individual, and how, in spite of the cleverestdevices of classification, living things ultimately escaped theclassifying net by virtue of their tendency forever to vary. 

The individual is unique. Yet when all is said and done, the factremains that between individuals there is resemblance, and among themvariation. What is the reason for their resemblances and what is thecause of their variation?

The conception of a particular chemical make-up of the individual, statable and relatively controllable in terms of the internalsecretions, supplies a more rational and satisfactory methodof approach to the problem than any so far suggested as far asvertebrates are concerned at any rate. In effect, the differencesbetween individuals may fundamentally thus be grouped among thedifferences which distinguish other chemical substances. Thedifference between water, technically known as hydrogen monoxide, and the antiseptic fluid labeled hydrogen dioxide lies wholly in thepossession by the latter of an extra atom of oxygen in its molecules. All the peculiarities and qualities by which hydrogen peroxide isseparated from water are referred to that additional quantum ofoxygen. So the diversity of constitution and appearance of twobrothers, alike in that they have inherited the same internalsecretion trends, may be traced to the superiority of the pituitary ofthe one over the other. 

Variation and resemblance are large issues, crucial material of thescience of biology upon which much has been thought and written. Thatthe proportion of the endocrines determines variation and resemblance, heredity and evolution is a hypothesis advanced, supported by a largeamount of facts, and capable of the most interesting experimentalverification and observation. If a child resembles particularly eitherof its parents, grandparents or relatives, there is good reason forbelieving that it is because their endocrine formulas are very muchalike. When people apparently not blood-related at all resembleone other, the same law must hold. Resemblances may be partial orcomplete, and the degree will depend upon the amount and ratio of theinternal secretions involved. 

The same endocrine constitutions will produce corresponding physiques, physiognomies, abilities and characters. Deviations in endocrine typefrom that of the original stock, more of one endocrine and less ofanother, is at the bottom of the phenomenon of variation, basic forthe origin of new species as well as the extinction of the old. Inshort, viewing the internal secretions as determinants, by theirquantitative variations, of a host of biologic phenomena furnishes aconcrete and detailed foundation for Darwin's theory of pangenesis. 

INHERITANCE OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERS

Darwin's theory of pangenesis was an attempt to harmonize everythingknown in his time about heredity. It supposed that the variousorgans of the body gave off into the blood substances, themselvesin miniature, which were taken up by the sex cells, and so becameresponsible for the development of their mother-organ in the newlyforming individual. Modern knowledge cannot accept all this as awhole. But in a modified version, it has become the germ of a theoryof heredity of which J. T. Cunningham, of Oxford, is the chief backer. 

Beginning with the traits and qualities which distinguish the sexes, grouped as the secondary sex characters, he showed that they arecorrelated with the special sexual function of the species in whichthey occur. These traits appear only when the hormones occur whichare present in one sex and that only when the gonads of that sex aremature. In some cases they appear only at the period of the yearwhen reproduction takes place, disappearing again after the breedingseason. Their presence makes certain cells develop in excessivenumbers at a particular spot in the organism (as in the growth ofbreasts from a few sweat glands) or causes them to specialize (to makehair on the face in man, or to grow antlers on the head of a stag). After castration, the hormones being absent, all these points ofcontrast between the sexes fail to appear. So by analogy we mayexplain all somatic and psychic differentiation as functions of theglands of internal secretion. Contemplated from the angle of theeffect of environment upon the endocrines, and a reflected actionupon the germ cells, we may outline a mechanism of the inheritance ofacquired characters at certain times and consequent adaptation. Thecycle of events would be as follows:

1. A state of lability of cells at a point because of increased ordecreased use. 

2. An increased or decreased appropriation by them of the hormonecontrolling their function. 

3. A corresponding increase or decrease in function of the gland ofinternal secretion and so, 4. An increased or decreased representation of it in the reproductivesex cells in the gonads. 

To take a classic illustration, the long neck of the giraffe. The neckof certain animals living in a district populated by trees with highbranches would be in state of instability. If at the same time thepituitary, for some reason, was unstable and reacted with an extrasupply of its secretion, it would stimulate the neck cells toreproduce themselves. In turn the pituitary would become stabilizedin the direction of increased secretion, and hand on the component ofincreased secretion to the sex cells. That component, in conjunctionwith other factors, would therefore determine the emergence of adefinite species character. In other words, the glands of internalsecretion, as intermediaries between the environment and body, andbetween the body and the reproductive sex cells or germplasm, tenderthe clue to a phase of the puzzle of heredity, adaptation andevolution. It is only a dotted outline of an explanation to be sure, but one certainly capable of being filled in. 

THE BEARING ON BREEDING

Since the endocrine glands are so subtly sensitive and responsive toenvironment, and are at the same time so intimately concerned in theprocess of inheritance--a law which sums up their influence uponresemblance and variation in animals--there is no need to stresstheir importance for the practical science and art of good breeding, eugenics. Another mode of approach to its problems is opened up, andfresh enthusiasm instilled into its hopes and aspirations. A methodof analysis of the factors involved, together with rules for theprediction of the outcome of certain matings, when finally worked out, will elevate its procedure to the level of the more exact sciences. 

A man's chief gift to his children is his internal secretioncomposition. The endocrines are truly the matter of breeding asthey are of growth. They are the material carriers of the inheritedphysical and psychic dispositions, powers, abilities and disabilitiesfrom the soma to the germplasm and back from the germplasm to thesoma. All kinds of questions arise as soon as one attempts to considerthe bearing of this underlying principle upon concrete situations. What happens, say, when a pituitocentric mates with a thyrocentric?Or when a pituitocentric marries a pituitocentric? Is there areinforcement or a cancellation of the dominant endocrine? Is therea quantitative addition of internal glandular tendencies in thegermplasm, or a more complex rearrangement dependent upon reactionsbetween all the internal secretions?

The term endocrine dominants brings up the inquiries of Mendelism, andthe relation of Mendelian conceptions of dominant and recessive to theinternal secretions. The Mendelians have emphasized the rôle of theunit factor in heredity, and the conservation of the unit factor asan entity through all the adventures of matings. Also, that when unitfactors, say of the color of the eyes, come into conflict, brown orblack being mixed with blue or grey, one, the recessive, is submergedand overlaid but not destroyed by the other, the dominant. So brown orblack eyes, dark hair, curly hair, dark skin, and so on, are dominant, while blue or grey eyes, light or straight hair, light skin arerecessives. A nervous temperament is dominant to the phlegmatic. Anumber of psychic qualities have been declared to be Mendelian unitfactors: memory, mechanical instinct, mathematical ability, literaryability, musical ability, and even handwriting. 

As architects of human qualities the endocrines must be involvedin the Mendelian unit factors. Moreover, they seem to act upon aparticular locale in different degrees, which is the strongestargument against the resolution of a number of structural traits intoMendelian unit characters. Most characters, somatic or psychic, arethe products not of the action of one internal secretion alone, but ofthe interlinked activities of all of them. The amount of fat depositedunder the skin, for instance, is influenced by the pituitary, thethyroid, the pancreas, the liver, the adrenals and the sex glands. Other qualities, likewise, are resultants of a compromise between allthe endocrine factors comprising the equation of the individual. Ifwe are to look for unit factors at all in endocrine heredity, we mustlook more deeply into constitution, and measure the hormone potentialsand their mobilization or suppression. 

It will, in all probability, be found that the stability orinstability of an endocrine will have a good deal to do with the partplayed by it in inheritance as well as in the life of the individualAn unstable pituitocentric marrying another unstable pituitocentricwill have children either exceptionally small or tall, or abnormallybright or stupid. The instability tends to right itself in the nextgeneration, or that following. Genius as a sport, as well as suddendegeneration of family stock, the whole problem of mutation, may beclosely connected with this tendency. 

It has been noted that the extinction of species has been preceded bya great increase in their size, for example, the case of the greatreptilia of prehistoric time. That possibly represented pituitarystabilization, and so an abeyance of the ability to vary, necessaryfor fresh adaptation to a changing environment. Indeed, endocrineinstability appears the fundamental condition of the tendency to vary, endocrine stability the opposite. 

Certain endocrine facts in relation to heredity should be mentioned. The daughters of mothers who menstruated early, themselves menstruateearly. Animals fed upon thyroid during pregnancy, comparable to thethyrocentric, give birth to offspring with a very large thymus, comparable to the thymocentric. Women with partial thyroid deficiency, or myxedema, bear cretins. These are suggestive of what the internalsecretions may do to an individual in inheritance and development. Inherited endocrine potential is the maximum reaction of which a glandis capable. This matter of potential is comparable to the factor ofreserve power or margin of safety demonstrated up to the hilt forsuch organs as the heart and kidney as varying from individual toindividual. A low potential, like instability of an internal secretiongland, may be latent, and not made manifest until the proper stimulus, the maximum amount of stress and strain, like accident, disease, shockor war, arrives. 

When the individual is tested the effects may be purely local becausethere is always in the organism a point of least resistance. Physicalchanges alone may be prominent. Or because somatic changes are minor, the psychic will dominate the picture. An attack of the "blues, "unaccompanied by any demonstrable transformation of the bodilyprocesses, may be the sole symptom of an endocrine failure somewherein the chain due to hereditary weakness or low potential. 

So we may account for family trends and streaks, for varietiesand strains among individuals, upon more precise lines based uponendocrine analysis. Family disturbances of the internal secretions ofthe extreme sort denominated disease are well known. Indeed, a numberof family diseases or predispositions to diseases, have been tracedto them. Predisposition in any direction will probably be shown to becaused by them, within limits. Research here has its opportunity. 

THE IMPROVEMENT OF RACIAL STOCK

A vast new territory of inquiry and achievement, as yet totallyunexplored, is opened by the endocrines to the eugenists, and thoseidealists whose most earnest aspiration is the improvement of racialstock as a necessary preliminary to improvement of racial life. Beginning with Galton, they have brought to light a great collectionof data to prove that human traits and faculties, good and bad, areinherited. Ability has been shown to run in certain families anddegeneracy in others. Yet all of the practical net result has beensummed up in the term "negative eugenics, " the eugenics of prohibitionand warning. 

Now the concept of personality, as woven around a system of chemicalreflexes, handed on from generation to generation, is bound to changeall that, and to create a structure of positive eugenics. It has beensaid that what radium is to chemistry, the internal secretions are tophysiology. Just as radium enlightens the chemist about the history ofmatter, and the integrations and disintegrations constituting the lifeof an element--the internal secretions illuminate the history of theindividual as part of the life of the race, and of its integrationsand disintegrations. Seeing the individual as a system of chemicalsubstances interacting will assist enormously to predict the nature, character and constitution of his descendants, which is essentiallywhat the eugenist is after. 

The study of matings, the heart of the matter, will concern itselfwith the investigation and comparison of the kind of endocrinepersonalities that mate, the internal secretion predominances thatcross, and the consequent endocrine personality of the offspring. Data bearing upon physique and physiognomy, details of anatomy andfunction, mind and behaviour will so be co-ordinated as no eugenisthas hitherto succeeded in doing. Laws of endocrine inheritance willemerge that will bring the control of heredity within measurabledistance. Standards and norms of a new kind would be obtained. 

A beginning of this study of endocrine inheritance, on the pathologicside, has been made. Some of these have been along Mendelian lines. Following up abnormal growth (making giants and dwarfs) and abnormalmetabolism (goitre, diabetes, and so on), it has been stated that itwould seem that abnormal growth is dominant in the male, and recessivein the female, while abnormal metabolism is dominant in the female andrecessive in the male. If an endocrine abnormality like a goitre, or cretinism, or a dwarf or giant appear in a family as a sign ofendocrine instability, other members of that family will very likelyshow internal secretion abnormalities. 

If one gland of internal secretion acts as the centre of the systemand the others as satellites, we should be able to trace what happensto it in the different generations. Does it maintain its supremacy? Orwill it be ousted by another member of the group? The time will comewhen we shall thus be able to advise prospective parents of theconsequences of procreation and to forecast the meaning for the raceof a particular marriage. Internal glandular analysis may becomelegally compulsory for those about to mate before the end of thepresent century. 

What are desirable and undesirable matings? The general law followedby nature in her helterskelter way seems to be the production of thegreatest number of hybrids and variations possible, whether forgood or evil does not matter. Certain endocrine types appear to bespecially attracted to others belonging to the same group. Thusthymus-centered types frequently marry. The ante-pituitary type ofmale, the strongly masculine, mates often with the post-pituitary typeof female, the markedly feminine. The children exhibit the lineamentsof the pituitary-centered type. The general trend seems to be theestablishment of a better balanced, equilibrated type. Yet thechildren often are apt to segregate into pituitary dominants orpituitary deficients. Happiness and unhappiness in marriage shouldbe examined from the standpoint of endocrine compatibility orincompatibility. Likewise those divorced or about to be divorced. 

The correction of endocrine defects, disturbances, imbalances andinstabilities, before mating, presents another field. It remains to beseen whether we shall thereby, in one generation, be able to affectat all the germplasm, hitherto revered by all pious biologists as anenvironment-proof holy of holies. No one can deny, in the face of themultitude of evidence available, that internal secretion disturbancesoccur in the mother, which, when grave, offer in the infant grossproof of their significance, and therefore when slight must moresubtly work upon it. Endocrine disturbances in infancy have beentraced to endocrine disturbances in the mother during pregnancy. Pregnant animals fed on thyroid give birth to young with large thymusglands. The diet of the mother has been proved conclusively toinfluence the development and constitution of the child. As theinternal secretions influence the history of the food in the body, they affect development in the womb indirectly as well as directly. Certainly, whether or no we learn how to change the nature ofgermplasm within a short time, we have in the endocrines the means athand for affecting _the whole individual that is born and sees thelight of day_. 

THE CONTROL OF MUTATIONS

The true physical and intellectual evolution of man depends upon theproduction of mutations of a desirable kind that can survive. Theinformation furnished by the study of the endocrines concerningthe genesis of personality provides the foundations for a positiveeugenics, a eugenics of the encouragement of desirable matings, withthe proper legal and social procedures. Selective breeding for theproduction of the best endocrine types should become practicable. 

But the biologist should be able to go farther. If the eugenist is tolimit himself to the method of the animal breeder he will have to restsatisfied with the characters or hereditary factors given, that turnup spontaneously in an individual. But with the internal secretionsas the controllable controllers of mutations, the outlook changes. It should become possible to produce new mutations, good and bad, tospeed up their production at any rate. The feeding of thyroid toa gifted father before procreation might enhance immeasurably thechances of transmission of his gift as well as of its intensificationin his offspring. A field of investigation is opened that wouldembrace in due time the deliberate control of human evolution. 

All the physical traits, stature, color, muscle function, and so on, offer themselves for improvement, as well as brain size, and theintellectual and emotional factors which have dominated man's socialevolution. The general prevalence of nervous disorders in civilizedcountries, visible even in the nervous infants the specialist inchildren's diseases is called upon to treat, shows that the nervoussystem of the better part of mankind is in a state of unstableequilibrium. It may be another example of the curious coincidencesthat have been called the Fitness of the Environment that theinvestigation of the endocrines promises to put into our hands theinstruments of the control of the future of the nervous system. Ingeneral, meanwhile, the eugenist should strive for raising the levelof the endocrine potential, and discourage its lowering. That meansthe encouragement of matings in which all the internal secretionactivities are reinforced. On the other hand, those internal secretioncombinations, generally leading to a deficiency of all of them whichproduce types of mental defectives, delinquency and crime should notbe allowed to occur. 

THE INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT

What suggestions now are there for the euthenist who would controlthe influence of environment upon child culture. There are certainpertinent facts and leads that are worth considering. 

In analyzing environment, one must distinguish sharply in the jungle, the non-living factors from the living. For while the nonliving actupon the endocrines directly, the living act upon the vegetativesystem, as a whole. The non-living factors are those with the intimatescrutiny of which physics and chemistry have busied themselves: food, water, air, light, heat, electricity, magnetism. The living are theanimals that prowl all over the planet, the predatories spreading thegospel of fear. 

The dietetic habits of a person, for instance, are known to have aninfluence upon the glands of internal secretion. Meat-eating producesa greater call upon the thyroid than any other form of food. In timethis ought to produce a degree of hyperthyroidism in the carniverouspopulations. Pre-war statistics concerning meat-eating in differentcountries show the greatest meat-eating among the English-speakinggroups, who all in all must be admitted the most energetic. 

 _Meat per Day per_ _Countries_ _Capita in Grams_

 Australia 306 U. S. Of America 149 Great Britain 130 France 92 Belgium and Holland 86 Austria-Hungary 79 Russia 59 Spain 61 Italy 29 Japan 25

Sea-water contains iodine. People living in contact with sea-waterwould be apt to get more iodine in their systems, and so a greaterdegree of thyroid activity. On the other hand, certain bodies andsources of inland water hold something deleterious to the thyroid, sothat whole populations in Europe, Asia and America drinking such waterhave become goitrous and cretinous, and a large percentage straightimbeciles. Endemic cretinism is the name given to the condition. Inparts of Switzerland, Savoy, Tyrol and the Pyrenees, in Americaaround some of the Great Lakes, there are still such foci. Marco Polodescribed similar areas he encountered in his travels through Asia. 

Certain foods with aphrodisiac qualities may act by stimulating theinternal secretion of the sex glands. A type of pituitocentric has analmost uncontrollable craving for sweets. Alcohol and the endocrinesremain to be studied. 

Light, heat and humidity stand in some special relation to theadrenals. Pigment deposit in the skin as protection against lightis controlled by the adrenal cortex. The reaction of the skin bloodvessels to heat and humidity is regulated by the adrenal medulla. Achange in the adrenal as a response to changes of temperature andhumidity in an environment would result in a number of concomitanttransformations throughout the body. So variation and adaptation areprobably connected. Most Europeans living for a sufficiently long timein the tropics suffer from a combination of symptoms spoken of as"Punjab head" or "Bengal head. " The condition is probably the resultof excessive adrenal stimulation by the excessive heat and light ofthe tropical sun, followed by a reaction of exhaustion and failure, with the consequent phenomena of a form of neurasthenia. In thesection on the pineal gland there was mentioned the relation betweenlight and the pineal gland in growing animals, and how it serves tokeep in check the sex-stimulating action of light. The earlier pubertyand menstruation of the warmer climates may be explained as due to anearlier regression of the pineal under the pressure of a great amountof light playing upon the skin. 

All these, and many more could be cited, are instances of the directinfluence of environmental factors upon one or more of the endocrines, and so upon the organism as a whole. Indeed, stimuli may be consideredto modify an organism only in so far as they modify the glands ofinternal secretion. Consequently, climatic factors will tend to make apopulation possess certain points of resemblance in common. 

Varieties of the human race exist as do varieties of dogs. Thepekingese and the fox terrier are as different as the Slav and Latinare different: because of differences in internal secretion make-up. The Slav peasant is definitely subthyroid in his general effect:round head, coarse features, stubby hands, and his stolid, broodingintellectual and emotional reaction. The Latin shows a pronouncedadrenal streak in his coloration, his emotivity, his susceptibility toneurosis and psychosis. H. Laing Gordon, a Scot physician, reportedthat of 700 cases he studied, more than twice as many of duplex eyedindividuals (brown or black, i. E. , adrenal-centered most often), weresusceptible to the mental disturbances of war as the simplex (blue orgray-eyed, i. E. , thyroid-centered most often). He also pointed outthat such individuals tend to have a narrow and abnormally archedpalate. The Anglo-Saxon tends to be more sharply pituitarized, hisfeatures are more clean-cut, his mentality more stable. The Frenchmanis rather a cross between the Anglo-Saxon pituitary-centered and theItalian or Spanish adrenal-centered. 

So national resemblances, traceable to climatic influences beingrepeated from generation to generation upon the endocrines, may beexplained physiologically. The physiologic interpretation of historywill indeed be found the broadest, including as complementary Buckle'sclimatic theory, Hegel's ideas on the influence of ideas, and Marx'son the superiority of the economic motives and forces. 

THE RACES OF MANKIND

Arthur Keith, conservator of the Museum of the Royal College ofSurgeons of England, was the first to apply the principle of endocrinedifferentiation to the problem of the color-lines--the lines whichhave divided mankind crudely into the yellow, the red, the white andthe brown, the Negro, the Mongol, the Caucasian, the copper tintedAmerican. It has long been recognized by anthropologists that thedifferences of color march with differences in every comparable trait. Thus the ideal Negro is built upon a pattern in which all the elementsare specific and singular. When the looms revolve that make him, there is produced a gleaming black skin, kinky black hair, squatwide-nostriled nose, thick protruding lips, large striking teeth, prominent jaws, and staring eyes. As his upright carriage andbone-muscle-fat proportions are distinctive, so are his musical voiceand his easily wrought upon nerves. In contrast the Caucasian has agood deal of hair on his body, his skin is a pale tan-pink, his lipsare thin, and his nose especially has the definite bridge whichnarrows it. The Mongol, like the Negro, has the hairless body and thebeardless face, but unlike him has lank straight hair on his head, while his features are flattened and fore-shortened. 

Upon the basis of these structural, functional and mental differences, the qualitative and quantitative evolution of which in the race as inthe individual is guided by the glands of internal secretion, Keithpresents a very good case for the view that the white man is anexample of relative excess of the pituitary, thyroid, adrenal andgonad endocrines. "The sharp and pronounced nasalization of theface, the tendency to strong eyebrow ridges, the prominent chin, thetendency to bulk of body, and height of stature in the majority ofEuropeans" are the signs of pituitary dominance. Keith is also of theopinion that "the sexual differentiation, the robust manifestations ofthe male characters, is more emphatic in the Caucasian than ineither the Mongol or Negro racial types . .. In certain negro types, especially in Nilotic tribes, with their long stork-like legs, we seemto have a manifestation of abeyance in the action of the interstitialglands. " As for the adrenal superiority of the white man, "it is 150years since John Hunter came to the conclusion . .. That the originalcolor of man's skin was black, and all the knowledge that we havegathered since his supports the inference he drew. From the fact thatpigment begins to collect and thus darken the skin when the adrenalbodies become the seat of a destructive disease we infer that theyhave to do with the clearing away of pigment, and that we Europeansowe the fairness of our skins to some particular virtue resident inthe adrenal bodies. " Finally, as regards the thyroid, a comparison ofthe face of a cretin with that of the Negro or Mongol tells the story. A certain variety of idiocy, Mongolian idiocy, in which the facesimulates cretinism so closely as to deceive practised clinicalobservers, is characterized by a Chinese cast of the features andeyes, hence the name. And in the Bushman of South Africa, the cretin'sface is even more startlingly recalled. 

There is every reason then for believing that the white man possessesmore of pituitary, adrenal, gonad, and thyroid internal secretions ascompared with the yellow man or black man. And since these endocrinescontrol not only physique and physiognomy, anatomic and functionalminutiae, but also mind and behaviour, we are justified in puttingdown the white man's predominance on the planet to a greaterall-around concentration in his blood of the omnipotent hormones. While the Negro is relatively subadrenal, the Mongol is relativelysubthyroid. Their relative deficiency in internal secretionsconstitutes the essence of the White Man's Burden. 

MAN'S ATTITUDE TOWARD HIMSELF

A last, but by no means least, application we may consider of thedeveloping knowledge of the internal secretions in relation to humanevolution is its effect upon Man's attitude toward himself and sotoward his fellow men. Whatever else he is, man is a land animal withideas. That makes him a thought-adventurer among materials. In a word, he is the last word of mind working upon matter. But persistently hehas refused to recognize himself as matter and as subject to the laws, to the physics and chemistry of matter. 

History consists of the protocols that record the high lights of theinteractions of materials and ideas which is the adventure of man intime and space. Materials and ideas have reacted, the record shows;materials come upon have begotten strange fantasies. Ideas thatflashed from nowhere into a consciousness have transformed utterly theface of the earth. The herd-brute, agglutinated with his fellows by amagnetism beyond his ken, could be infected with thought, and so castin the heroic mould. The possibility of communion, --that possibilityof possibilities, for without it none other could be possible--hasrendered man the heir of a divine destiny. For the progressiveeducation of the race, a single discoverer here, an inventor there, and thinkers everywhere have been inspired. In due time theirinspiration becomes the possession of even the lowest brain butcapable of grasping it. 

Man's attitude toward himself, his self-consciousness, and hisattitude toward his fellow creatures has grown and varied andevolved with his education about himself. According to the theory heformulated concerning his being, his why and wherefore, he directedand governed, punished and mutilated himself and them. But thepressure of his curiosity, and the inexorable quality of the truthwould not let him stand still. The poetic genius within him, as Blakecalled it, struggled on from one dogma concerning his nature toanother. Behaviour malignant or beneficent, horrible in its tragedyand pitiable in its comedy, flowed inevitably on. Witchcraft trialsand the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition belong among the morementionable consequences of some of man's theories about his ownnature and its requirements. 

Heretofore the imaginative spirit has had its day in the matter. And, curiously enough, an obsession to subjugate the natural has made itexalt the supernatural. Visions, dreams, portents, revelations, allsymptomatic of an order of things above nature, are the stuff of whatmore than ninety-nine per cent of the millions of the race believeabout themselves and their fate. Man's cruelty to man, through theages, is a comment upon how vast and ramifying may be the consequencesof a delusion. 

But now for a couple of centuries the critical spirit, which is thespirit of science, has been invading the affairs of men. Humble butpersistent corrosive of delusion, it has infiltrated the furthestbounds of ignorance and superstition. It has not dared to assert thesupremacy of its fundamental views upon the everyday problems of humanlife because it was without concrete means of vindicating its claims. That lack is now supplied by the growing understanding of the chemicalfactors as the controllers and dictators of all the legion aspects oflife. 

The profoundest achievement of the physiologist will be the change histeachings and discoveries will bring about in man's attitude towardhimself. When he comes to realize himself as a chemical machine thatcan, within limits, be remodeled, overhauled and repaired, as anautomobile can be, within limits, when he becomes saturated with thesignificance of his endocrine-vegetative system at every turn and moveof his life, and when sympathy and pity informed by knowledge andunderstanding will come to regulate his relationships with the lowestand most despised of the men, women and children about him, the era ofthe first real civilization will properly be said to be born. 

Morality, as society's code of conduct for its members, will haveto change in the direction of a greater flexibility with theestablishment of organic differences in human types. There is nothingthat is more emphasized to the pathologist than that one man's meat isanother man's poison. In the family, as nature's laboratory forthe manufacture of fresh combinations of the internal secretions, allowances will be made for divergences in capacity and deportmentfrom a new angle altogether. Schools will function as the developers, stimulators and inhibitors of the endocrines, as well as investigatorsof the individuals who have not enough or too much of one or some ofthem. Prisons will have the same function, only they will be nameddetention hospitals. The raising of the general level of intelligenceby the judicious use of endocrine extracts will mean a good deal tothe sincere statesman. The average duration of life will be prolongedfor an enormous mass of the population. If the prevention of wardepends upon the burning into the imagination of the electorateswhat the consequences of war are, a high intelligence quotient andrevaluation of life will count for a good deal. 

Man is the animal that wants Utopia. So long as human nature waslooked upon as fixed constant in the ebb and flow of life, a Utopia offine minds could be conceived only by the dreamer and poet. The desirefor such a Utopia could only be regarded as a tragic aspiration for animpossibility. The physiology of the internal secretions teaches thathuman nature does change and can be changed. A relative control of itsproperties is already in view. The absolute control will come. 

Nor need anyone fear that the science of the internal secretions inits maturity will signify the abolition of the marvelous differencesbetween human beings that create the unique personalities of history. A derangement of the endocrines has been responsible for masterpiecesof the human species in the past and will be responsible for them inthe future. The equality of Utopia can be the equality of the highestand fullest development possible for each of its inhabitants. Theapplications of endocrine control will not necessarily interferewith the life of the individual. There will be breeding of the bestmixtures of glands of internal secretion possible. And there willbe treatment for those born with a handicap, or who have becomehandicapped in the life struggle. There will be a stimulation ofcapacity to the limit. But beyond that, compulsory equalization is atheorist's bogey. 

The internal secretions are the most hopeful and promising of thereagents for control yet come upon by the human mind. They open uplimitless prospects for the improvement of the race. A few hundreds ofinvestigators are engaged upon their study throughout the world. Thatis one of the ironies of our contemporary civilization. A concertedeffort at the task of understanding them, backed by the labors of tensof thousands of workers, would, without a doubt, accomplish as muchfor humanity as the vast armies and navies that consume the substanceof mankind. If we could not obtain Utopia then, we might, at least byabolishing the subnormals and abnormals who constitute the slaves andcareerists of society, render the human race less contemptible andmore divine. 

INDEX

 Ability, natural Acquired characters, inheritance of Acromegaly Addison Addison's disease Adolescence, period of Adrenal glands and anger and courage and emergencies and emotions and fatigue and fear and neuroses and pseudo-hermaphroditism and puberty blood pressure and brain cells and chromaffin cells of cortex of excess of secretion failure of secretion function of glands of combat and fight hair and influence of in hermaphroditism insufficiency of secretion medulla of pigment cells and relation to pineal gland relation to pituitary secretion of sexuality and skin and Adrenal-centered type Adrenal face Adrenal personalities, or types compensated insufficient in pregnancy of brain work of girl of hair of skin of teeth Adrenal personalities, or types of women reactions to modernism in Adrenalin Alcoholism and endocrine types Analysis, endocrine Anger and adrenals Antagonisms Anti-Fate Antitoxic function of thyroid gland Ape-parvenu, the Applications of endocrinology Autonomic system

 Backgrounds of personality Baldness and the thyroid Baumann Bayliss Beard Beard's neurasthenia von Bechterew Behavior Bell, Blair Bernard, Claude Berthold Black races, endocrine control in Blood pressure, and adrenals Body, influence of glands upon Body-mind complex Bones long, development of Bordeau Bossi Brain cells and adrenals Brain, growth of Brainwork, adrenal type of Breakdown, nervous Breeding, bearing of endocrine glands on Brown-Séquard

 Caesar, Julius, an epileptic pituitary in Capacity Careerist as abnormals feminine instincts of masculine super- Carlson Castration effects of effects of, on thymus Character Charcot Charging of wishes, endocrine Check and drive system Chemistry of the soul Child--bearing, transfigurations of Childhood, epoch of the pineal Chromaffin cells of adrenals Chromosomes Climacteric Color, endocrine control of, in races Combat, adrenals and Combinations of types of personality Conduct Constitutions, endocrine Cooperation Corpus luteum and mammary glands Courage and the adrenals Cretinism a thyroid deficiency effect of feeding thyroid in Cretinoid type Cretin Crime, treatment of Criminals and endocrine types Critical ages Curling Cushing, Harvey

 Dangerous age, the Darwin, Charles as a neurasthenic genius his "Descent of Man" his theory of Pangenesis Davenport Deficiency, mental Development Diabetes, and the pancreas Diet, effect of on the endocrine glands Directorate, endocrine glands as a Diseases and endocrine types Division of labor Drug addiction and endocrine types Dwarfs

 Education, of vegetative-system vocational Egomania Elixir of life Emergencies, adrenals glands of Emotions, adrenals glands of Endocrine analysis charging of wishes constitutions control in color of races corporation deficiency in old age epochs of life glands and feeblemindedness and insanity as an interlocking directorate bases of variation bearing on breeding discovery of effect of diet on influence upon body influence upon mind inferiority neurosis personality sex traits types alcoholism and criminals and diseases and drug addiction and narcotism and Endocrines, evolution of Endocrinology, applications of possibilities of Energy and thyroid Enthusiasm and thyroid Environment, influence of Epilepsy, in genius Epochs of life, endocrine Eugenics, negative positive promises of Eunuchoid face personality Eunuchoidism Eunuchs Evolution, human, effect of internal secretions upon Exhibitionism Expressionism Eyes

 Face, adrenal eunuchoid hyperpituitary hyperthyroid Facial types Family, and mixed sex Fat, distribution of Fat people Fate and Anti-Fate Fatigue and industry as an endocrine deficiency relation of adrenals to relation of thymus to Fear mechanism of relation of adrenals to Feeblemindedness and the endocrine glands Feminine pituitary type Feminine precocity Feminoid complex constitution and personality Fertilization Fight, relation of adrenals to Fingers, pituitary and thyroid and Forgetting Freedom Freud Freudianism Freudians Friedleben

 Galli Galton Genius, epilepsy in migraine in neurasthenic treatment of Giants Girl, endocrine types of Glands, definition of endocrine, as an interlocking directorate discovery of influence on body influence on mind Goitre, relation of iodine to Gonads and libido and sexuality and thymus Gonads and thyroid function secretion Gonad-centric personalities homosexuality and Growth relation of thymus to Guilford Gull

 Hair and adrenals and pineal and thymus and thyroid Hands, and pituitary and thyroid Henle Hermaphrodite Hermaphroditism functional influence of adrenals in influence of pituitary in Hibernation and the pituitary Historic personages Darwin, Charles Julius Caesar Napoleon Nietzsche Nightingale, Florence Wilde, Oscar History, internal secretions in von Hochwart Homosexuality, and gonad-centric type and thymus type Hormones harmony of the Horsley Howitz Human nature attitudes towards case against science and Hunger Hunter, John Hygiene of the internal secretions Hyperpituitary face skin Hyperpituitrism, Hyperthyroid face skin type of girl pregnancy in premenstrual molimina in Hyperthyroidism Hysteria

 Imagination, an endocrine gift Improvement of racial stock Industry, and fatigue relation of endocrines to Infancy, epoch of the thymus Infantilism Infantiloid constitution or personality Inferiority, breeding of Inheritance of acquired characters Insanity, and the endocrine glands Instinct Instincts, pituitary thyroid Insuline Intellectuality, and the pituitary Internal secretions, determinants of vegetative pressures effect of, upon human evolution hygiene of in history Interstitial glands, see Gonads type of teeth Iodine, in thyroxin relation of to goitre

 Janet Judgment Julius Caesar, an epileptic pituitary in

 Keith Kendall Kinetic chain drive system Kocher

 Laennec Lanugo Larey Libido and gonads sex Life, well-springs of Lime salts, and sex Lincoln, Abraham Lutein

 MacDougallians Malthusian law of slavery Mammary glands corpus luteum and placenta and Man, a transient attitude of towards himself a product of glands of internal secretion critical age in secondary sex characteristics of Manic depressive psychoses Mankind, races of Marie, Pierre Masculine, the secret of the Masculine and feminine, mechanics of, and see Sex Masculine pituitary type Masculinoid women Masochism Maternal instinct different from sex instinct relation of the pituitary to Matings, desirable and undesirable Megalomania Memory Mendelism Menopause Menstruation and ovaries cycle of Mental deficiency Migraine in genius Mind, influence of glands on oldest part of Mitchell, Weir Mixed sex and the family Mixed types Möbius Modernism, reactions to in adrenal types Moods, and the organic outlook Moral irresponsibility and thymus type Mujerados Müller, Johann, Murray Muscles Mutations, control of Myxedema operative

 Napoleon, case of Narcotism, and endocrine types Nature's experiments _vs_. Man's "Nerves" Nervous breakdowns Neurasthenia Neurosis adrenals and endocrine war Nietzsche, case of Nightingale, Florence, legend of Normal, what is

 Obesity Operative myxedema Ord, William Ovaries, internal secretion of relation of to menstruation removal of, effect of rôle of Oversecretion

 Pancreas diabetes and function of removal of secretion of Pangenesis, Darwin's theory of Parathyroids function of secretion of Paulesco Pawlov Permutations, of types of personality, Perry, Caleb Personality, background of combinations of types of determined by the endocrines endocrine eunuchoid types of adrenal combinations of gonad-centric nature's experiments _vs_. Man's permutations of pituitary of Philosophers, prejudices of Physics of the wish Physiologists, attitude of rôle of Pigment cells and the adrenals in skin of various races Pineal gland and hair and childhood feeding of to children function of muscle function of Pineal gland, obesity and puberty and relation of to adrenals to progressive muscular atrophy secretion of type of muscles Pituitary gland action of and fingers and toes compared with thyroid diminished action of extirpation of function of in Julius Caesar in Oscar Wilde instincts overaction of personalities regulator of organic rhythms relation to adrenals to growth to hair to hermaphroditism to hibernation to imagination to intellectuality to judgment to maternal instincts to memory to puberty to rejuvenation to sex difficulties to sexual glands to stature to thymus secretion of secretion, characteristics of inferior characteristics of sufficient type feminine masculine of eyes of hands of muscles pregnancy in premenstrual molimina in Pituitary-centered type Pituitocentrics, Caesar Darwin Napoleon Nietzsche Nightingale Pituitrin function of Placenta and mammary glands Placental gland Plater, Felix Plummer Poise Popielski Possibilities of endocrinology Postpituitary type of girl Precocity, feminine male Pregnancy, in various endocrine types Premenstrual molimina, in various endocrine types Progressive muscular dystrophy and the pineal gland Prostate Pseudo-hermaphroditism and the adrenals Psychanalyst, as a therapeutist Psychology, new Psychopathology of every day life Puberty glands, see Gonads in female significance of Public health, prospects of Pure types Puericulture, science of

 Races of mankind Reactions to modernism in adrenal types Rejuvenation, possibilities of Religion of science Repression Resilience of skin Restelli Reverdin, J. L. Rhythms of sex Robertson

 Sadism Schiff, Moritz Science, and human nature origin of religion of Secondary sex traits Secretin Secretion Sella turcica Semon, Sir Felix Senility, epoch of endocrine deficiency interpretation of Sensitivity Sex and lime salts attitudes towards questions of cause of chemistry of characteristics, secondary conflict crises difficulties, pituitary and glands, see Gonads and hair and puberty and muscles centered chain index instinct different from maternal instinct libido life, determining factors of mixed, and the family rhythms of traits, or characteristics endocrine origin of primary secondary Sexual cravings glands, see Gonads, and Sex glands and pituitary gland Sexuality, and gonads and adrenal glands Shaw, G. B. Shell-shock Skeletal types Skin adrenal type and adrenals hyperpituitary type hyperthyroid type pigmentation subadrenal type subpituitary type subthyroid type Slavery, Malthusian law of origin of Soul, chemistry of the Starling Statesman, problems of why he fails Stature, pituitary and Status lymphaticus, and thymus type Steinach Stirner, Max Subadrenal skin Subpituitary skin Subpituitary type of women premenstrual molimina in Subpituitism Subthyroid face skin type of eyes of women, pregnancy in Subthyroidism Sugar metabolism Super-Careerist Susceptibility Sympathetic system

 Teeth Tethelin action of function of Thymic face Thymo-centric personalities Thymo-centric type Oscar Wilde Thymus and gonads and pituitary and puberty and sexual glands and thyroid effect of castration on effect of feeding thymus to animals extirpation of function of hair and hyperactivity of infancy, epoch of the persistent, skin of relation of fatigue to relation of growth to relation of weight to removal of, effect on gonads secretion type of teeth Thymus type homosexuality and moral irresponsibility and status lymphaticus and Thyroid gland and adrenals and baldness and energy and enthusiasm and intersitial glands and judgment and memory and pancreas and pituitary Thyroid gland and puberty and rejuvenation and skin and thymus antitoxic function of as an accelerator as a catalyser as a differentiator as an energiser compared with pituitary creator of land animals deficiency effect of feeding the gland excess functions of hair and instincts personalities secretion of, and see Thyroxin type, of eyes of hands of muscles of teeth Thyroid-centered type Thyrotoxin Thyroxin and energy mobilization and energy production and speed of living Toes pituitary and thyroid and Tonus Types endocrine adrenal adrenal-centered alcoholism and combinations of cretinoid criminals and diseases and drug addiction and facial hyperthyroid mixed narcotism and of girls pituitary, pituitary-centered pure skeletal, subthyroid thyroid-centered Unconscious, the and the viscera physical basis of Undersecretion Variation endocrine glands as basis of Varieties of internal secretions Vegetative apparatus Vegetative pressures internal secretions determinants of Vegetative system education of Virilism Viscera the unconscious and Vocational education

 War neurosis Weight relation of thymus to White races endocrine control in Wilde, Oscar explanation of Wishes endocrine charging of physics of Women adrenal type of masculinoid secondary sex characteristics in

 X-chromosome

 Yellow races endocrine control in