Endocrine system

“ Not only the sex glands, but the liver, suprarenals, thyroid—the whole body in fact—became adjusted to the male type. He had long before birth what we call a male sex complex. Complex it is, but it is, nevertheless, easy enough to imagine its nature for illustrative purposes. It is simply all the endocrine or hormone-producing organs organized into a balanced chemical system—adjusted to each other. ”

“ The internal secretion formula of an individual may, in the future, constitute his measurement which will place him accurately in the social system.
"More and more we are forced to realize that the general form and external appearance of the human body depends, to a large extent, upon the functioning, during the early developmental period, of the endocrine glands. ”

“ They are, however, endocrine glands, that generate a hormone known as thyroxin, which regulates the body-temperature, growth of the body in general, and of the nervous system in particular, etc., etc. Atrophy or extirpation of these glands causes cretinism in the young and myxoedema in adults. Without a sufficient supply of this hormone, the normal exercise of mental powers in human beings is impossible. The organ, therefore, is far from being a useless vestige of what was formerly useful. ”

“ War for the soldier, or the civilian combatant as well, sets the strings vibrating, and with them the glands controlled by them. Excessive stimulation or depression of an endocrine will disturb the whole chain of hormones, and the vegetative system, and their echoes in the psyche. ”

“ The posterior lobe of the pituitary body constitutes, with the pars intermedia, a second endocrine gland, which generates a stimulatory hormone called pituitrin. This hormone stimulates unstriated muscle to contract, and thereby regulates the discharge of secretions from various glands of the body, e. g. the mammary glands, bladder, etc. Hence the hypophysis, far from being a useless organ, is an indispensable one. Moreover, it is an integral and important part of the cryptorhetic system.
The same story may be repeated of the thyroid glands. ”

“ THE REACTIONS OF THE OTHER GLANDS As in so many other aspects, the facts about the various influences exerted by the endocrine glands upon the reproductive system are complicated and disjointed. A chink of light has been let in upon a dark cave, and slowly the chink will widen. ”

“ Ruut said. "I know that."
"Ah, but perhaps you don't know that our race at one time had no more control over our endocrine systems than those little animals.
"There are a lot of ways to account for the change, and it makes very fascinating discussion because it's absolutely unimportant. However, under such conditions, a human being would automatically reach a certain stable level of development. But then, after an incredibly short time, the essential chaos within its body due to lack of endocrine control causes it to deteriorate. ”

“ The amount of fat deposited under the skin, for instance, is influenced by the pituitary, the thyroid, the pancreas, the liver, the adrenals and the sex glands. Other qualities, likewise, are resultants of a compromise between all the endocrine factors comprising the equation of the individual. If we are to look for unit factors at all in endocrine heredity, we must look more deeply into constitution, and measure the hormone potentials and their mobilization or suppression. ”

“ But life episodes and crises, diseases, accidents, and struggles, experiences of pleasure and pain, as well as climatic factors, settle finally which endocrine or endocrines are left in control as a consequence of the series of reactions the period of maturity may be analyzed into. ”

“ Fatigue as an endocrine deficiency—a depressed state of one or more of the glands of internal secretion, abolished when its normal functioning is restored—is a general principle from which departures of exploration of sub-problems will proceed. An endocrine organ will secrete at a certain rate. When it is stimulated excessively, it will eject extra amounts of its secretion. How long the period of excessive stimulation may last must depend upon the secretion potential or margin of reserve of the cells, varying from organ to organ, and from individual to individual. ”

“ Studying endocrine traits of physique, life reactions, disease tendencies, hereditary history and blood chemistry, one may gain an insight into the composition or constitution of an individual. The endocrine type of an individual is a summary of these, his behaviour in the past, and is also a prediction of his reactions in the future, much as a chemical formula outlines what we believe to be the skeleton of a compound substance as deducible from its properties under varying conditions. ”

“ One suggested thyroid extract and perhaps Brown-Sequard’s testicular juices, and there seemed to be a more general agreement that a man is as old, not as his heart and arteries as was once thought, but as his endocrine glands. ”

“ This gland is now known to manufacture and pour out into the blood a hormone which is a regulator of metabolism. When it is produced in normal amounts, the metabolism goes on at the rate that we find in healthy people. If the gland is inactive and does not secrete enough of the hormone, there is a reduction in the metabolism. Since this implies a lowering of the vigor of the life processes, we might expect it to have important effects. The most marked of these are in the nervous system. Persons whose thyroid glands are relatively inactive are mentally sluggish ”

“ A derangement of the endocrines has been responsible for masterpieces of the human species in the past and will be responsible for them in the future. The equality of Utopia can be the equality of the highest and fullest development possible for each of its inhabitants. The applications of endocrine control will not necessarily interfere with the life of the individual. There will be breeding of the best mixtures of glands of internal secretion possible. ”

“ SEX CRISES At the periods of interstitial cell hyperactivity, when a wave of radicalism in the blood sweeps through the tissues, the other endocrines are tested, and their latent stability or instability is made manifest. Even before puberty, cyclic variations of health and conduct may be observed in boys and girls which undoubtedly depend upon currents among the internal secretions. Children, who, in the best of circumstances, habitually are attacked by a wanderlust and run away from home, or suffer from fits of naughtiness, are samples of such endocrine lability. ”

“ In view of all the possible mixtures, permutations and combinations of the endocrine glands, that may construct an individual, it is possible to conceive a million types of normals. For normality means harmony, the harmonious equilibrium between the hormones, which tends to continue itself, because it does no harm to itself. ”

“ The druggist handed him a new, long hypodermic needle, then the epinephrin.
“We hear a great deal nowadays about the glands, the endocrine glands,” said Kennedy, proceeding quickly with his sterilizing and antiseptic preparations. “One gland that has a striking influence on the chemical overturn in the body is the central, or medullary, portion of the adrenal. ”

“ An explanation is an attempt at a consistent and persistent, sometimes an obstinate clarity of mind. A vast number of observations gathered by laboratory experimentalists as well as by those naturalists of the abnormal, physicians in active practice, prove that the construction of the individual both during development before maturity, and maintenance during maturity, his constitution, in short, is directed by the endocrine glands. ”

“ Endocrine types have other tendencies, which when studied and controlled, will decimate the great assassins of middle age: heart disease and kidney disease, with accompanying degenerations of the blood vessels and circulation. The adrenocentric tends to get up a hyperacidity of the stomach and a high blood pressure, besides certain forms of diseases of the lungs. The thyrocentric is predisposed to heart disease, as well as intestinal disturbances. The pituitocentric is liable to periodic and cyclic upsets in his health. ”

“ CHAPTER X THE TYPES OF PERSONALITY THE ENDOCRINE PERSONALITY If a single gland can dominate the life history of an individual it becomes possible to speak of endocrine types, the result of the endocrine analysis of the individual. ”

“ But personality and its reactions, normal and abnormal, are determined by the endocrines. So we should find that particular infections run with special internal glandular predominances. For the picture presented by an infection, temperature, rash, prostration, are the details of the general reaction of the organism in the face of a new situation, the presence of a powerful, destructive invader. Information has accumulated that the invader is powerful and destructive, as well as selective, because of endocrine deficiency of one sort or another in the body it has attacked. ”

“ CHAPTER XIII THE EFFECT UPON HUMAN EVOLUTION The ubiquitous and deep-seated influence of the internal secretions upon life and personality comprises but a fraction of what is known, and only a hint of what is to become known. There is an endocrine aspect to every human being and every human activity, normal and abnormal, internal process and its external expression, regulated by laws of which we are beginning to catch a glimpse. ”

“ No one can deny, in the face of the multitude of evidence available, that internal secretion disturbances occur in the mother, which, when grave, offer in the infant gross proof of their significance, and therefore when slight must more subtly work upon it. Endocrine disturbances in infancy have been traced to endocrine disturbances in the mother during pregnancy. Pregnant animals fed on thyroid give birth to young with large thymus glands. The diet of the mother has been proved conclusively to influence the development and constitution of the child. ”

“ We know that the thyroid gland in the neck swells and contracts in very sensitive relation with the sex organs; we know that some chemical secretion from the developing embryo, or the tissue in which it grows, sends its chemical stimulus to the distant mammary glands of the mother; we know that if the ovaries of a girl or the testes of a boy are completely cut out, the far-reaching influences their hormones would have exerted are made evident by the numerous changes in the system and departures from the normal, which result from their lack. ”

“ ENDOCRINE ANALYSIS The modes of classification glimpsed at are certainly exceedingly broad and sweeping. It is well enough to establish types and classes. But beneath them are sheltered the infinite possibilities of permutations and combinations, which explain the countless variety and complexity of form and function. Every individual born among the vertebrates, for example, must have a certain definite amount and percentage of pituitary gland, anterior and posterior, pineal, thyroid, parathyroid, thymus, adrenal, pancreas, interstitial and so on. ”

“ 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. ”

“ George Howard Parker, the Zoölogist of Harvard, sums up the case against the Darwinian interpretation of the endocrine glands as follows: “The extent to which hormones control the body is only just beginning to be appreciated. For a long time anatomists have recognized in the higher animals, including man, a number of so-called ductless glands, such as the thyroid gland, the pineal gland, the hypophysis, the adrenal bodies, and so forth. These have often been passed over as unimportant functionless organs whose presence was to be explained as an inheritance from some remote ancestor. ”

“ In the chapter on historic personages analyzed from the endocrine viewpoint, we shall see that some of the most eminent and illustrious people of history have been pituitary-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 by fertilizers like phosphates or nitrates. Increased production follows increased fertilization. Natural disability must vary similarly with a perversion or improper mixture, deficiency or absence of the hormones that combine in natural ability. ”

“ And as we can often attack that soil more effectively and radically from the endocrine end than from the experience end (e.g., repressed episodes) we may transform the soil and make it barren rock for morbid complexes, at any rate. The concept of the endocrine-vegetative apparatus as the determinant of normal and abnormal behaviour, emotional reactions and disturbances of power should in time cause even the most fanatic of the psychanalysts to recognize the functional basis of the mental acrostics they are so fond of dissecting. ”

“ The thyroid and the adrenals are mutually stimulating—when the thyroid oversecretes, the adrenal dittos, and vice versa. Yet they have directly opposed effects upon the economy—because they act upon antagonistic portions of the involuntary or vegetative nervous system, the system which is independent of the will. ”