Hormone

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Growth hormone is only manufactured under certain, specific circumstances: for about one hour immediately after going to sleep and then only if the blood supply is rich with argenine and ornithine but contains few other amino acids; it is also manufactured during heavy aerobic exercise that goes on for more than thirty minutes; and growth hormone is produced at an accelerated rate when fasting. ”

“ These are some of the best-known examples of the way in which the products of the activity of one organ modify the functions of other organs. In all probability many more examples of hormone action will be discovered, and it will be found that it plays probably even a more important part than the nervous system in the coordination of function in the animal. ”

“ Recently, medical gerontologists have discovered another reason that fasting heals infections. One body function that deteriorates during the aging process is the production of growth hormone so the effects of growth hormone have been studied. This hormone also stimulates the body to heal wounds and burns, repair broken bones, generally replace any tissues that have been destroyed and, growth hormone stimulates the immune response. Growth hormone also maintains muscle tone and its presence generally slows the aging process. ”

“ When the head begins to form in the process of individual development, the factors, according to my theory, have a tendency to form the special growth of tissue of which the incipient antler consists, but part of the stimulus is wanting, and is not completed until the testicular hormone is produced and diffused into the circulation—that is to say, when the testes are becoming mature and functional. ”

“ THE SEX INSTINCTS Hormone reactions, as we have seen, initiate the complicated forces, processes and expressions of sex. The dictum of the founder of modern pathology, Virchow, that Woman was in effect an appendix to the ovaries, has long been taken to apply to her psychic traits as well as somatic. Her mind, like her skin, her hair and her pelvis, is a product of the ovarian endocrines. But these determinations are by no means her monopoly. Man is likewise a creation of the chemical wheels within wheels and springs within springs that are his glands of internal secretion. ”

“ If the hormone is deficient in quality or quantity, or is absent, the man tends toward the secondary physical attributes of the woman, with the corresponding psychic disposition. That is, he is inclined to narrow shoulders and broad hips, rounded breasts, lack of beard, layers of fat underneath the skin instead of a more muscular development, a high pitched voice, effeminate features, mannerisms and idiosyncrasies.
The internal secretion (as distinguished from the semen) of the testes is produced in the interstitial glands or tissue, meaning "spaces between." ”

“ Perhaps the most remarkable of all somatic sexual characters are those which are almost universal in the whole class of Mammalia, the mammary glands in the female, the scrotum in the male. We have considered the evidence concerning the relation of the development and functional action of the milk glands to hormones arising in the ovary or uterus, now we have to consider the origin of the glands and of their peculiar physiology in evolution. ”

“ As the cells of various organs furnish different secretions, which in health contribute to proper metabolism, resulting in growth or maintenance of the tissues, so these disordered cells are believed to secrete a toxic substance, or malignant hormone, which has a prejudicial action on the body, and hæmolytic action on the blood, as has been brought out pretty clearly by Troisier and others. ”

“ As in chemistry and physics, so in the science of living creatures there have been recent advances that have changed the whole prospect. A good instance is afforded by the discovery of the "hormones," or chemical messengers, which are produced by ductless glands, such as the thyroid, the supra-renal, and the pituitary, and are distributed throughout the body by the blood. ”

“ Thus far we have spoken of hormones only in connection with their ability to excite those nerve cells by which smooth muscles and glands are controlled. As a matter of fact, their action is much wider than that. They have the power of affecting the metabolism of very many body cells. Some of them appear to have the special function of regulating the rate of metabolism. These we shall talk about in detail, when we return to the study of metabolism in a later chapter. One of the hormones is interesting in connection with the relation of emotions to smooth muscle and gland activity. ”

“ Whereas the spermatic fluid of the seminal glands is carried out of the body by way of the genito-urinary canal, the hormone of the instititial gland is poured directly into the blood.
Chemical Aspects of Sex. Glandular secretions, among other physiological factors, play a paramount rôle in the sexual life of man. It will not be denied that these secretions may be influenced by the mind—as an attitude, or state of mind, always in some degree reflects itself physiologically by acting upon the ductless glands, either by inhibiting, stimulating or modifying their action to some extent. ”

“ This hormone is a messenger, stimulating the mucous membrane of the womb into making its velvet pile longer and softer, and its nutrient juices more abundant in readiness for the ovum.
The same stimulus causes the whole organism to make ready for a new life. As in hunger, the chemistry of the body produces the muscle-tension that is felt as a craving for food, so this recurring chemical stimulus produces a definite craving in body and mind. This craving brings about an increased irritability or sensitiveness to stimuli which may result either in a joyous or a fretful mood. ”

“ The work of physiologists like Professor Starling and Professor Bayliss has shown that these chemical messengers regulate what may be called the "pace" of the body, and bring about that regulated harmony and smoothness of working which we know as health. It is not too much to say that the discovery of hormones has changed the whole of physiology. Our knowledge of the human body far surpasses that of the past generation. ”

“ Some of these chemical messengers are called hormones, which stimulate organs and tissues to greater activity; others are called chalones, which put on a brake. Some regulate growth and others rapidly alter the pressure and composition of the blood. Some of them call into active development certain parts of the body which have been, as it were, waiting for an appropriate trigger-pulling. Thus, at the proper time, the milk-glands of a mammalian mother are awakened from their dormancy. This very interesting outcome of evolution will be dealt with in another portion of this work. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is no longer a question of the formation of semen in the male, of the function of menstruation in the female. It has become largely a question of physiological chemistry. The chief parts in the drama of sex, alike on its psychic as on its physical sides, are thus supposed to be played by two mysterious protagonists, the hormones, or internal secretions, of the testes and of the ovary. Even the part played by the brain is now often regarded as chemical, the brain being considered to be a great chemical laboratory. ”

“ This conception, we find, is now receiving an admirable and beautifully adequate physical basis in the researches of distinguished physiologists in various lands concerning the parts played by the ductless glands of the body, in sensitive equilibrium with each other, pouring out into the system stimulating and inhibiting hormones, which not only confer on the man's or woman's body those specific sexual characters which we admire but at the same time impart the special tone and fibre and polarity of masculinity or femininity to the psychic disposition. ”

“ The sexual protagonists are no longer at the surface but within the most secret recesses of the organism, and they appear to science under the name of Hormones or Internal Secretions, always at work within and never themselves condescending to appear at all. Those products of the sexual glands which in both sexes are cast out of the body, and at an immature stage of knowledge appeared to be excretions, are of primary reproductive importance, but, as regards the sexual constitution of the individual, they are of far less importance than the internal secretions of these very same glands. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He then states that Professor Langley had pointed out to him in correspondence that if an animal changes its structure in response to a changed environment, the hormones produced by the altered organs will be changed. The altered hormones will circulate in the blood and bathe the growing and maturing genital cells. ”

“ Rapidly he sketched what he had already told me of the thyroid and the hormones. “These hormones,” added Kennedy, “are closely related to many reactions in the body, such as even the mother’s secretion of milk at the proper time and then only. That and many other functions are due to the presence and character of these chemical secretions from the thyroid and other ductless glands. It is a fascinating study. For we know that anything that will upset—reduce or increase—the hormones is a matter intimately concerned with health. ”

“ The difficulty of this theory is one which has occurred to biologists who have previously made suggestions of a connexion between hormones and heredity—namely, how hormones or waste products from one part of the body could differ from these from the same tissue in another part of the body. If there were no special relation, hypertrophy of bone on one part of the body such as the head, would merely stimulate the factor for the whole skeleton in the gametocytes, and the result would merely be an increased development of the whole skeleton. ”

“ The normal processes of the skin cease, the hair falls, the features bloat, and the paragon of animals is transformed into a shapeless caricature of humanity. These essential lubricators, of which a number are now known, are called hormones—you will recognize from its derivation how appropriate is the term. ”

“ It is probable that we may ultimately find a more fundamental source of these various phenomena in the stimulating and inhibiting play of the internal secretions. [234] Our knowledge of the intimate association between the hormones and sexual phenomena is already sufficient to make such an explanation intelligible; the complex interaction of the glandular internal secretions and their liability to varying disturbance in balance may well suffice to account for the complexity of the phenomena. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the adult stage activity of the legs produces hormones which influence the same determinants in the gametes to develop legs, but again in the presence of the different hormones which are present in the body generally in the adult stage. As the habits of larva and adult became more specialised and contrasted, the change became less and less gradual, and the intermediate stage, not being adapted to any transitional mode of life, became an inactive pupa in which the adult organs develop. ”

“ Also the mucous membranes, the color and lustre and structure of the hair, as well as its general distribution and development, are hieroglyphics of the endocrine processes below the surface. Whether the muscles are massive or sparse, atrophied or hypertrophied, soft or hard, easily fatigable or not, bespeak conditions in the glandular chain. In short, we must regard the individual as an immensely complicated pattern of designs traced by the hormones as the primary etchers of his development. ”