THE GLANDS AS AN INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATE
Now in considering each gland of internal secretion as a separate
entity, and labelling it with certain properties and actions, we of
course commit the usual sin of the intellect: the sin of abstraction
and isolation of its material. This crime of analysis the intellect
commits every day in the search for truth. Before its dissection, it
seems to have to dip the elusive article in a fixative, and bottle it
in a vacuum.
Yet nothing in reality is more of a changing flux than the body in all
of its parts and tissues and organs. And of all these, the glands of
internal secretion stand out as the most susceptible to change. Made
to react to stimuli of offense and defense, instantaneously responsive
to situations involving energy exchanges and protective reflexes,
they are never for any minute the same or alone. They never function
separately. Each influences the other in a communicating chain. Let
one be disturbed, and all the others will feel the impact of the
disturbance and vibrate with it.
Any break in the somatic or psychic equilibrium, a blow or an
infection, or a startling thing seen, or a worrisome thought felt,
will start a process going. This will only wind up when every gland
has been somehow touched, and a final equilibrium reestablished. The
thyroid, maybe, was first excited, and then in turn the adrenals, with
a boomerang reinforcing effect upon the thyroid, and at the same time
a stimulating effect upon the pituitary. Each gland is thus influenced
and influencing, agent and reagent in the complex adjustments of the
organism.
ENDOCRINE CO-OPERATIONS
The body-mind is a perfect corporation. Not quite perfect, for
continually there arise little insurgencies, inadequacies and
frictions to which in time it will succumb. Yet, in the efficiency of
its co-operations, and in the co-ordination of the needs and supplies
of producer, middle man, and consumer, there is no one of the great
organizations of the captains of industry which can for a moment
approach it.
Of this corporation the glands of internal secretion are the
directors. But the huge corporation, not to topple over with its own
unwieldy size, must be composed of smaller units, each within itself
a corporation, and governed by a directorate. There are, in the
corporation-organism, different departments and bureaus, subdivisions
of function, which constitute the smaller corporations within the
larger corporation. These subsidiary companies have their own glands
of internal secretion as their directors.
Thus, the growth of the brain is presided over by the adrenal cortex,
the thyroid, the thymus and the pituitary. They determine the size of
the brain, the number of its cells, the complexity of its convolutions
and the speed of its chemistry, which means the speed of thought and
memory and imagination. As its directorate, therefore, they may be
entitled. The disturbance of one of them means the disturbance of all
of them, and a consequent deleterious effect upon the brain. Now take
the burning up of sugar in the organism, the great material source
of energy, which is controlled by the pancreas, the adrenals and
the liver, the thyroid and the pituitary. Together they form the
directorate of sugar metabolism. But, as is evident from a glance at
the membership of the growth directorate, and comparing it with the
directorate of sugar metabolism, there are some members who are
present on both boards. An infection, an illness, an ailment, an
exaltation or intoxication of such members will produce reverberations
in both directorates. A disturbance of sugar metabolism might then
cause a disturbance of growth. The advantages and disadvantages
are before us of having, in the glands of internal secretion, an
interlocking directorate, rulers over all the varied and manifold
activities of the organism.
Behind the body, and behind the mind is this board of governors.
Indeed, from the administrative and legislative points of view, the
body-mind may be said to be governed by the House of Glands. It is the
invisible committee behind the throne. Upon the throne is what? Man,
the most baffling of complexities. Man who is not a mind, but owns a
mind--Man who is not a body, but possesses a body, just as he might
have a motor car, a fortune or a calamity. Back of all his daily
activities, behind the life of body-mind is the mysterious unique
individuality, the Ego, the Psyche or the Soul. Lately, a competitor
with these ancient and honorable terms has come upon the scene as the
Subconscious. In that darkened No Man's Land is determined a man's
destiny. The endocrine association stands out as at least the most
important physical determinant of the states and processes of the
subconscious.
ANTAGONISMS AND CO-OPERATIONS
As within a corporation there are factions and cliques, influences
that always work together, and forces that are always pulling in
opposite directions, so within the interlocking directorate of the
ductless glands there are antagonisms and inhibitions, co-operations
and compensations. One gland will assist the action of another's
secretion with its own, or will in turn be stimulated to secrete by
it. Another will throw out its secretion in order to neutralize the
effects produced. Or its own activity will be depressed or completely
inhibited by it. Thus the pituitary arouses the interstitial glands
and vice versa, whereas the pancreas and the thyroid are mutually
inhibitory. Indeed, whole systems of glands may work in unison, or be
pitted against each other in certain situations, especially when
the organism is subjected to conflicting impulses with the clash
of opposing instincts, like fear and anger. In general there is
reciprocity and team work among the internal secretions.
A certain minimum amount of each must be present if life is to
continue along the normal lines. Whether there is to be an excess
of any one secretion above this minimum, or a deficiency below it,
decides the fate of the individual. If there is deficiency of one, the
other members of the directorate attempt to make up for what has been
lost, and to carry on its work by an extra effort, to substitute. Or,
released from the discipline of the deficient member, or the necessity
for antagonizing it, they may be released from its stimulus to
secrete, and produce less of their own specific secretion. A general
reaction all along the line will accompany overaction, oversecretion,
of one gland. Due to consequent stimulations and depressions of
other glands, some may be excited by the event to overwork--some to
assist--others, to act as antidote for--the excess secretion, while
still others, relieved of a burden, do not have to supply as much of
their quota under the circumstances and so shut down, or limit their
output.
It is important to get clearly in mind these subtle inter-reactions of
the different ductless glands. They may be antagonistic in their end
effects because of the opposed functions of the nerves or organs
stimulated. There are inhibitions and restraints produced when a gland
will send out its secretions to stop another gland secreting. There
are compensations resulting when because of insufficiency of a gland,
others will endeavour, by manufacturing more of their own secretion,
to compensate for the loss. There are mutual co-operations,
partnerships, when a gland will oversecrete to assist another, or in
response to another which is also oversecreting. There are losses
of balance, so that when one gland ceases secreting, another will
simultaneously or soon after. Normal secretion, oversecretion or
undersecretion are thus adjusted, but leave a train of after effects.
So with loss or insufficiency of the thyroid, there may be pituitary
overgrowth, because the pituitary may act as vicar for the thyroid.
The thyroid and thymus are antagonistic, for the thyroid hastens
differentiation, puberty and the coming of sexual maturity, while the
thymus delays and retards them and prolongs the period of childhood.
The thyroid and the pancreas are antagonists, for when the thyroid
has been excised, the pancreas appear no longer necessary to act as a
break upon the mechanism of sugar liberation into the blood from
the liver. The thyroid stimulates the interstitial glands, for
menstruation and pregnancy are impossible with no thyroid or an
insufficient thyroid. Removal of the pituitary makes the thymus shrink
because the restraining influence of the latter is no longer needed.
But there is an enlargement of the thyroid to compensate. In castrates
there is an increase in the size and number of the cells of the
anterior pituitary, again a compensation or substitution effect. The
pituitary and the adrenal cortex are mutually assistant, alike in
their influence upon the tone of the brain and sex cells.
THE KINETIC SYSTEM
So there are combinations of glands to assist or restrain others, or
to control a body function, or to determine the domination or abeyance
of an instinct. One such has been named the kinetic system because it
comes into play in situations which demand prompt adaptation without
hesitancy, and a consequent immediate transformation of static or
stored energy into kinetic or active energy. According to this
conception the brain, the adrenals, the liver, the thyroid and the
muscles together constitute a machine very much like an automobile.
The self-starter of the machine is the brain, with storage battery
(composed of stored past memories) and ignition combined. The thing
seen without, or the idea felt within, act as the initial sparks,
while the adrenals, as the carburetors, permit the freer flow of fuel,
sugar, from the liver. The thyroid works as the accelerator, the
original impulse finally landing upon muscles keyed up and supplied
with food to meet the situation, be it that of removing a poison,
removing an aggressor (attack) or removing the individual himself
(running away). When one is exhausted by exertion and emotion, injury,
intoxication or infection, it is these members of the kinetic system,
the brain, the adrenals, thyroid and liver, which are exhausted.
Exhaustion diminishes when the activity of the brain is diminished by
anesthetics, and cured when it is abolished by sleep.
If the adrenal gland may be called the Gland of Emergency energy, the
Kinetic System is entitled to the name of Council of Emergency Defense
for the organism. The Kinetic Drive is the name that has been given to
the whole system at work. It is one of the best examples we have of
inter-glandular co-operations and reactions in reply to the threat of
danger or the hint of pleasure.
THE CHECK AND DRIVE SYSTEM
Another instance of the complexity of these inter-glandular reactions
is furnished by the thyroid and the adrenals. The thyroid and the
adrenals are mutually stimulating--when the thyroid oversecretes, the
adrenal dittos, and vice versa. Yet they have directly opposed effects
upon the economy--because they act upon antagonistic portions of
the involuntary or vegetative nervous system, the system which is
independent of the will. Before proceeding further, it is worth while
sketching this division of the nervous system.
In the construction of a motor car from the point of view of absolute
control of it at every moment, the first thought of the mechanic is an
adequate _brake_ and an efficient _regulator_ of speed, instruments
antagonistic, but necessary to work simultaneously or alternately.
The involuntary or vegetative nervous system is built upon the same
principle. It supplies every organ in the body beyond the control of
the will (that is to say, the brain) with two sets of filaments which
have opposing functions. One group of filaments in general increases
or activates the function of the organ to which it is distributed. The
other group of filaments, when tingling, inhibits or prohibits that
function. They are like the two buttons on the wall which regulate
the supply of electricity to incandescent bulbs, one switching on the
current, the other switching it off. It has been agreed to call the
stimulative or activating portion the autonomic or drive system. To
its antagonist has been left the older name of the sympathetic or
check system. It is because they do not both act upon these two
components of the vegetative nervous system, but only upon one, that
the thyroid and adrenal though in themselves complementary, come to
exert opposite effects. For the internal secretion of the thyroid has
a selective affinity for the autonomic or activating system, while
that of the adrenals has a selective affinity for the sympathetic or
inhibiting system.
In the stomach, for instance, extracts of the adrenal glands have been
proved to intensify the function of the sympathetic or check system
in different degrees, so that there is a lessening of the amount and
acidity of the gastric fluid. On the other hand, thyroid extracts will
intensify the action of the autonomic or drive system, so that the
amount and acidity of the digestive juice is increased.
The stomach cell may, therefore, be regarded as a test-reagent for
the different internal secretions, as they affect the check and drive
systems.
These constitute an automatic device for regulating the activities of
every organ. Three factors enter into the mechanism. One is the amount
of the circulating internal secretions. Another is the organic and
functional integrity of the nerve filaments comprising the check and
drive systems. The third consists of the number and vitality and
limitations of the terminal receiving cells acted upon by the nerve
filaments, which in their turn have been acted upon by the internal
secretions. Upon every organ, including the mind, through the brain, a
stimulus from without or within will act according to its ability to
influence one or others of these factors.
Normally, the check and drive systems are properly balanced. But under
stress and strain the balance is upset. Indeed, the Kinetic Drive may
be defined as a mechanism contrived in the course of evolution as the
normal, healthy mode for meeting stress and strain. The Kinetic chain
of organs, brain, adrenals, liver, thyroid and muscles, began working
together in desperate situations for their possessor ages ago.
Successful in helping him to survive, they have survived as a
functional unit.
It was probably evolved in the Post-Tertiary Era, about twenty million
years ago, when the coming of the carnivores introduced direct
body-to-body conflicts, and their concomitants, a quick and versatile
nervous system. During the Tertiary epoch the earth basked in the heat
of a tropical sun nearly everywhere on its surface. The luxuriant
vegetation of the torrid zone flourished and swarmed, for the
temperature all over was what it is today at the equator. Gigantic
vegetarians were the animals, creatures like the dinosaurs, enormous,
gargoylean monsters, of an incredible size and strength, but clumsy
and grotesque, with small brains and little intelligence. For what
need was there for brain and intelligence when food lay about so
abundantly at hand for them to gorge themselves. As there was no
competition for food, there were no enemies.
Then as the earth evolved and grew cooler, vegetation failed, the
ancestors of the present carnivora appeared, the fathers of the
wolf and tiger, light, lithe and pugnacious, with senses acute and
ferocious weapons of attack, who set out to destroy everybody. They
destroyed pretty nearly all of the huge leaf-eating species, and only
the more plastic and smaller ones, who were more keen-sensed and
swift-footed (of whom the deer and antelope, horse and ox are the
descendants), escaped. The smallest either took to the air to become
the bat, or, like the forerunners of the squirrel and ape, took to the
trees.
It was the coming of the carnivores, therefore, that accelerated the
development of brain matter, and started the process which created
man. But in the millions and millions of years of conflicts, instincts
grew into being that sank deep into bone and marrow. The most
fundamental reflexes, those immediate responses to irritation or
danger, were laid down, and among them the drive and check system.
When the animal had decided to fight its enemy or was forced to fight,
or determined to prey, then was the time for the drive system to do
its utmost to speed up everything that would help in the fight, while
the check system came into play to hinder whatever would interfere or
burden in the fray. First the drive mechanism must have been hit upon,
and then the value of the check devices must have been found in fear
and flight, and especially in hiding and simulation of death, when
even breathing had to be inhibited. Until finally there developed, for
everyday use, a complete check and drive nerve machinery for every
organ, to be used according to the exigencies of the moment, with the
thyroid as the primary stimulant and controller of the drive system
and the adrenal as the primary dictator over the check system.
THE HARMONY OF THE HORMONES
All the glands, in fact, work in unison, with a distribution of the
balance of power that diplomatists might envy. In the co-ordinating
synchronism, the vegetative nervous system plays the part of an agent
that acts as well as is acted upon. The chemical interaction of the
internal secretions is not the only way in which they influence each
other. For, as the case of the thyroid and the adrenal so well shows,
secretions which, when directly interacting, are mutually reinforcing,
when affecting nerves, may become clashing opponents.
The Kinetic Chain is about as good a case as there is of the glands of
internal secretion co-operating. The Check and Drive systems, with the
adrenals and thyroid opposed, are one of the best instances of their
antagonisms. Besides, there are a number of other relationships
between them that might be cited. They all bear with more or less
pressure, positive or negative, upon the sex glands which will be
considered in its place. If one wished to consider all the glands in
their pro and anti relations, a separate volume would be required.
THE VEGETATIVE APPARATUS
The combination of the internal secretions and the vegetative system
has been spoken of as the vegetative or autonomic apparatus. The
vegetative apparatus is the oldest part of the nervous system.
And some acquaintance with its constitution is necessary to any
understanding of the possibilities of control of human nature.
For modern thought does not regard the brain as the organ of mind at
all, but as one unit of a complex synthesis, of which mind is the
product, and the vegetative apparatus is the major component. That
involves the blasting of the last current superstition of the
traditional psychology, the dogma that the brain is the exclusive seat
of mind.
That an animal is a vast concourse of cells is one of the accepted
fundamentals of biology. What is not so generally taken into
consideration is that the assemblage is formed by the agglutinations
of millions of years, and that it is hence composed of parts of
different ages and pedigrees, some exceedingly ancient and hoary, some
middle-aged, and some relatively new and recent. In the invertebrates,
who date further back in the history of the planet than any
vertebrate, the nervous system consists of discrete patches of nerve
cells, the ganglions composing the ganglionic system of which the
vegetative or autonomic nervous system of man is the direct descendant
and representative. The brain and central nervous system are
definitely later acquisitions, imposed upon the original stratum of
the check and drive machine.
The primitive chassis of the mechanism, so to speak, is the so-called
vegetative nervous system. Grouped with that system are the primeval
breathing, feeding and reproducing inventions, the viscera boxed up
in the chest and abdomen. The third partner is the glands of internal
secretion, which act upon the viscera both directly and indirectly
through the check and drive effect upon the vegetative nerves.
The glands are like tuning keys, by which certain strings in the
instrument may be tightened, so that its vibratory activity is
increased, or they may be loosened, the vibrations decreased, the
activity lessened. Tuning up the motors is a constant process in the
organism. Finally, there are the large nerve masses at the base of the
brain known as the basal ganglia, which contain the nerve centers for
the co-ordination of the other three. All these together constitute
the oldest family of the corporate organism. Beside them, the brain
and the face and the prehensile organs are mere parvenus.
THE OLDEST PART OF THE MIND
Granted, then, that this vegetative apparatus is the most deeply
rooted core of our being. What warrant is there for the grandiloquence
of the phrase: the Oldest part of the Mind? There is, indeed, room for
rhetoric, even poetry, here. For all the evidence points to it as the
rightful occupant of the throne upon which Shelley placed his Brownie
as the Soul of the Soul. Or to put it in another way, we think and
feel primarily with the vegetative apparatus, with our muscles,
especially the involuntary, with our viscera, and particularly with
our internal secretions. Whenever there is thought and feeling, there
is movement, commotion, precedent and concomitant, among these. They
are the oldest seats of feeling, thought and will and continue to
function as such.
Just what evidence is there for this conception? In the first place,
there is the fascinating story of the origin of vertebrates from
invertebrates of the sea scorpion or spider type. Then there is a
whole group of data which demonstrate that the primitive wishes which
make up the content of a baby consciousness are determined, settled by
states of relaxation or tension in different segments or areas of the
vegetative apparatus. According to this, the brain enters as only one
of the characters in the play of consciousness. It is just the organ
of awareness by the organism of itself as an integer which must adjust
itself to the specific condition within the disturbed vegetative
apparatus. Consequently the brain emerges not as the master tissue,
but as merely the servant of the vegetative apparatus.
Consciousness is a circuit. Swinging around in it are the
wish-feelings generated by the vegetative dynamo. From each viscus,
from the stomach and intestine, from the kidneys and bladder, from
the liver and spleen, from the blood-vessels, from all the glands
of external and internal secretion, there flow along the vegetative
nerves, to and from the brain, energies of various qualities and
intensities. All the members of the vegetative apparatus are more or
less active, and so all our wishes are all more or less active. All
our working hours we are aware of hunger, satiety or indifference, of
a desire to empty the intestine or bladder, or of a lack of necessity
of doing so, of a state of tranquillity of the blood-vessels and sweat
glands, or of a perturbation of them, of a varying tensity of even the
muscles that are, as we say, under the control of the will, of the
state, in fact, of all the elements of the vegetative complex. The
stream of feeling which constitutes the undertow of consciousness
originates outside of the brain altogether, and is composed of
currents arising from viscera, muscles, blood-vessels and glands.
Now the component currents are of different sizes and positions and
variable degrees of warmth. That is another way of saying that whether
or not a current is to become the center of the stream, or to approach
it, or whether it is to be hot, cold, or tepid, depends upon the
degree of activity of the various parts of the vegetative apparatus.
A convenient name for this is _tonus_. Tonus can be experimentally
watched and measured. Thus hunger, the most primitive of the
wish-feelings, has been found to be simultaneous with certain
characteristic contractions of the stomach. Stop those contractions,
and you stop the hunger. The contractions begin slowly and weakly,
and no awareness of them occurs in the mind. As they grow stronger,
consciousness becomes a sensation rather like an itch somewhere in
the upper abdomen, and accompanied sometimes by a sense of general
weakness. The vegetative activity going on as a current almost on the
outside of the stream of feeling has swelled and warmed, and so forced
itself, in a manner of speaking, into the center of the stream. Or if
you will, the rest of the stream has to arrange itself around it as
the center. A similar mechanism for the tonus of the other members
of the vegetative system, and how they determine consciousness and
behaviour is understandable. It has been shown that when the bladder
tone and the intestinal tone are of a definitely measurable size, one
has the desire to empty them. The same applies to the sex glands.
The pressure within a viscus is dependent upon the ratio between the
amount of contraction of the involuntary muscle in its walls, the
external pressure, and the quantity of its distending contents, the
internal pressure. The resultant quotient, the internal pressure
divided by the external pressure, measures the intravisceral pressure.
The primitive wish-feelings are the direct expressions of the various
intravisceral pressures, or tones. The primitive soul is an awareness
of the fused primitive wish-feelings of themselves as a whole, and of
the struggle between them for recognition, isolation, and, as we say,
satisfaction. This satisfaction consists in a degradation of the
highest intravisceral pressure to a point at which some other
intravisceral pressure becomes higher and therefore predominant.
PHYSICS OF THE WISH
Mind, consciousness, may then be portrayed as an ocean comprised of
mobile current layers, complexes built up around the awareness of
different intravisceral pressures. A shifting hierarchy of such
pressures form the points of focusing of consciousness that result in
conduct. Behaviour may be defined as the resultant of the organism's
pressure against the environment's counter pressure until there is
a sufficient reduction of the specifically exciting intravisceral
pressure. Just as water flows to its own level, so will conduct flow
to reduce intravisceral pressure to its own level. A physics of the
soul comes into prospect, in which a mathematical analysis will state
the process quantitatively in terms of some common unit of pressure.
Not only conduct, but also character, because it is past conduct
repeated, associated, and fixed, will be so statable. For
intravisceral tonus or pressure is not simply or only an acute or
passing affair. There is for it a persistent or average figure,
the so-called normal for it, below which or above which the acute
situation will bring it. _Character_ is a _matter then of standards
in the vegetative system_. Character, indeed, is an alloy of the
different standard intravisceral pressures of the organism, a fusion
created by the resistance or counter pressure of the obstacles in the
environment. Character, in short, is the grand intravisceral barometer
of a personality.
Thus the comfortable, healthy, happy, well-balanced, progressive,
constructive, virile personality is one in whom there is a
continuously harmonious reduction of the intravisceral pressures in
the environment called society. For in a gregarious creature, like
man, fellow beings are the most powerful determinants of negative and
positive vegetative pressures. Not so well rounded are other types
existing because of inferiorities or excesses of the standard visceral
tone. There is, for instance, the sexually cold type, comfortable by
creating for itself an anaphrodisiac environment composed of pressures
that can be fitted into its own. Or there may be an insufficiency of
standard pressure in the alimentary tract, and we have the ascetic,
mal-nourished, striving, uplifting type. Different types will be made
by the permutations and combinations of factors that determine the
intravisceral pressure and the environmental, i.e., social resistances
or counter pressures.
INTERNAL SECRETIONS DETERMINANTS OF VEGETATIVE PRESSURES
Now of all the different factors which determine the tones, that is to
say, the internal pressures, of the various parts of the vegetative
apparatus (including all structures not controlled by the will in
the term), the internal secretions or hormones are by far the most
important. This significance is conferred upon them because it is
by their activities primarily that these pressures are produced,
regulated, lowered and heightened; in short, controlled. We have seen
how the thyroid and adrenal hold the reins of the drive or check
systems in the vegetative apparatus. Together with the other ductless
glands, they decide the advance or halt, forward or retreat, tension
or relaxation, charge and discharge, of the visceral--involuntary
muscle--blood vessel combination which is at the core of life. Here
again they emerge as the directorate.
Carlson, the Chicago physiologist, who probably knows more about being
hungry than any other man on the planet, once demonstrated that the
injection of an ounce or two of the blood, which means the internal
secretion mixture, of a starving animal, into one not starving
increased the signs of hunger and the accompanying hunger contractions
of the stomach. There can be no doubt that hunger is the expression of
a certain specific concentration of internal secretion or secretions
in the blood. When the quantity, in the cycles of metabolism, becomes
sufficiently great, it stimulates the stomach to contract in a way
which augments the pressure within it to a point at which the feeling
of hungriness, and the wish to satisfy it, or to get rid of it,
becomes imperative, and the dominant of consciousness.
Without doubt the sexual cravings are likewise so determined. Sex
libido is an expression of a certain concentration, a definite amount
peculiar to the individual, of the substance manufactured by the
interstitial cells, circulating in the blood. It arouses its effects
probably by (1) increasing the amount of reproductive material in
the sex glands in a direct chemically stimulating effect upon the
germinative cells, and so raising the internal pressure within them,
(2) stimulating the involuntary muscles within the walls and the
canals of the sex glands, and so, by augmenting the tenseness of the
muscles, elevating the total intravisceral pressure, (3) by a direct
chemical and indirect nervous effect upon the brain, the muscles, the
heart, as well as the other glands of internal secretion stimulating
the organism as a whole. Though the isolation in pure form of the
substance or substances involved has never been scientifically
achieved, their inference is entirely justified. It is indeed the only
comprehensible mechanism conceivable that will fit all the known facts
about the matter. And even though the assertions of Brown-Séquard were
only the exaggerations of a semi-charlatan, it is certain that some
day in the near future the particular substance, that he claimed he
had discovered, will be handed about in bottles for the inspection of
the curious.
Besides thyroxin, adrenalin, and the libido-producing secretion of the
interstitial cells, the substance produced by the paired glandlets,
situated behind the thyroid, the parathyroids, have a profound
influence upon the vegetative apparatus and the vegetative nervous
system. These direct the lime exchanges within the cells of the
organisms, including the nerve cells. It has been shown that lime is,
relatively, a sedative to cells. It raises the threshold or strength
of stimulus necessary to evoke a reaction. Removing the parathyroids
means removing the lime barrier, for with their deficiency there is a
change in, and then an escape, from the blood, of the lime, by way
of the kidneys. The result is sometimes an enormous increase in the
excitability of all the cells, and especially of the vegetative
apparatus. What that means for the individual whose comfort depends
upon a stability of the intravisceral tones and pressures may be
readily imagined.
The pancreas likewise acts as a sedative to the vegetative apparatus.
In particular, this applies to the sugar mechanism in the liver under
the discipline of the check and drive organization. The adrenal and
the pancreas are the direct antagonists in the struggle for control of
sugar. Removal of the adrenals will cause a decrease in the amount
of sugar in the blood, while removal of the pancreas will produce an
increase. Excess of sugar in the blood may thus be concomitant with
changes of character considered incorrigible.
In different locales of the vegetative apparatus, as indeed of
the body in general, the directorate seems to be handed over to a
committee of control, generally made up of two members working
in opposing directions. Such a division of power in the general
directorate is analogous to the small holding corporations which
divide functions in, for example, the United States Steel Corporation.
The relative ratios of tonus in these smaller internal secretion
balances are of the utmost significance as causes of differences
in the vegetative apparatus, which are the basis of differences in
structure, power, and character between individuals.
THE GENERAL LAWS OF THE DIRECTORATE
Our knowledge of the glands of internal secretions as an interlocking
directorate presiding over all the functions of the organism is still
exceedingly meagre. As yet, we seem to be knocking at the portals
of the chemistry of the imponderable. There are holes in the bronze
doors, and we glimpse the unfathomable distances of unexplored
regions. But we do see something, and we do glimpse a beginning.
Already the outlines of a differential anatomy, and a different
physiology and a differential psychology, which will explain to us
the unique in the constitution, the temperament and character of
an individual, emerge. It is worth while, before proceeding to the
details, so valuable to a society which would become rational, to
summarize the general principles emerging, expressing the directing
powers of the ductless glands over the individual. _They may be
regarded as the present postulates of a new science of the whys and
wherefores separating and setting apart, as so recognizably distinct,
those peregrinating chemical mixtures: men and women_.
1. The life of every individual, in every stage, is dominated largely
by his glands of internal secretion. That is, they, as a complex
internal messenger and director system, control organ and function,
conduct and character. The orderliness of human life, in the
sequential march of its episodes, crises, successes and failures,
depends, to a large extent, upon their interactions with each other
and with the environment.
2. One or several of the glands possesses a controlling or superior
influence above that of the others in the physiology of the individual
and so becomes the central gland of his life, its dominant, indeed, so
far as it casts a deciding vote or veto, in its everyday existence and
incidents as well as in its high points, the climaxes and emergencies.
3. These glandular preponderances are at the basis of personality,
creating genius and dullard, weakling and giant, Cavalier and Puritan.
All human traits may be analyzed in terms of them because they are
expressions of them.
4. Specific types of personality may be directly associated with
particular glandular prominences, so that we have the thyroid-centered
types, the pituitary-centered types, the adrenal-centered types, etc.
These are the classic Three, the prototypes in their purity most
easily described and recognized.
5. Combinations of these, as well as of other glands--with joint
predominance--occur and indeed form the majority of populations. The
phenomena of varieties in species are thus explained.
6. Internal secretion traits are inherited, and variations in heredity
are essentially the structural representation of the resultant of a
parallelogram of forces exerted by each of the parental prepotent
glands. If they are of the same type, they may reinforce each other:
if not, inhibitions and compensations will come into play. Mendelian
laws may apply.
7. The process of evolution, as the play of natural selection upon
these variations, becomes comprehensible from a new standpoint.
8. Certain diseases, and disease tendencies, both acute and
constitutional, as well as traits of temperament and character, and
predetermined reactions to certain recurring situations in life,
are rooted in the glandular soils that compose the stuff of the
individual.
9. The subconscious, of which the vegetative apparatus is the physical
basis, leads back to the internal secretions for the profoundest
springs of its secrets. We shall see how and why.
10. Given the internal secretory composition, so to speak, of an
individual--his endocrine formula--and so his intravisceral pressures,
one may predict, within limits, his physical and psychic make-up,
the general lines of his life, diseases, tastes, idiosyncrasies and
habits.
11. Within limits, if the previous history of an individual is known,
his physical appearance may be approximately described, and his future
outlined.
12. Conversely, given the physical and psychic composition of an
individual, and his past history, one may deduce the internal
secretion type to which he belongs.
Examples:
A. One Thyroid-centered Type has
Bright eyes
Good clean teeth
Symmetrical features
Moist flushed skin
Temperamental attitude toward life
Tendency to heart, intestinal and nervous disease
B. One Pituitary-centered Type
Abnormally large or small size
Musical--acute sense of rhythm
Asymmetrical features
Tendency to cyclic or periodic diseases
C. One Adrenal-centered Type
Hairy
Dark
Masculinity marked
Tendency to diphtheria and hernia
These are some of the master types. They have their variants depending
upon the influences of the other glands, especially the interstitial
cells of the sex glands.
ANTE-NATAL DEVELOPMENT
In their ensemble, the glands of internal secretion wield a
determining influence upon the development of the individual from
his very inception. If his various powers may be conceived of as an
orchestra, they may be said to conduct it from the very beginning of
its movements, and to cease only with its termination. From the moment
when the spermatozoon penetrates and fecundates the ovum, the fate
of the future being is settled by their disposition. The seal of his
destiny is soaked with their substance.
POST-NATAL DEVELOPMENT
Every particle of protoplasm, every granule of the impregnated ovum
carries the representatives of the parental ductless glands. As a
consequence, they transmit chemically, with no figure of speech
involved, the peculiar familial, racial and national characters from
progenitors to offspring. They confer upon the child a number of the
properties commonly recognized as inherited. All those features which
distinguish Caucasian from Mongolian, Scandinavian from Italian,
Italian from Jew are determined by them.
In short, at every step of his life, in every relation and
association, in every expression of the inner forces that control his
being, the normal individual is influenced by his internal secretions.
Let us now see how.