Chapter 4 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.