The Glands Regulating Personality: A Study of the Glands of Internal Secretion in Relation to the Types of Human NatureBerman, Louis
History
The Glands Regulating Personality: A Study of the Glands of Internal Secretion in Relation to the Types of Human Nature
Berman, Louis
Endocrinology; Personality
In pregnancy, the teeth suffer particularly because of disturbances of
the endocrines. The saying, "A tooth for every child," is said to have
its equivalent in every language. The bicuspids and second permanent
molars erupt around puberty, when profound readjustments are going on
among the glands of internal secretion. They consequently suffer with
their abnormalities or divergences from type. The teeth thus furnish a
good deal of information concerning the distribution of the balance of
power among the hormones.
THE SKIN
The skin is influenced in its color, moisture, hairiness, texture, fat
content and disease vulnerability by the endocrines. The question of
color is very interesting, for it is probably the expression of the
blending action of the different internal secretions. Davenport, the
American student of heredity and eugenics, has shown that neither
white nor black skins are either perfectly white or perfectly black,
but are mixtures in various proportions of black, yellow, red and
white. The exact percentages of the pigments in each particular skin,
can be determined by means of a rotating disc. Thus a white person's
skin may have the following composition:
Black 8% Red 50%
Yellow 9% White 33%
The composition of the skin of a very black negro may be:
Black 68% Red 26%
Yellow 2% White 7%
Now the fact that in Addison's disease in which the adrenals are
destroyed there occurs a coincident increase in the black in the
skin, and other evidence pointing to adrenal implication in dark
complexioned white people, as well as in those possessing pigmented
spots, seems to indicate the adrenals as controllers of the black
and white factors. Davenport has concluded that there are two double
factors for black pigmentation in the full-blooded negro which are
separately inheritable. The determinants of the red and yellow have
still to be worked out.
The moistness of the skin, as perspiration, depends upon the number
and activity of the sweat glands. It varies with the water content of
the body, the state of the vegetative nervous system, and the body
temperature. Thus the skin of the hyperthyroid and the subadrenal
is soft and moist, because of their antagonistic effects upon the
sympathetic system. The subthyroid and the hyperadrenal have dry
and harsh skins for the same reason, if no other glands intervene.
However, in both of the latter, if there is a persistent thymus, the
skin will retain the bland quality of adolescence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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