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
most unscrupulous careerist of history, must be put down to an
insufficiency of the post-pituitary. What post-pituitary does to the
brain cells and the organism as a whole to render them susceptible
to sympathy and suggestion, the social sublimations of the maternal
instinct, with its offsprings of religion and art, we have seen.
Napoleon lacked a chemical trace of the religious instinct, his
sympathy was nil, and his conquests were made possible only because he
was blind to the suffering and misery his greed for glory and dominion
generated. Post-pituitary insufficients of this type, patent or
concealed, gradually become corpulent as they grow older. The
increasing corpulency of Napoleon was commented upon by all observers.
A student of his make-up, and acquainted with present developments
concerning the internal secretions, given an opportunity to observe
him as we have when he was alive, and at the height of his success,
would have had every reason for classing him a pituitary-centered,
ante-pituitary superior, post-pituitary inferior, with an instability
of both that would lead to his final degeneration. Besides, his
insatiable energy indicated an excellent thyroid, his pugnacity,
animality and genius for practical affairs a superb adrenal. Given the
kind of pituitary he possessed, with its great intellectual potential
energy and the relation between the two parts which would further the
objects of an intellectual machine, plus a remarkable thyroid and
adrenal, plus the military education Napoleon had, and the character
of the Revolution into which he was plunged, and we have the
conditions out of which his career emerged as inevitable.
That it was his pituitary which first failed him, rather than the
thyroid or adrenal, which might have, is demonstrated by a number of
considerations. Before he made himself Emperor, it was noticed that he
was becoming fat, a pituitary symptom. A comparison of portraits at
different stages of his rise and fall shows an increasing abdominal
paunch, and a laying down of fat in the pituitary areas, around the
hips, the legs and so on. The beginning of weakness in judgment that
he was to exhibit soon in the invasion of Russia manifested itself at
the same time. His keen calculating ability attained the peak of its
curve at Austerlitz, Jena and Friedland. Thereafter, the descent
begins. A rash, grandiose, speculative quality enters his projects,
and divorces the elaborate coordination of means and end from his
plans. That his thyroid energy capacity did not fail him is indicated
by the fact that at St. Albans he would ride for three hours at the
end of the day to tire himself sufficiently for sleep. That his
adrenals were not affected is indicated by the brutality which
remained characteristic to the end of his life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account