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
The knowledge that the shape and action of a man's body as well as
his mind depend on the internal secretions inspires the hope of the
emergence of a hitherto inconceivable controlling power over human
life in the future. For in the wake of chemical discovery there has
always come chemical control. The nature of chemical research, the
necessity for clear thinking, accurate measurement, and experience
in the actual handling of materials, the fundamental tradition and
technique of the science, have made and will make the practical
applications about which we today may only speculate. What the study
of the internal secretions suffers from, at the beginning of the third
decade of the twentieth century, is insufficient appreciation of its
meaning for mankind. It is true that there are thousands of workers
scattered throughout the world contributing their mites to the general
store. They increase yearly, almost daily, and their achievements,
in spite of an uncritical enthusiasm in some quarters and a
semi-charlatanism in others, have been and continue magnificent. But
they are pecking at a mountain which requires organized, massive,
engineering organization for its blasting.
The crying need is for an international institute, endowed and
equipped for investigation upon the proper scale, with all the
available appliances and methods already worked out and at hand. Such
an institution would possess the right chemical laboratories for
the making of blood analyses, metabolism examinations, and tests of
endocrine functions. There would be X-ray machines and experts to
radiograph the pituitary, pineal and thymus glands when possible.
There would be psychologists to carry out intelligence tests,
determine emotional reactions, and group mental aberrations,
deficiencies and defectives. There would be statisticians, trained in
biometrics, to criticize and compare data obtained. There would be
anthropoligists to note and measure variations in angles and curves,
ratios and quotients of the external conformation of the body.
Internists would record the history and status of the organs and
viscera. There would be librarians to collect, abstract and collate
the vast, accumulating literature. In short, the mystery of
personality, the most marvelous, complex, and variable process in the
universe, would be attacked and at length penetrated systematically
and persistently, with the ideal of absolute control of its
composition as the goal in view.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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