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
But not only is sexuality, and the conduct of the secondary sex
characters, connected with the adventures of the adrenal cortex. The
development of the master tissues of the body, the brain, the pride
and darling of evolution, is in some subtle way correlated with
it. The adrenal cortex contains more of the phosphorus-containing
substances of the general nature of those found in the central nervous
system than any other gland or non-nervous tissues in the body. During
human intrauterine life the adrenal glands are large and conspicuous,
in the first half of the second month being twice as large as the
kidneys. Most of this relatively huge size, which happens in the human
alone, and not in other animals, is due to enlargement of the cortex.
Should this preponderance of the cortex over the medullary portion not
occur in the human, that is, if the proportions remain like those of
other animals, the brain fails to develop properly, or an entirely
brainless monster is generated. The human brain, therefore, probably
owes its superiority over the animal brain, to the adrenal cortex, in
development anyhow. The growth of the brain cells, their number and
complexity is thus controlled by the adrenal cortex.
Besides its action upon the sex cells and the brain cells, the
internal secretion of the adrenal cortex acts upon the pigment cells
of the skin, blunting their sensitiveness to light. In degeneration
of the interior of the gland, which destroys the medulla, but not the
cortex, the color of the skin is left unmodified. If, however, the
cortex is invaded, as happens most often in the classical tuberculosis
of the adrenals which drew the attention of the Englishman Addison
to them, then a darkening of the skin, which may go on to a negroid
bronzing, follows. That means an increased sensitiveness of the
pigment cells of the skin to light. Skin color control may therefore
be looked upon as an adrenal cortex function.
So much is known about the adrenal cortex. Upon the medulla, the
interior gland of the gland, there has been lavished an amount of
attention beside which the cortex is to be classed as a neglected
wall-flower. Nearly everything that possibly could be determined
about an internal secretion has in its case been settled or plausibly
guessed at. The cells manufacturing the secretion, its exact chemistry
and function, its action upon the blood, the liver and spleen, the
heart and lungs, the brain and nervous system, have been minutely
investigated, studied and charted. Its source in the food, its fate in
the body, its place in the history of the individual and the species,
its importance as a weapon in the struggle for existence, and the
survival of the fittest have been made the subject of an astonishing
number of researches, considering the short period of scarce three
decades that intensive science has centered its barrage upon it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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