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 ovaries are a most important factor in the regulation of the power
of the organism to keep lime in the bones. If they over-secrete in an
excess which cannot be taken care of by the other glands of internal
secretion, the body loses lime, a softening and curving of the bones
occurs, and the most horrible deformities and tortures for the
sufferer. Taking out the ovaries has cured some of the afflicted.
Administration of the antagonizing gland extracts has helped others.
An Italian, Bossi, in 1907, used adrenal gland curatively. More
recently, a British student of the subject, Blair Bell, was given the
direction of the treatment, at long range, of a number of cases in
India, the land of chronic pregnancy with insufficient food, and
consequent oversecretion of the ovaries, with the typical softening of
the bones. At his suggestion pituitary was used successfully.
Some of the glands of internal secretion act as accelerators to the
sex glands. Others act as retarding antagonists. Among the most
important of the latter is
THE THYMUS
The thymus is the gland which dominates childhood. It appears to do so
by inhibiting the activity of the testes or ovaries. Castration causes
a persistent growth and retarded atrophy of the thymus. Removal of the
thymus hastens the development of the gonads.
Situated in the chest, astride the windpipe, it descends and covers
over the upper portion of the heart, overlapping the great vessels
at the base of the heart. It is a brownish red mass, which when cut
presents the spongy effect of a sweetbread. The more intimate view
of detail revealed by the higher powers of the microscope shows
conglomerations of the white cells of the blood known as lymphocytes.
But scattered through the substance of the gland, between these
lymphocytes, like the interstitial cells of the sex glands placed
between the sex cells, are peculiarly staining cells in whorls.
Of which there are many more in the thymus of embryonic and early
postnatal life, known after their discoverer as Hassal's Corpuscles.
They are believed by some to elaborate the specific internal secretion
of the thymus. Present in all vertebrates, there seems to be more of
it in the carnivora than in the herbivora, like the thyroid.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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