~N
THE GLANDS REGULATING
PERSONALITY
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
HEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
LONDON • BOMBAY ■ CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OP CANADA, Ltd,
TORONTO
PHE GLANDS REGULATING
PERSONALITY
A STUDY OF THE GLANDS OF INTERNAL SECRETION
IN RELATION TO THE TYPES OF
HUMAN NATURE
BY
LOUIS BEEMAN, M.D.
ASSOCIATE IN BIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY, COLUMBIA UNI-
VERSITY; PHYSICIAN TO THE SPECIAL HEALTH CLINIC,
LENOX HILL HOSPITAL
The passage from the miracles of nature to those
of art is easy.
—Francis Bacon, Novum Organwm, 1620. ^ ^ J cj Q
• 3 ■ 0 3
jQeto gotfe
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1922
All rights reserved
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Copyright, 1921,
By LOUIS BERMAN.
Set up and printed. Published October, 1921.
1H1
Press of
J. J. Little & Ives Company
New York, U. S. A.
\
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
^ Introduction: Attitudes Toward Human Nature 1
^--IT How the Glands of Internal Secretion Were
Discovered 28
II. The Glands: Thyroid and Pituitary .... 46
III. The Adrenal Glands, Gonads, and Thymus . 69
IV. The Glands as an Interlocking Directorate . 96
V. How the Glands Influence the Normal Body 113
VI. The Mechanics of the Masculine and Feminine 132
VII. The Rhythms of Sex 149
VIII. How the Glands Influence the Mind . . . 166
IX. The Backgrounds of Personality 186
X. The Types of Personality 202
XI. Some Historic Personages 231
XII. Applications and Possibilities 255
XIII. The Effect upon Human Evolution .... 275
THE GLANDS REGULATING
PERSONALITY
THE GLANDS REGULATING
PERSONALITY
INTRODUCTION
ATTITUDES TOWARD HUMAN NATURE
The Case Against Human Nature
Man, know thyself, said the old Greek philosopher. Man per-
force has taken that advice to heart. His life-long interest is his
own species. In the cradle he begins to collect observations on
the nature of the queer beings about him. As he grows, the
research continues, amplifies, broadens. Wisdom he measures by
the devastating accuracy of the data he accumulates. When he
declares he knows human nature, consciously cynical maturity
speaks. Doctor of human nature — every man feels himself
entitled to that degree from the university of disillusioning expe-
rience. In defense of his claim, only the limitations of his ar-
ticulate faculty will curb the vehemence of his indictment of his
fellows.
For all history provides the material, literature the critique,
biology the inexorable logic of the case against human nature.
The historical record is a spectacle of man destroying man, a
collection of chapters on man's increasing cruelty to man. Limi-
tations of time and space have been shortened and eliminated.
Tools of production have been multiplied and complicated. The
sources of energy and power have been systematically attacked
and trapped. But the nature of man has remained so unchanged
that clap trap about progress is easy target for the barrage of
every cheap pamphleteer.
The naturalist probes into codes of conduct, systems of moral-
ity, structures of societies, variations in the scales of value that
individuals, races and nations have subjected themselves to as
custom, law and religion. Again and again the portrait is
presented of man preying upon man, of cunning a parasite upon
1
2 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
stupidity and of predatory strength enslaving the weakling intel-
lect. Until finally are evoked reactions and consequences that
overtake in catastrophe and catacylsm preyer and preyed upon
alike.
Human nature is but part of the magnificent tree of beast
nature. Man is linked by every tie of blood and bone and cell
memories with his brethren of the sea, the jungle, the forest and
the fields. The beast is a seeker of freedom, but a seeker for his
own ego alone, and the satisfaction of his own instincts only.
Thus he struggles to a sort of freedom which makes him the
Ishmael of the Universe, everyone's hand against him, as his own
hand is against everyone. The human animal has achieved no
advance beyond the necessities of his ancestors, nor freed himself
from his bondage to their instincts and automatic reflexes. And
so the sociologist, the analyst of human associations, turns out
to be simply the historian and accountant of slaveries.
Yet the history of mankind is, too, a long research into the
nature of the machinery of freedom. All recorded history, indeed,
is but the documentation of that research. Viewed thus, customs,
laws, institutions, sciences, arts, codes of morality and honor,
systems of life, become inventions, come upon, tried out, stand-
ardized, established until scrapped in everlasting search for more
and more perfect means of freeing body and soul from their
congenital thralldom to a host of innumerable masters. Indeed,
the history of all life, vegetable and animal, of bacillus, elephant,
orchid, gorilla, as well as of man is the history of a searching for
freedom.
Freedom! What to a living creature is freedom? How com-
pletely has it dominated the life history of every creature that
ever crawled upon the earth? Trace our cellular pedigree, descend
our family tree to its rootlets, our amebic ancestors, and the
craving for more freedom is manifest in the soul of even the
lowest, buried in darkness and slime. When the first clever bit
of colloidal ooze, protoplasm as the ameba, protruded a bit of
itself as a pseudopod, it achieved a new freedom. For, accident-
ally or deliberately, it created for itself a new power — the ability
to go directly for food in its environment, instead of waiting,
patiently, passively, as the plant does, for food to just happen
along. Therewith developed in place of the previous quietist
pacifist, quaker attitude toward its surroundings, a new religion,
a new tone: aggressive, predatory, careerist.
That adventure was a great step forward for the ameba — a
ATTITUDES TOWARD HUMAN NATURE 3
miracle that freed it forever from the danger of death by starva-
tion. But latent in that move were all the terrible possibilities
of the tiger, the alligator, the wolf and all the varieties of preda-
ceous beast and plant, parasitism and slavery. The device that
enabled the ameba to change its position in space of its own will,
and so increased its freedom immeasureably, meant the genera-
tion of infinite evil, pain, suffering and degradation for billions in
the womb of time.
The Breeding of Inferiority
Human history, being a continuation of vertebrate his-
tory, is full of similar instances. The invention of the stock
company, for example, furnished a certain relative freedom to
hundreds, a certain amount of leisure to think and play, and
independence to travel and record, and immunity from a daily
routine and drudgery. In turn, it bore fruit in miseries and
horrors multiplied for millions, like those of the child lacemakers
of Mid- Victorian England, who were dragged from their beds at
two or three oclock in the morning to work until ten or eleven
at night in the services of a stock company.
A corporation is said to have no soul. The struggle for freedom
of every living thing has no conscience. Throughout the living
world, from ameba to man, parasitism and slavery together with
their by-products, physical and spiritual degeneracy, appear as
the after effects of the more vital individual's efforts to remain
alive and free. The origins of slavery may be seen in the parasit-
isms of the infectious diseases which kill man. The change from
parasitism to slavery was an inevitable step of creative intelli-
gence. In the transition evolution made one of those breaks
which it indulges in periodically as its mode of progress.
The natural effect of slavery has been a selection of two sorts
of individuals along the lines of the survival of the adapted.
It has tended to perpetuate in the breed the qualities of the
strong which would make them stronger, and certain qualities in
the weak which would increase their weakness. For parasitism
and likewise slavery infallibly entail the degradation of certain
structures and an overgrowth of others by the law of use and
disuse. The type of organ which would function normally, were
not its possessor parasitic in that function, invariably degenerates
or disappears. Parasitic insects lose their wings. An entire
4 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
anatomical system may even be lost. So the tapeworm, which
feeds upon the digested food present in the intestines of its host,
has no alimentary canal of its own because it needs none. On
the other hand, the. organs of attack and combat grow by a
constant use into the most remarkable of efficient weapons.
In human society the process continues. Out of the tapeworm
nature, the tiger nature, the wolf nature, the simian nature,
human nature evolves. Repeated episodes of subjugation and
suppression mixed with countless incidents of predaceous cupidity
and rapacity have made Man what he is today. Indeed, by a sort
of instinct, society has constructed its institutions upon em-
pirical observations and assumptions agreeing with this principle.
The deductions concerning human nature and human traits that
an interplanetary visitor would draw from a study of our
common law would be at least slightly humiliating to our incor-
rigible pride. Law courts, codes of civil contract and criminal
procedure, the systems of subordination in armies and navies,
castes and classes, men and women, employers and employees,
teachers and pupils, parents and children, are based upon the
fundamental, the conservative axiom that man, especially the
common plain man (Lincoln's phrase) , is a being incurably lazy,
stupid, dishonest, muddled, cowardly, greedy, restless, obsessed
with a low cunning and a selfish callousness and insensibility
to the sufferings of his fellow creatures, animal and human.
Why is it that Man, the noblest creature of creation, made in
the image of God, capable of the flights of attainment that dis-
tinguish a Christ, a Csesar, a Plato, a Shakespeare, a Shelley, a
Newton, is so described, not alone by hopeless pessimists like
Koheleth, Swift, and Mark Twain, but by the common law, the
common opinion, the common assumptions of mankind? Because
the development of slavery and parasitism in human society, the
subjection of the weak to the strong, the dull and base to the
clever and headstrong, set up a vicious cycle: the liberation of
more energy for the making of more and more slaves and the
propagation of slaves and slave qualities in a geometrically
increasing proportion.
This might be called the Malthusian law of slavery. For the
qualities that I have named as man's own characterization of
himself are the qualities of the slave and the slave-soul. Nietzche
took great pains to repeat ad nauseam that these qualities were
the qualities of the slave. But by burdening himself with the
hypothesis, evolved from his inner consciousness, that the slaves
ATTITUDES TOWARD HUMAN NATURE 5
imposed from below a morality of weakness upon their masters,
he missed the really obvious process by which slaves beget more
slaves, slavery begets more slavery, and the slave-soul becomes
universal. That process is the simple action of physical and
spiritual reproduction of the slaves. The subnormal begets the
subnormal, the inferior begets the inferior.
Slavery appeared as an invention of the would-be-free. It was
a brilliant flash of genius of a seeker after freedom. However,
it became a boomerang. By multiplication and hereditary trans-
mission, the inferiority and the number of the slaves created a
new overwhelming problem for the superior few, the upper crust
of the free. At last the problem grew into the problem of prob-
lems, the problem of government, that threatened all freedom,
as an epidemic disease threatens even the most healthy. Govern-
ment, at first organized for conquest and subjugation, had to
change its character until it became more and more to consist of
experiments in a new social machinery that would free somebody
of the incubus. So through the centuries, one technique of liberty
after another was tested in the laboratory of experience.
But always the attempts are so muddled, because the problem
is not grasped. Muddledom is the essence of the slave-soul. And
the essence infiltrates and poisons the whole atmosphere in
which the would-be-free think and act. Kings' heads are chopped
off, a whole class is guillotined, reform movements come and go,
the masters fight every inch of their retreat, and pile stratagem
upon stratagem, device upon device, to retain their spoils.
The democratic formula of freedom for all comes to the fore.
So at last universal suffrage is introduced as the panacea. Free-
dom seems within grasp. Now it looks as if a method and an
objective have been hit upon, that will lead both the free and the
enslaved out of their mutual bondage, and release the handcuffs
which have bound them together. All the trial and error tests
to which history had subjected institutions appeared to culminate
in the formula that would automatically yield Liberty. The
French wanted a little more and added Equality and Fraternity.
The Americans put it quite definitely as the formula that would
assist the Pursuit of Life, Liberty, and Happiness. That formula
is: the democracy of the normals.
To be sure, a civilization might be organized for the breeding
and the glorification of the supernormals. Such a civilization
may yet have to be tried. But as the supernormals, as we know
them today, are merely biologic sports, in a sense, simple acci-
6 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
dents, no one can tell whether they will turn out true shots or
just flashes in the pan. So it looks the better course to stick to
the plan of nature, which seems to be the raising of the level of
the normals, and the gradual increase of their faculties and
powers.
What the Statesman Is Up Against
Under the terms of the democratic formula the problems of
the statesman seem to become enormously simplified. That is, if
one assumes that he has worked out a perfectly clear idea of what
a democracy means and what the normal means. Assuming
these unassumables, his problem simplifies into the definite object
of producing and developing the greatest possible number of
normals — or if you will, the greatest happiness of the greatest
number of normal lives.
Furthermore you then begin to have the entirely novel possi-
bility in the world: some sort of collective effort for a collective
purpose, beyond the personal greeds and fears, factions and
hatreds. So the state, instead of fulfilling its old function of
serving as the tool of certain powerful individuals, latterly known
as the Big Men, might be transformed into an instrument toward
freedom. With the ideal of a democracy of the normals ever
before him, the statesman could go on to construct and modify
his social machinery. That would entail the satisfaction not
alone of the animal needs, but also the highest aspirations and
therefore the provision of the finest conditions of life for the
normal: those most favorable, stimulative, and assistant to crea-
tive activity. For what else is the content of the idea of freedom?
Without committing the intellectual sin which William James
named Vicious Abstractionism, the goal of the clearest progres-
sive and liberal thought and forces of the twentieth century
might be summed up as this freedom in a democracy of normals.
A good formula which coincides with the technique of nature in
the evolution of species. A fair fight, a free-for-all who are
unhandicapped, is the motto of natural selection. Where civiliza-
tion shakes hands with natural instinct, what but the happiest
of results can be expected?
Unfortunately, the formula in human society possesses an
Achilles' heel. Again it is slavery. Where slavery has become
bred into the bone, the standard of the normal becomes reduced
so tremendously that the average of normals, the majority, are
ATTITUDES TOWARD HUMAN NATURE 7
hopelessly inferior. In effect, they are really subnormal. So the
ideal of our ideal statesman is bound to be defeated because of
the inadequacy of his material.
No matter how interested in his main business: the promotion
of freedom for creative activities in a democracy of the normals,
he is bound to be beaten by the majority consisting of subnor-
mals. There is nothing left for for him but to cater to the
minority of careerists, the one-eighth of the electorate represent-
ing superior intelligence. The intelligence tests employed in the
War showed that and also that forty-five per cent of the exam-
ined, or about one half the total population, had a mental
capacity, or natural ability that would never develop beyond the
stage normal to a twelve-year-old child. They are doomed to
remain forever subnormal.
The Careerists as the Abnormal^
The careerists are those who practice the careerist religion.
The careerist religion is the religion par excellence of modernity.
Someone once said, with the perfect candor of the North
American, that America is the land of opportunity. He meant
that America is the land of the Careerist or, as it has also been
put, it is the land of the man on the make. The careerist, or
the man on the make, is of a thousand genera and species, varie-
ties and subvarieties, with transition links between. One finds
him at every level of society.
Excepting a negligible minority, the feminine career of today
(as of the last ten thousand years of the race's history) consists
in the acquisition of a husband. After that she is so identified
with him that her own life, as something distinct, individual and
unique, becomes blurred and then completely erased. The femi-
nine careerist, the careeristina, if you will, is a definite type.
Consider the unimportance of a collective purpose to the woman
whose career is the mate, and then the mate's career. All the
kinks and twists of the feminine mind, resulting from the neces-
sities of that fundamental primary problem, would form a multi-
tudinous and interesting list. The most successful careeristinas
are the absolutely unconscious ones because they are not
passively besieged nor actively bombarded by any doubts as to
what they want. They play their game exceedingly well as do not
the quasi-rebels and faint-hearted revoltees that form no small
percentage of the Newest Women. For a number of women the
8 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
feminist movement has been an attempt to break away from the
traditions of the wife-careerist, and to strike a line of auto-
careerism. Can the careeristina instinct, the fruit of the practice
of so many generations, be uprooted by the good intentions of a
mere statesman?
But the masculine careerist is a marvelous creature. He is a
biologic sport, an abnormal variation. New York is the place to
watch and study him in his thousands and tens of thousands.
You can observe him climbing, climbing, climbing, precisely as
an ant climbs a tree. Nothing can really discourage or sway
him from his chosen path. If he is not getting on financially, he
is getting on socially, or he is using the one method of advance
to help him with the other. How the line of least resistance and
greatest advantage is determined for and taken by him is a fas-
cinating process.
The careerist instinct, the inherited flair for a career, must not
be confounded w^th the instincts of self-preservation, self-expan-
sion or self-expression, because they are utterly different. Indeed,
the careerist instinct is often their direct antagonist, clashing with
and dominating them. The making of the career involves the
distortion, the mutilation, degradation, degeneration or even the
complete suppression of the true personality. But it is all instinc-
tive. To consider the life of the careerist as an expression of
instinct will explain too the success of so many who have no
inner awareness of what they want. These go straight for the
career, looking neither to the right nor to the left, without doubt
or hesitation, just as they go for the respiration business as soon
as they are born.
Then there is the Super-Careerist. Ordinarily, the careerist is
rather obvious, easily recognizable, with diaphanous motives and
conduct. But there is another and rarer bird, the careerist of
talent, even the careerist of genius, whom it is not so easy to see
through. Clever and brainy, he may be a good all around trifler,
or his specific gift for some line of achievement may make him
more"effective. There is nothing he may not call himself: conser-
vative, liberal, progressive, or radical. Often he is an agnostic
about social and political affairs and problems, which passes
for the indecision of the open mind, and is quite handy to render
him all things to all men. But perpetually, the underlying
careerist instinct drives him to use all men and women, all ideas
and movements and forces he comes in contact with for his own
personal advancement, just as the slave making instinct guides
ATTITUDES TOWARD HUMAN NATURE 9
the red ant in all its activities to procure its captives. Ideas do
not make a hero out of him, but he makes heroes of ideas, be-
cause they serve him in his ascent.
Because he is the most subtle, the most complex and the most
deceptive type of careerist, he is the most dangerous to the adven-
ture and speculation in intellect which mankind is. To say that
he is a wolf in sheepskin is to be unjust to him, since he is most
successful when he is most unaware of his own charlatanry. He
is most sincere when he is most insincere, and most truthful when
he lies best. A little self-consciousness of hypocrisy is a corrupt-
ing thing, much of it completely incompatible with the most suc-
cessful careerism. TartufTe is always applauded by the world
when he plays Hamlet, if he really believes in himself as Hamlet.
And, as all he has to do, if he is at all talented, is to look into
his glass and see himself in the part, he carries it off very well.
Why the Statesman Fails
Slaves and careerists, subnormals and abnormals, are the im-
portant elements of the constituency of every modern statesman.
The financial and social careerists as business men, professionals,
artists, publicists, presidents of countries, politicians, philosophers
dominate his outlook, his plans, his horizon. The slaves, the
inferiors, the subnormals exist merely to be exploited by them.
No one questions the causes of the multiplicity of them. No one
asks why there are so many little lives. For a fundamentally
minded statesman the control of the production of the careerist,
why he is produced, and how he may be prevented, becomes the
primary problem of his art.
Well, you say, what are you going to do about it? That is
human nature. The Evils of Human Nature! There is the
perpetual answer to be repeated by our clever editors unto Eter-
nity. You cannot get away from human nature. It is human
nature to be a careerist. It is human nature to put the immediate
triumphs of the self and its pleasures above the more indirect,
the more remote and distant benefits of a great, wonderful, free
community. We are all careerists. In so far as democracy has
succeeded as a form, it has persisted because there was in it for
the common man the promise of his getting more out of life that
way than any other way. For himself. And the devil take the
others. The myopia of such crude selfishness continues to deter-
mine his politics to this very day. And so he proceeds to vote for
10 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
favors bestowed and patronage past or potential. That is, when
he does not throw his ballot away altogether into the fire of
family habit, sectional inertia, or race prejudice.
Again you say, that is human nature. It is human nature for
us to be narrow, to be confined within the circle of personal
thought and desire, without imagination for the beyond. So the
calf is limited in its wanderings to the radius of the rope by
which it is tethered. The servile soul will always be submissive
and docile, greedy and stupid. What else could you expect from
the descendant of the solitary beast who once lived for thousands
of years in caves? Without servility of the soul, without chains
for the spirit of the wild animal against the world, men could
never have been driven to live together for twenty-four hours in
communities.
The conception of human quality out of which all social
machinery has been devised and built is a conception of slave-
quality and careerist quality. As we are all caught in the net,
as the unconscious memories of our slave and careerist ancestors
flow in our blood and echo in our cells, all we can do is accept
it and work with it. Human nature is an incurable disease. Like
Jehovah's definition of Himself, it is, it has been, and ever will
be. Everywhere the same, always the same, forever the same,
there is no way out.
Poor Human Nature
All of these strictures upon poor human nature are exceedingly
delightful to our careerists. Every unpleasant social fact, every
outrage to our best instincts, every exhibition of incapacity, in-
competency, inefficiency, indifference, every example of super-
criminal negligence is pardoned as an effect of that universal sin,
human nature. Take the case of the statesman and the diplomats
who failed to prevent the Great War, though they saw it coming
for years, and who should therefore all, Entente as well as Ger-
man, American as well as Japanese, be indicted for their criminal
negligence, precisely as a physician would be for failure to report
and stop the spread of an epidemic disease. All these crimes of
omission and commission are excused on the plea that it was
all due to human nature, and that what can be blamed on
human nature in general can be blamed on no one in particular.
Poor human nature! Flagellated on every hand, what are we
to do with it? Why is the careerist so numerous and ubiquitous?
ATTITUDES TOWARD HUMAN NATURE 11
Why does the slave-soul infiltrate like a cancer the soul of society
with its black fluid? Is freedom, the divine idea, nothing but the
toy of an orator to the majority, a distant star in the night to a
helpless minority? Yet the instinct to freedom, the appetite for
freedom, flickers through the centuries as a fitful flame, though
snuffed out by every gust of class passion, every wind of mob
resentment, and every storm of national jealousy. Though the
inferior subnormals multiply into great sheep majorities, and
the careerists, like Napoleon, morbid variants, involve millions
in their disease, the idea of freedom persists obstinately. Have
we any reason for regarding it as other than an illusion?
If freedom is an illusion, we must admit the doom of democracy.
And no Wagnerian crashes of orchestration mitigate the tragedy
of the scene as our eyes are opened to the twilight of our new
gods. For what other social methods are there left to us? In the
struggle against nature's barriers upon human aspiration for per-
fect satisfactions, it looks as though every other method has
failed us.
In the past, refined aristocracies and benevolent despotisms
have failed as miserably as our democracies are now failing and
as we are sure crude anarchism and communism would. Their
inferiority has thrown them on the scrap heap. As for our present
ways of government as a permanent method, the storage of power
in the hands of the Clever Few, War burns in the lesson of how
little the careerist regards either the subnormal or supernormal.
He condemns them all sooner or later to wholesale slavery and
carnage.
Is man then never to be the architect of his own destiny? Are
we to surrender our faith in the future of our kind to the spectacle
of a miserable species sentenced by its own nature to self-destruc-
tion? We thought to rise upon the wings of knowledge and
beauty, lured by the mysteries of color and the magic of design
and the might of the intellect and its words, that have trans-
figured life into the greatest adventure ever attempted in time
and space. But we find ourselves merely another experiment,
intricate and rather long drawn out, to be sure, with marvelous
pyrotechnics, magnificent effects here and there, but bound to
eliminate itself in the end, to make stuff for the museums of the
real conqueror of the stars yet to come. We are condemned to
be classed with the dodo and the mammoth by the coming dis-
coverer of an escape from the slave and careerist. And so let
us resign ourselves to fate. Let us eat of the humble bread of
12 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
the stoic's consolation in the face of the mocking laughter of
the gods, let us admit that Mind in Man has unconsciously but
irretrievably willed its own self-annihilation. What remains for us
except to beat our breasts and proclaim: So be it, O Lord, so be it?
Man as a Transient
Yet, true as it is that the human animal has achieved no
advance beyond the necessities of his ancestors, nor freed himself
from his bondage to their instincts and automatic reflexes, is
there no way out anywhere? Is there perhaps some ground for
hope and consolation in the thought that we, of the twentieth
century, no longer see ourselves, Man, as something final and
fixed? Darwin changed Fate from a static sphinx into a chame-
leon flux. Just as certainly as man has arisen from something
whose bones alone remain as reminders of his existence, we are
persuaded man himself is to be the ancestor of another creature,
differing as much from him as he from the Chimpanzi, and who,
if he will not supplant and wipe him out, will probably segregate
him and allow him to play out his existence in cage cities.
The vision of this After-man or From-man is really about as
helpful to us as the water of the oasis mirage is to the lost dying
of thirst in the desert. The outcries of the wretched and miser-
able, the gray-and-dreary lived din an unmanageable tinnitus
in our ears. Like God, it may be but a large, vague idea toward
which we grope to snuggle up against. It seems implicit in the
doctrines of evolution. But how do we know that in man the
spiral of life has not reached its apex, and that now, even now,
the vortices of its descent are not beginning? How do we know
that the From-man is to be a Superman and not a Subman?
How can we dare to hope that the slave-beast-brute is to give
birth to an heir, fine and free and superior?
We do not know and we have every indication and induction
for the most oppositely contrary conclusions. Life has blun-
dered supremely, in, while making brains its darling, forgetting
or helplessly surrendering to the egoisms of alimentation. So it
has spawned a conflict between its organs, and a consequent
impasse in which the lower centres drive the higher pitilessly into
devising means and instruments for the suicide of the whole.
As War shows plainly to the most stupidly gross imagination,
the germs of our own self-destruction as a species saturate our
blood. The probability looms with almost the certainty of a
ATTITUDES TOWARD HUMAN NATURE 13
syllogistic deduction, that such will be the outcome to our hun-
dreds of thousands of years of pain upon earth. In the face of
that, speculations upon a comet or gaseous emanations hitting
the planet, or the sun growing cold, become babyish fancies. How
clearly the possibility is pointed in the discussions about the use
in the next War of bacterial bombs containing the bacilli of
cholera, plague, dysentery and many others! What influenza did
in destroying millions, they can repeat a thousand times and ten
thousand times. What else the laboratories will bring forth, of
which no man dreams, in the way of destructive agents acting at
long distance, upon huge masses and over any extent of territory,
is presaged in that single example. But besides thus willing, by
an inner necessity, its own annihilation, Life, in the very struc-
ture and machinery of its being, seems caught into the entangle-
ments of an inescapable net, an eternity-long bondage it can
never rip, to flee and remake itself into the immortal image that
is its God.
And so there go by the board the last alleviations of those un-
beatable optimists who would soothe their aching souls with at
least the drop of comfort: that if man is a mortal species, with
not the slightest prospect of a continuing immortality, not to
mention a glorious future and destiny, there are others. Man,
after all, may be simply a bad habit Life will succeed in shaking
off. No philosophy or religion can afford to be anthropocentric
merely. It must include all life and all living things to which we
are blood-related. There are other species or latent species to
take up the torch that burned poor homo sapiens and ascend the
heights. The ant and bee may yet mutate along certain lines
that would make them the masters of the universe.
But no matter what species or variety gets the upper hand in
the struggle for survival and power, the implications of the
qualities necessary to victory in conflicts of individual separate
pieces of protoplasm will be there. Besides, life is always begot-
ten of life. That is why synthetic protoplasm is nothing but a
phrase. It is impossible to conceive of something alive, possessed
of the property of remembering, that is not possessed of a store
of past experiences. You can no more think of getting rid of
these unconscious memories of protoplasm than you can think
of getting rid of the wetness of water. They are imbedded in the
most intimate chemistry of the primeval ameba as well as in our
most complex tissues.
The memories of the cold lone fish and the hot predatory car-
14 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
nivor who were our begetters, may haunt us to the end of time.
The bee and the ant, too, have woven inextricably into the woof
of their cells the instincts that sooner or later would send their
brain ganglia, even when evolved to the pitch of perfection, to
elaborating the self-and-species murdering inventions and dis-
coveries that are apparently destined to slay us. The powers of
unconscious memory and unlearnable technique of reaction to
experience, once grooved, thus prove the great gift and the
eternal curse of protoplasm. Making it possible for it to be and
become what it is and has, they have also made it forever impos-
sible for it to be or become its own contradiction.
Add to this unsloughable remembrance of the past, for better,
for worse, the secretive consciousness of its present needs every
living thing, as against every other living thing, is obsessed with.
As a peregrinating, finite, spatially limited being, it is separated
from all other living beings by inorganic, dead masses, and yet
driven to contact with them by a fundamental impulse to as-
similate them into itself, and make them part of itself. That as-
similatory urge is present in every activity from coarse ingestion
as food to the moral metabolism of the hermit-saint who would
influence others to do as he.
Fate and Anti-Fate
In effect the history of Life resembles the life history of the
smallest things we know of, the electrons, and the largest, the
great suns and stars of space. The electron begins, perhaps, as a
swirl in the primeval ether, joins other electrons, forms colonies,
cities, empires, elements of an increasing complexity, through
stages of a relative stability, like lead or gold. Until it reaches
the stage of integration which wills its own disintegration, that
we have been taught to look upon with proper awe and reverence
as radium. And we are told that nebulae wander until they
collide and give birth to stars, stars wander and collide and give
birth to nebulae. Life begins as a quivering colloid, goes on
painfully to build a brain, which automatically refines itself to
jthe point of discovering and using the most efficient methods of
destroying others, and by a boomerang effect, itself. Fate I
The conception of Fate was a Greek idea. The classic formula
for tragedy, the struggle of Man with the sequence of cause and
effect within him and without, that is so utterly beyond his grasp
and ken, or power to modify, originated with them. But they
ATTITUDES TOWARD HUMAN NATURE 15
must also be given the credit for having conceived an idea and
started a process which, at first slowly and gropingly, now slip-
ping and falling, torn and bleeding among the thorns of the dark
forest of human motives, presently goes on, with a firmer, more
practiced, more confident step, to emerge into the light as the
deliberate Conqueror of Fate. That idea-process, this Anti-Fate
is Science.
Science began with the adventures of free-thinking speculators,
who revolted against religious cosmogonies and superstitions.
Sceptics concerning the knowledge that was the accepted mono-
poly of the priesthood must have existed in the oldest civilization
we know anything of, more than twenty-five thousand years ago,
the Aurignacians. But it was to the Greeks that we owe that
amalgamation of curiosity delivered of fear, that merger of
systematic research and critical thinking untrammelled by social
inhibitions which is the essence of modern science. Out of
them has come the great Tree of Knowledge of our time, which is,
too, the only Ygdrasil of Life, undying because it lives upon
successive generations of human brain cells.
Science, as the pursuit of the real, began with very small things
by men with very small intentions. Inventories, collections of
isolated data, something permanent for the mind out of the flux
of transient sensations, little tracks and foot paths in the jungle
of phenomena, were their goal. With no sense of themselves as
the mightiest of master-builders, cultivating humility toward
their material at any rate, the little men ploughed their little
fields, striking the oil of a great generalization or classification
or explanation with no fanfare of trumpets.
First as freaks and cranks> then as scholars and pedants, then
protected and perhaps stimulated under the competitive royal
patronage as societies and academies, they prepared for the
harvest. Comparing them to pioneer farmers sowing an undevel-
oped territory is really totally inadequate and inaccurate. For
the most part, they were like coral makers, laboriously construct-
ing, with no vision, certainly no sustained vision, of the whole.
To the practical men of affairs, the shopkeepers and traders,
the land-owners and ship-owners, the soldiers and sailors, the
statesmen and politicians, the people who specialized in maneu-
vering human beings and materials, they were, for this futile
devotion to abstract knowledge, marked ridiculous and absurd
weaklings, mollycoddles, babies, not to be trusted with the de-
mands and dangers of public life.
16 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
But it so happened remarkably late in history that with the
discovery of the possibilities of coal there was a great boom in
the demand for industrial machinery. At the same time there
were thrown up the most marvelous advances in physics and
chemistry. Recurring War became not the clashes of mercenary
armies, but the catapulting of whole nations at each other. New
destructive devices out of the laboratories were raised into the
commandants of the course of history. Then science acquired
prestige.
Science as King, science as power, looms as the great new
figure, the overshadowing novel factor, in practical statesman-
ship. Unlike the factor X in the traditional equation, it is the
known factor par excellence, the factor by which the value of all
the other factors of human life will be ascertained and solved.
As knowledge of the conditions determining all life, it stands as
the courageous David of the race against the Goliath territory
of the uncontrollable and the inevitable, even the unknowable.
Human history resolves itself into the drama: Science contra
Fate. Quite a change from the vaudeville show of the restless
personal ambitions of vindictive fools and greedy scoundrels, the
mischief and adventures of half-witted geniuses and licensed
rogues that have been figures of the prologue.
The future of science has become the future of the race. So
much of an inkling of the truth is beginning to be appreciated.
That is ordinarily taken to mean that the process by which the
Wessex man became the New York and London man, the accumu-
lation of accidental discoveries and inspired inventions of scat-
tered individuals, will go on, providing a succession of marvels
and miracles for the careerist and his retinue. Not only is he to
be entertained and served by them, but any commercial value will
also be exploited by him. The natural wonders of the labora-
tories have taken the place of the supernatural absurdities of the
medieval mind as a fillip for the imagination of the man in the
street. Even spiritualism apes the technique of the physicist.
The credulity of reporters alone concerning developments in
surgery, for example, is incredible. There is enough rot published
daily for a brief to be made out against the idolatry of science.
The Religion of Science
Science also as a religion, as a faith to bind men together, as a
substitute for the moribund old mythologies and theologies which
ATTITUDES TOWARD HUMAN NATURE 17
kept them sundered, is commencing to be talked of in a more
serious tone. The wonder-maker may have forced upon him,
may welcome, the honors of the priest, though he pose as the
humble slave of Nature and her secrets. Presently the founda-
tions and institutes, which coexist with the cathedrals and
churches, just as once the new Christian chapels and congregations
stood side by side with pagan temples and heathen shrines, may
oust their rivals, and assume the monopoly of ritual. Should its
spirit remain fine and clear, should it maintain the glorious
promise of its dawn, should its high priests realize the perpetually
widening intimations of its universal triumph, and escape the ossi-
fication that has overtaken all young and hopeful things and
institutions, the real foundation for a future of the species would
be laid, and so its ultimate suicide prevented.
The time has gone by, however, for any complacent assurance
that the redemption of mankind is to be attained by a new
religion of words. There is no doubt that the damnation or salva-
tion of an individual has often been determined by a religious
crisis, in which the magic of words have worked their witchery.
There is plenty of evidence that a psychic conversion will effect
an actual revolution in the whole way of living of the victim or
patient, as you like it. William James, in his "Varieties of
Religious Experience," established that pretty definitely. When
it comes to groups, races, nations, the outlook is wholly different-
There is a conflict of so many and diverse habits and interests,
beliefs and prejudices, that hope for some common merely intel-
lectual solvent for all of them is rather forlorn. If at all, the
resolution of the conflict will come by a pooling of actual powers
and interests, in which the religion of science will play the great
part of the Liberator of mankind from the whole system of tor-
ments that have made the way of all flesh a path of rocks along
which a manacled prisoner crawls to his doom.
Science and Human Nature
Science has a future. The religion of science has a future.
Can science assure us that human nature, in spite of its beast-
brute-slave origins holds the possibility of a genuine transforma-
tion of its texture? Can Fate's stranglehold upon us be broken?
There will be certainly a tremendous, an overwhelming increase
in the general stock of informations we call physics and chemistry
and biology. An abundance of new comforts, novel sensations,
18 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
fresh experiences, and breath-bereaving devices that will thrill
or heal, will follow of course in their wake. The religion of
science will infiltrate and penetrate and permeate by its capillary
action the barbaric superstitions, the ridiculous rites, the un-
sanitary insanities of our social systems.
But what about the poor human soul itself, with its inherent
vices and virtues, its fears and indulgences, audacities and nobili-
ties, jealousies, shames, blunders, incurable likes, cravings and
diseases? Can science change the texture of the slave and
careerist, if they represent the subnormal and the abnormal?
What about the Becky Sharps, the Mark Tapleys, and Tom
Pinches, not to speak of the Nicholas Nicklebys and the Hamlets,
the Micawbers and the Falstaffs? What future have they as
they recur in the generations? Indeed, does not the very fact of
their recurrence, of them and of the hundreds of other types
and temperaments, point implacably to the conclusion to which
the historian, the philosopher and the biologist have driven us:
that in the grip of an endless chain of pasts the human soul has
no future?
That may appear an irrelevant, an immaterial, and an incom-
petent question to our men of business and affairs. Human nature,
as fallen angel or ape parvenu, has always looked upon itself
as fixed for eternity. "Human nature never changes, and is
everywhere and always will be the same." "As a man is built."
"Bred in the bone." These are the axioms of our social and
economic Euclids. Indeed, Man, assuming that his nature is as
uncontrollable as the course of the stars, has limited his research
into the substance of freedom to a groping for an understanding
of the adequate external conditions of liberty. Thus he set
himself another of the insoluble problems he seems to delight in
by neglecting the most important factor in the equation. Yet
the invisible soul of man, ignored, as a variable, varying quantity,
has upset all societies and constitutions, and all schemes of bond-
age as well as of freedom.
For freedom, it becomes obvious as soon as it is clearly stated,
is sheer impossibility until the internal conditions of his nature
are ascertained, and the way paved for their control. A simple
illustration of the working of this principle is supplied by our
democracies, grossly pretenders. How can a democracy be pos-
sible without a knowledge of the control of the individually and
socially subnormal, who, since they offer themselves to exploita-
ATTITUDES TOWARD HUMAN NATURE 19
tion by the careerists, prove themselves the weak links in the
chain of co-operation with an equal opportunity for all, that is the
: democratic ideal? In what does the equality or inequality of men
consist? Just what are the qualities necessary for successful
competition, or if you will, co-living, of man with his fellow-men,
and how and why do they operate? No freedom, independent
of the servile repetitions of history and heredity, is conceivable
I until these inquiries have been elaborately carried out toward a
certain working finality.
The Promises of Eugenics
There are, to be sure, the claims and assertions and negative
i achievements of the youngest of the sciences, eugenics. They
are invincible optimists, the eugenists: it is perhaps a case of a
! virtue born of necessity. Thus Francis Galton, in the preface
\ to the "Bible of Eugenics," his essays on Hereditary Genius, de-
; clares: "There is nothing either in the history of domestic animals
[ or in that of evolution to make us doubt that a race of sane men
may be formed who shall be as much superior, mentally and
morally, to the Modern European, as the Modern European is to
j the lowest of the Negro races." High hopes beat in this declara-
tion. But Galton could not have foreseen that the signing of a
scrap of paper by one of the Modern Europeans would let loose
all the other Modern Europeans in a pandemonium of horrors
| the lowest of the Negro races could not but envy as a master-
| piece of its kind. It seemed to be suspiciously easy for him to
j| accept an excuse to slide down the dizzy height he had climbed
f from the African level.
The eugenists would put their trust in the encouraged breeding
of the best and the compulsory sterility of the rest. But what is
the best, and who are the best, and where will you find them when
they are not inextricably emulsified with the worst? It's a long,
long way to the day of a segregating out and in of Mendelian
unit-characters. Besides, this is a strange world of choices. No-
body is to be considered worthy of parenthood until he has fallen
in love properly. Nobody who would permit an outsider's deci-
sion as to when he was properly in love would be worth thirty
cents as a parent. There is the ultimate dilemma of the eugenist
— the dilemma which destroys forever the dream of a control of
parenthood from the point of view of merely psychic values.
20 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
New Psychology
There are the claims and outcries and promises of the
psychologists — the specialists in the probing of the human soul
and human nature. In our time, the demand for a dynamic
psychology of process and becoming, psychology with an energy
in it, has split them into two schools — the emphasizers of instinct
and the subconscious, the McDougallians, and the pleaders for
sex and the unconscious, the Freudians. A synthesis between
these two groups is latent, since their differences are those of
horizon merely. For the McDougallians look upon the world
with two eyes and see it whole and broad — the Freudians see
through their telescope a circular field and exclaim that they
behold the universe. It is true that they own a telescope.
But what has either to offer our quest for light on the future
of the species? Nothing very much. Thus, to turn to the dis-
ciples of McDougall. In a recent volume entitled, "Human
Nature and its Remaking," Professor William Ernest Hocking
of Harvard contends that Man, all axioms about his nature to
the contrary, is but a creature of habit, and so the most plastic
of living things, since habit is self-controlled and self-determined.
By the self-determination of the habits of the race will the new
freedom be reborn. It sounds old, very old. And pathetic be-
cause it recognizes original and permanent ingredients of our
composition in the words pugnacity, greed, sex, fear, as elements
to be accepted in any system of the principles of civilization.
It is the bubble of education all over again. What in our cells ia
pugnacity? What in our bones is greed? What in our blood is
sex? What in our nerves is fear? Until these inquiries are
respected, conscious character building or even stock breeding
must remain the laughing stock of the smoking rooms and the
regimental barracks.
Come the Freudians. To them we owe the aeroplanes to a new
universe. They have opened up for us the geology of the soul.
Layer upon layer, cross-section upon cross-section have been piled
before us. And what a melodramatic cinema of thrills and
shivers, villains and heroes, heroines and adventuresses have they
not unfolded. Each motive, as the stiff psychologist of the nine-
teenth century, with his plaster-of-Paris categories and pigeor
holes and classifications, labelled the teeming creatures of th>
mind, becomes anon a strutting actor upon a multitudinous
stage, and an audience in a crowded playhouse. Scenes art
ATTITUDES TOWARD HUMAN NATURE 21
enacted the febrile fancy of a Poe or a de Maupassant never
could have conjured. The complex, the neurosis, the compulsion,
the obsession, the slip of speech, the trick of manner, the devotion
of a life-time, the culture of a nation all furnish bits for the
Freudian mosaic. Attractions and inhibitions, repulsions and
suppressions are held up as the ultimate pulling and pushing
forces of human nature.
But is the problem solved? Is not human nature primarily
animal nature? And do we so thoroughly understand this animal
nature? Does not all this material of Freudianism consist of
variations upon social burdens imposed on the original human
nature? To be sure, at every moment of life, choices have to be
made, and choice involves the clashing of instincts and motives,
with victory for one or some, and defeat for the others. But the
Freudian material per se — the sex material — is it not merely the
by-product of a certain state of society? A sane society would
eliminate nearly all of Freudian disease, but still have original
human nature upon its hands. Why is it that of two individuals
exposed to the same situation, one will develop a complex, the
other will remain immune? The only soil we know of, the real
foundation stones of our being and living, are the cells we are
made of. Tell me the cellular basis of a complex, and I will grant
that you have arrived at some real knowledge.
Way for the Physiologist
There has grown up, contemporaneously with the teachings of
Freud, a body of discoveries and knowledge in physiology, con-
cerning these factors, which is like a long sword of light illumi-
nating a pitch-black spot in the night. The dark places in human
nature seem to have become the sole monopoly of the Freudians
and their psychology. But only seemingly. For all this time
the physiologist has been working. Beginning with a candle and
now holding in his hands the most powerful arc-lights, he has
explored two regions, the sympathetic nervous system and the
glands of internal secretion, and has come upon data which in
due course will render a good many of the Freudian dicta obso-
lete. Not that the Freudian fundamentals will be scrapped com-
pletely. But they will have to fit into the great synthesis which
must form the basis of any control of the future of human nature.
That future belongs to the physiologist. Already his achieve-
ments provide the foundations. I propose in the following chap-
22 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
ters to sketch the history and outline the elements of this new
knowledge, and then to glimpse some of the larger human reac-
tions to it. A good deal of this new knowledge is not altogether
new. A number of the isolated facts have been known and
talked about for more than two generations. But the newer
additions, and the light they have thrown upon old problems
present the opportunity for a synthesis, which must sooner or
later be made.
The Chemistry of the Soul
Besides, it is time that the secrets of the laboratories stepped
out into the market place, unashamed. Imaginative man has
played for ages immemorial with wondrous fairy tales and fan-
cies of what he would achieve. The sciences of physics and
chemistry have made every-day commonplace realities out of his
radiant dreams. One need not repeat the cliches of our editors.
But the analogy is there nevertheless. No control over heat and
light and electricity, today our slaves, was possible until physics
and chemistry took them in hand. No control of the human soul
is possible until it too will be taken in hand by them. We may
now look forward to a real future for mankind because we have
before us the beginnings of a chemistry of human nature. The
internal secretions, with their influence upon brain and nervous
system as well as every other part of the body corporation, as
essentially blood-circulating chemical substances, have been dis-
covered the real governors and arbiters of instincts and disposi-
tions, emotions and reactions, characters and temperaments, good
and bad. A huge complex of evidence, as various, complicated
and obscure as human nature itself, supports that fundamental
law.
The chemistry of the soul! Magnificent phrase! It's a long,
long way to that goal. The exact formula is as yet far beyond
our reach. But we have started upon the long journey and we
shall get there. Then will Man truly become the experimental
animal of the future, experimenting not only with the externa]
conditions of his life, but with the constituents of his very nature
and soul. The chemical conditions of his being, including!
the internal secretions, are the steps of the ladder by whicr
he will climb to those dizzy heights where he will stretch ou1
his hands and find himself a God. < Modern knowledge of thes<
chemical substances, circulating in the blood, and affecting even
ATTITUDES TOWARD HUMAN NATURE 23
cell of the body, dates back scarce half a century. But already
the paths blazed by the pioneers have led to the exploration of
great countries. The thyroid gland, the pituitary gland, the
adrenal glands, the thymus, the pineal, the sex glands, have
yielded secrets. And certain great postulates have been estab-
lished. The life of every individual, normal or abnormal, his
physical appearance, and his psychic traits, are dominated
largely by his internal secretions. All normal as well as ab-
normal individuals are classifiable according to the internal
secretions which rule in their make-up. Individuals, families,
nations and races show definite internal secretion traits, which
stamp them with the quality of difference. The internal secretion
formula of an individual may, in the future, constitute his meas-
urement which will place him accurately in the social system.
"More and more we are forced to realize that the general form
and external appearance of the human body depends, to a large
extent, upon the functioning, during the early developmental
period, of the endocrine glands. Our stature, the kinds of faces
we have, the length of our arms and legs, the shape of the pelvis,
the color and consistency of the integument, the quantity and
regional location of our subcutaneous fat, the amount and distri-
bution of hair on our bodies, the tonicity of our muscles, the
sound of the voice, and the size of the larynx, the emotions to
which our exterior gives expression. All are to a certain extent
iconditioned by the productivity of our glands of internal secre-
tion." (Llewellys F. Barker, Johns Hopkins University, 1st
President of Association for Study of Internal Secretions.)
The implications for the statesman, the educator, the voca-
lonal expert, the student of the neurotic and of genius, of
elinquents, deficients and criminals, the explorers of the excep-
tional and the commonplace, the understanding of the poetic and
rinetic, base and dull types, as well as of those two master inter-
sts of mankind, Sex and War, are manifest. The mystery of
he individual, in all his distinct uniqueness, begins to be pene-
rated. And so every phase of social life, in which the individual
s at bottom the final determinant, must be reviewed in the light
f the new knowledge. History may be examined from an en-
irely new angle. The biographies of our Heroes of the Past, in
he Carlylean sense, will bear reinspection. Even Utopias will
ave to be revised.
The internal secretions constitute and determine much of the
lherited powers of the individual and their development. They
24 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
control physical and mental growth and all the metabolic proc-
esses of fundamental importance. They dominate all the vital
functions during the three cycles of life. They co-operate in an
intimate relationship which may be compared to an interlocking
directorate. A derangement of their function, causing an in-
sufficiency of them, an excess, or an abnormality, upsets the entire
equilibrium of the body, with transforming effects upon the mind
and the organs. . In short, they control human nature, and who-
ever controls them, controls human nature.
The control of the glands of internal section waits upon our
knowledge of them, the nature and precise composition of the
substances manufactured by them, and just what they do to the
cells. Envisaging the future, that knowledJfctoday is meagre.
Looking back fifty years, it becomes an amaziflg" achievement and
revelation. It is worth our whilejjW survey the accomplished,
and to trace its general hunrerPsignificance. For a certain
tangible degree of knowledge ^pl control has been attained and
should be part of the average citizen's equipment in dealing with
the everyday problems of his life.
The Attitude of the Laboratory
A certain number of so-called experimental physiologists, tha
is, the physiologists of the animal laboratory, who will have noth-
ing but syllogistic deductions and quantitative determination
based upon animal experiments as the data of their science, wi
be apt to look askance upon the preceding paragraphs, and th
which will follow. To them, any man who relates the inte:
secretions to anything, outside of the routineer's paths, puts
reputation at stake, if he has any reputation at all to start
with. They would have us deliver a Scotch verdict upon all t
questions which arise as soon as one attempts to take in tl
more general significance of the glands of internal secretion. Thi
even though the more general implications concerning the effec
of their products, the relations of them to growth and develoj
ment, nutrition and energy, environmental reactions and resis
ance to disease, as well as the grand complex of intelligence, a
admittedly well ascertained in some directions.
The method of absolute measurement in science has yield
miracles. For some thousands of years, an isolated inc
vidual, here and there or an isolated institution have devot
themselves to the task, struggling not only with their own wea
ATTITUDES TOWARD HUMAN NATURE 25
nesses, but with religious and political dogmas which spoiled and
vitiated even the beginnings of their efforts. When, in the seven-
teenth century, men associated themselves in research, for free
communication and discussion of their findings, a great invention
came alive. Close on its heels was born the exact experimental
method. Amazing triumphs were born of that marriage which
swept away before it ignorance and superstition and prejudice.
Its children and grandchildren have flourished and grown strong
and mighty. They have transmuted the material conditions of
life. Certainly all the laurels belong to the method of absolute,
measured observations.
Yet all this time the old method of inductive observation has
not gone dead. Most magnificent triumph of nineteenth century
science, the evolution theory of Charles Darwin, remains the
most conspicuous instance of clarification of thought in human
history. That work was the outcome of an attempt to relate
and interpret a collection of observations on species and their
variations, that had long lain to hand, a mixture without a
solvent. Darwin saw certain generalizations as solvents, and
behold! a clear solution out of the mud. But it was by piling
evidence upon evidence, co-ordinating isolated facts not directly
associated, that the towering structure was erected. There is no
prettier sample extant of the powers of the inductive method.
Not that there are no triumphs of the quantitative method in
store for the biologist. Already, the materials of the Mendelians
have become basic parts of his structure. And today, in pursuit
of the solutions of hundreds of the problems of living matter,
chemists and physiologists are employing the most precise stand-
ards, units, and measures of the physical sciences. Blood chem-
istry of our time is a marvel, undreamed of a generation ago.
Also, these achievements are a perfect example of the accom-
plished fact contradicting a priori prediction and criticism. For
it was one of the accepted dogmas of the nineteenth century that
the phenomena of the living could never be subjected to accurate
quantitative analysis.
However desirable the purely quantitative experimental
methods may be, they naturally need always to be preceded by
the qualitative studies of direct observations. Inevitably there
will be numberless errors, apparent and real inconsistencies and
contradictions, and ideas that will have to be discarded. Just
the same there is no other method of progress. Every bit of
evidence points towards the internal secretions as the holders of
26 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
the secrets of our inmost being. They are the well springs of life,
the dynamos of the organism. In trailing their scent we appear
to be upon the track not only of the chemistry of our bodies, but
of the chemistry of our very souls. An increasing host of facts
and studies marshal themselves solidly for that declaration.
Endeavor to conceive the consequences and possibilities for the
future. A synthesis of the known in the field provides even now
means of understanding and control of the perplexities of human
nature and life that are like a vista seen from a mountain top
after the lifting of a fog.
The most precious bit of knowledge we possess today about
Man is that he is the creature of his glands of internal secretion.
That is, Man as a distinctive organism is the product, the by-
product, of a number of cell factories which control the parts
of his make-up. Much as the different divisions of an automobile
concern produce the different parts of a car. These chemical
factories consist of cells, manufacture special substances, which
act upon the other cells of the body and so start and determine
the countless processes we call Life. Life, body and soul emerge
from the activities of the magic ooze of their silent chemistry
precisely as a tree of tin crystals arises from the chemical reac-
tions started in a solution of tin salts by an electric current.
Man is regulated by his Glands of Internal Secretion. At the
beginning of the third decade of the twentieth century, after he
had struggled, for we know at least fifty thousand years, to
define and know himself, that summary may be accepted as the
truth about himself. It is a far-reaching induction, but a valid
induction, supported by a multitude of detailed facts.
Amazingly enough, the incontestable evidence, that first
pointed to, and then proved up to the hilt, this answer to the
question: What is Man? has been gathered in less than the last
fifty years. Darwin and Huxley, and Spencer, who first opened
men's eyes to their origins, were ignorant of the very existence
of some of them, and had not the faintest notion or suspicion of
the real importance or function of any of them.
The Prejudices of Philosophers
Now, there are certain prejudices and problems which appear
rudely brushed away by the dogmatic arrogance of the
principle lUted What, you say, is Man but an affair of his
peculiar gland chemistry? But what of mind, soul, conscious-
ATTITUDES TOWARD HUMAN NATURE 27
ness? Still another of these pathetically one-sided and superficial
theories of man as a machine pure and simple which would
make him the most complicated of mechanisms, a marvel of
intricate parts, but would deprive him of his essence as self-
conscious unique in the universe. Man, thinking man, at any
rate, dreads to lose the cherished impregnable conviction that he
is something apart, inherently, and therefore infinitely different
from every other phenomenon in the range of his cosmos.
A thorough dissection of the relation and attitude toward
psychic material of the consistent physiologist, who refuses to
deal in contradictory terms, would lead us a little too far. So
would the reconciliation between the claims of mind and the
concept of the organism as a system of chemical reactions. The
most fundamental aspects of that herculean task, warned by the
sign, No Trespassing, we shall leave to the metaphysicians. The
influence of the glands of internal secretion upon the mind we
must consider, but at present postpone. Yet the hot-headed con-
tenders on both sides may be reminded of certain facts.
We live in the most iconoclastic of ages. There are sane
people alive today going quietly about their business who deny
the very existence of consciousness. These heretics of course
pooh-pooh absolutely the lions of metaphysics. On the other
hand, it may be pointed out to our mechanists who believe in
mechanism to the bitter end, that even if man can be described
entirely as a mere transformer of energy, there is no reason why
he cannot also be described as a transformer of energy plus
someone who makes use of the transformer and of the energy
transformed. The stone wall before the honest mechanist is the
abolition of purpose, and design, an old insoluble problem upon
his premises. Preach, until you are blue in the face, behaviorist
tropisms, in which man is pushed and pulled about in his environ-
ment as are iron filings in a magnetic field. Think up objective
physiologies in which your life and mine become a series of con-
catenated influences and compound reflexes. Play with words
like the concentration reflex when you mean idea, and the sym-
bolic reflex when you mean language. But your most rigid
nomenclature will never abolish the mystic personal purpose
in the equation, no matter how low the step in the animal series
to which you descend. The declaration that a man is dominated
by certain glands within his body should not be taken to give
aid and comfort to those who would banish mind from the
universe.
CHAPTER I
HOW THE GLANDS OF INTERNAL SECRETION WERE
DISCOVERED
Just what are the glands of internal secretion? And how have
we become possessed of whatever information about them we
have? A brief review of how the idea of a gland of internal secre-
tion came into the human mind and of the contributions that
have converged into a single body of knowledge i3 worth while.
A gland is a collection of cells (those viscous globules which
are the units of all tissues and organs). It manufactures sub-
stances intended for a particular effect upon the body economy.
The effect may be either local or upon the body as a whole.
Originally, a gland meant something in the body which was
seen to make something else, generally a juice or a liquid mix-
ture of some sort. A classical example is the salivary glands
elaborating saliva. The microscope has shown us that every
gland is a chemical factory in which the cells are the workers.
The product of the gland work is its secretion. Thus the sweat
glands of the skin secrete the perspiration as their secretion, the
lachrymal glands of the eyes the tears as theirs. The collec-
tivism of management and control is the only essential difference
between them and the modern soap factory or T.N.T. plant.
Man as a carnivor, and as a consequent anatomist, has been
acquainted with these more superficially placed glands for some
thousands of years. During all this time and during the epoch
of the achievements of gross anatomy, it was believed that the
'ions of all glands were poured out upon some surface of
the body. Either an exterior surface like the skin, or some in-
terior surface, the various mucous membranes. This was sup-
1 by the discovery of canal-like passage ways leading from
!:u)(l to the particular surface where its secretion was to'-
act. These corridors, the secretory or excretory ducts, are pres-
ent, for example, in the liver, conducting the bile to the small
intestine. Devices of transportation fit happily into a com-
parison of a gland to a chemical factory, corresponding thus
closely to the tramways and railroads of our industrial centers.
HOW THE GLANDS WERE DISCOVERED 29
Little more than a hundred years ago, it was observed that
certain organs, like the thyroid body in the neck, and the adrenal
capsules in the abdomen, hitherto neglected because their func-
tion was hopelessly obscure, had a glandular structure. As in so
much scientific advance, the discovery or improvement of a new
instrument or method, a fresh tool of research, was responsible,
The perfection of the microscope was the reason this time.
If one wishes to trace the idea of internal secretion by cells to
an individual, it is convenient, if not pedantic, to give the credit
to Theophile de Bordeu, a famous physician of Paris in the
eighteenth century. Bordeu came to Paris as a brilliant pro-
vincial in his early twenties and by the charm of his manner
and daring therapy fought his way to the most exclusive aristo-
cratic practice of the court. Naturally a courtier, taking to the
intrigues of the royal court like a duck to water, making enemies
on every hand as well as friends, and with a fastidious and
impatient clientele, he yet found time to dabble in the wonders
of the newly perfected microscope and to speculate upon the
meaning of the novelties revealed by it in the tissues. He coined
the thought of a gland secretion into the blood.
It was in the year 1749 that he came to Paris from the
Pyrenees, a young medical graduate, destined to become the most
fashionable practitioner of his time. At the age of twenty-three
he was holding the professorship of anatomy at his alma mater,
Montpelier, where his father was a successful physician. At
twenty-five he was elected corresponding member of the Royal
Academy of Sciences. A handsome presence and a Tartarin de
Tarascon disposition assured his success from the start. The
medical world was then composed of the emulsion of charlatanry
and science Moliere ridiculed. Success stimulated envy and
jealousy. One of the richest of the older medical men set himself
the job of procuring his scalp. On a trumped-up charge of steal-
ing jewels from a dead patient — a favorite, accusation against
the doctors of the eighteenth century — he had Bordeu's license
taken away from him. The good graces of certain women to
whom Bordeu had always appealed, and who indeed supplied
the funds to get him started in Paris, rammed through two acts
of Parliament to reinstate him. Nothing daunted, he returned
to his quest for a court clientele, and was rewarded finally by
having the moribund Louis XV as a patient.
This was the man with whom the modern history of the in-
ternal secretions begins. Not content with adventures among the
30 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
courtiers and desperadoes of the most corrupt court in the most
corrupt city of the world, he went in for research. The high
power microscope that came into vogue when he was studying,
revealed vague wonders which he described in a monograph, "Re-
searches into the mucous tissues or cellular organs." But what
makes him interesting is a slender volume on the "Medical Analy-
sis of the Blood," published in the year of the American Declara-
tion of Independence. The sexual side of men and women aroused
Bordeu's most ardent enthusiasms. Starting with observations
on the characters of eunuchs and capons, as well as spayed female
animals, he formulated a conception of sexual secretions absorbed
into the blood, settling the male or female tint of the organism
and setting the seal upon the destiny of the individual. Thus
he must be donated the credit of anticipating the most modern
doctrine on the subject.
The generation after him witnessed the triumph of the cell as
the recognized unit of structure of the tissues, the brick of the
organs. It was soon found that the cells of the more familiar
glands, like the sweat or tear glands, resembled the cells of the
more mysterious structures named the thyroid in the neck, or
adrenal in the abdomen, of which the function was unknown.
What had hitherto prevented classification of the latter as glands
was the fact that they possessed no visible pathways for the
removal of their secretion. So now they were set apart as the
ductless glands, the glands without ducts, as contrasted with the
glands normally equipped with ducts. Since, too, they were
observed to have an exceedingly rich supply of blood, the blood
presented itself as the only conceivable mode of egress for the
secretions packed within the cells. So they were also called the
blood or vascular glands.
The names which became most popular were those which
represented a contrast of the glands with the ducts, conveying
their secretion to the exterior, as the glands of external
secretion and the glands without the ducts, the secretions
of which were kept within the body, absorbed by the blood
and lymph to be used by the other cells, as the glands of
internal SECRETION. How different these two classes of
glands are may be realized by imagining the existence of great
factories manufacturing food products, which would diffuse
through their walls into the atmosphere, to be absorbed by our
bodies.
re are certain terms for the glands of internal secretion
HOW THE GLANDS WERE DISCOVERED 31
which are used interchangeably. They are spoken of often as
the endocrine glands and as the hormone producing glands.
Endocrine is most convenient for it stands for both the gland
and its secretion. Hormone is employed a good deal in the lit-
erature of the subject. But it applies specifically to the internal
secretion, and not to the gland.
The Experimental Pioneer
All this clarification of the concept of the glands of internal
secretion occurred in the first quarter of the nineteenth century.
However, no inkling of their real importance to the body, of
which quantitatively they form so insignificant a part, was ap-
parently revealed to anyone. Not even the most daring specula-
tion or brilliant guess work in physiology engaged them as
material. Thus Henle, the great anatomist, calmly affirmed that
these glands "have no influence on animal life: they may be
extirpated or they degenerate without sensation or motion suffer-
ing in the least." Johann Miiller, the most celebrated physiologist
of his day and contemporary of Henle, wrote in 1844 and coolly
stated, "The ductless glands are alike in one particular — they
either produce a different change in the blood which circulates
through them or the lymph which they elaborate plays a special
role in the formation of blood or of chyle." In other words, they
were dismissed as curious nonentities, of no real significance to
the running of the body. Laennec, the French founder of the Art
of Diagnosis in Medicine, once said that nothing about a science
is more interesting than the progress of that science itself. He
might have added that nothing either was more interesting than
the contradictions in that progress. For while these grand moguls
of their sciences were enunciating their dogmas, pioneers here
and there were already setting the mines that were to explode
them.
The experimental method, to the value of which biologists
were just beginning to awaken, was destined to be the vehicle
of Time's revenges. An application of it to the mysteries of sex
was the immediate occasion. Sex and sex differences have always
more or less obsessed the imagination of mankind. The volumes
of theories about them would constitute a respectable museum.
Certain gross facts, however, were known. 'fhe effects of loss
of the sex glands upon the configuration of the body and the
predominating constitution in animals and eunuchs have always
32 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
attracted attention. The proverbs and stories of all nations are
full of references to them. But up to the nineteenth century no
controlled experimental work was ever carried out regarding
i. It was in 1849, that A. A. Berthold of Gottingen, a quiet,
re lecturer, carried out the pioneer experiment of removing
the testes of four roosters and transplanting them under the
^kin. It was Berthold's idea to test whether a gland with a
definite external secretion, and a duct through which that secre-
tion was expelled, but which yet had powers over the body as a
whole that were to be attributed only to an internal secretion,
could not be shown, by a clean-cut experiment, to possess such
an internal secretion. He succeeded perfectly. For he found
that, though, in thus separating the gland from its duct and so
cutting off its external secretion, the action of the cells manufac-
turing that secretion was destroyed, the general effects upon the
body were not those of castration. The animals retained their
male characteristics as regards voice, reproductive instinct, fight-
ing spirit and growth of comb and wattles. Whereas if the
glands were entirely removed, these male traits, peculiar to the
rooster, were completely lost. The inference was the existence
of an internal secretion.
To Berthold belongs the honor of being the first experimental
demonstrator who proved the reality of a gland with a true in-
ternal secretion and the power it exercised through the blood upon
the entire organism. Besides, he showed that a typical gland of
external secretion could also have an internal secretion, a possi-
bility never before considered. That two kinds of cells could
live within the same gland: one set usually recognized as pro-
ducing the external secretion, the other evolving the internal
secretion, was an astounding original conception.
Enter Claude Bernard
Science is supposed to be immune to the personal prejudices
and emotional habits of the vulgar. It is the tradition that a
new contribution to knowledge emerging from no matter how
obscure the source, should be hailed as a gift from the gods.
But the sad truth of the matter is that a new finding in science
requires as much backing as a new project in high finance or
social climbing. Berthold, like Mendel, the founder of genetics,
was a great pioneer. But there was no personage, no person of
consequence, with no patronage by anyone of consequence, nQ
HOW THE GLANDS WERE DISCOVERED 33
wife or kin, to push him, and no audience to stimulate him. His
poor four little pages of a report, published ten years before
Darwin's "Origin of Species," attracted not the slightest notice.
Buried in the print of a journal with a subscription list of pos-
sibly two or three hundred, of whom perhaps two dozen may have
been interested enough to read it, but without any recorded
reaction on the part of any of them, it was a flash in the pan.
Though it was good, original, conclusive stuff, it was cut dead,
absolutely, by the scientific world. As a result, forty years
elapsed before the implications of his studies were rediscovered
by the Columbus of the modern approach to the internal secre-
tions, the American Frenchman, Brown-Sequard.
It took a first class man of genius in his field, in Paris, with a
respected position in the whirl of its medical planetary system
and a university appointment, to boom and advertise the doc-
trine of the internal secretions, so that people began to sit up
and listen and take sides — on the wrong grounds. This French-
man was Claude Bernard. At a series of lectures on experi-
mental physiology delivered at the College of France, in 1855,
he coined the terms internal secretion and external secretion and
emphasized the opposition between them, on the basis of an in-
correct example, the function of the liver in the supply of sugar
to the blood.
Just as Columbus reached America, carried on a series of
logical syllogisms, built upon unreal pictures of a straight .path
to the East, Claude Bernard opened up the continent of the
internal secretions to the experimental enthusiasts of his time
by a discovery which today is not grouped among the phenomena
of internal secretion at all. In attempting to throw light upon
the disease diabetes, in which there is a loss of the normal ability
of the cells to burn up sugar, he examined the sugar content of
the blood in different regions of the body. He found that the
blood of the veins, in general, contained less sugar than the
blood of the arteries, which meant that sugar was taken from
the blood in passing through the tissues. But the venous blood
of the right side of the heart contained as much sugar as the
arterial blood. Evidently, somewhere, sugar was added to the
blood in the veins before it got to the heart. The blood of
the vein which goes from the liver to the right side of the heart
was then found to contain a higher percentage of sugar than is
present in the arteries. The vein which transmits the blood from
the intestines to the liver had the usual lower percentage of
34 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
sugar corresponding to the analysis established for the other
5. The liver, therefore, must add sugar to the blood on its
way to the heart. Extraction of the liver then revealed the
presence in it of a form of starch, an animal starch, which Ber-
: called glycogen, the sugar-maker. The origin of the sugar
added to the blood on its way from the liver to the heart was
settled. Bernard went on to hail glycogen and the sugar
derivable as the internal secretions of the liver, and to erect, and
then drive home, a theory of internal secretions and their impor-
o in the body economy.
The case he had hit upon was exquisitely fortunate, as the
liver had hitherto been regarded purely a gland of external
secretion, the bile. Nowadays, glycogen and the blood sugar are
not considered internal secretions, because they are classified as
elementary reserve food, while the concept of the internal secre-
tions has become narrowed down to substances acting as starters
or inhibitors of different processes. Moreover, the process of
liberation of sugar from glycogen itself in the liver, upon demand,
is today set down to the action of an internal secretion, adrenalin.
Claude Bernard's conception, like a novelist's characters, has
turned upon its creator, taken on a life of its own, and evolved
into something he never intended. He looked upon an internal
Mon as simply maintaining the normal composition of the
blood, which bathed alike and treated alike the democracy of
cells. Today, the blood is believed merely the transporting
medium for the internal secretion, destined for a particular group
of cells.
Addison's as the First English Contribution
The years 1855-56 are red-letter years in the history of the
plands of internal secretion. They witnessed, not only the pub-
lication of Claude Bernard's "Lectures on Experimental Physi-
ology," but also the appearance of a monograph by Thomas
Addison, an English physician, entitled "On the constitutional
Mid local effects of disease of the suprarenal bodies." In this,
he described a fatal disease during which the individual affected
! inguid and weak, and developed a dingy or smoky
ion of the whole surface of the body, a browning or
\ of the skin, caused generally by destructive tubercu-
ase of the suprarenal or adrenal bodies. Addison
i'tly put down these constitutional effects of loss of the
HOW THE GLANDS WERE DISCOVERED 35
adrenal bodies to loss of something produced by them of con-
stitutional importance. He was particularly struck by the
change in the pigmentation of the skin, so much so that his own
designation for the affection was "bronzed skin." Since then,
however, the condition has been universally styled Addison's
Disease.
There is something spectacularly mysterious and picturesque
about most of the malign, insidious effects of the disease which
appealed at once to a number of investigators. The most adven-
turous, the most daring, the most imbued with enthusiasm for
the experimental method, was the American Frenchman, Brown-
Sequard, who is acknowledged the father of modern knowledge
of the glands of internal secretion, though to Claude Bernard
belong the honors of the grandfather.
Brown-Sequard the Great
Brown-Sequard, as the outstanding figure in the history of the
glands of internal secretion, deserves some notice as a person-
ality. In the words of the note-makers for novels and plays,
he was a card. He was born in 1817 at Port-Louis, on the island
of Mauritius, off Africa, then French property. His father was
a Mr. Brown, an American sea captain; his mother a Mme.
Sequard, a Frenchwoman. Early in childhood, the father sailed
away on one of his voyages and never came back. The mother
thereafter supported herself and her son sewing embroideries.
At fifteen, Brown-Sequard, with the physical appearance of an
Indian Creole, was clerking in a colonial store by day, and com-
posing poetry, romances arid plays by night. The call of Paris
was in his blood, which was indeed a supersaturated solution of
wanderlust.
Soon he was landed there to make his fortune in literature,
only too speedily to be disillusioned. Exhibition of manuscripts
to a leading literary light merely evoked curt advice to learn a
trade or go into business. He would have none of either and
studied medicine instead, earning his way by teaching as he
learned. In the laboratories, he made the acquaintance of people
who more than once were to be his salvation in the ups and downs
of his career. In 1848 he was one of the secretaries of the Society
of Biology, newly founded by Claude Bernard.
Some trouble, perhaps some effect upon his health of cholera
which then swept Paris, caused him to return to his native
36 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
Mauritius, to encounter an epidemic of cholera. There he slaved
manfully, for which a gold medal was afterward struck for him.
That over with, he embarked in 1852 for New York, without a
word of American, learning English on board. This was the first
of a series of voyages. As he often boasted, he crossed the ocean
sixty times, not a bad record for the days when the Mauretania
was still in the womb of time. He made a hopeless failure out
of practice in New York, became so poor as to practice obstet-
rics at five dollars a case, and married a niece of Daniel Webster.
Then he went back to Paris. Back to America next as Professor
of Physiology at the University of Richmond, Virginia, a job
occupied for a few months only because of his opinions on
slavery, ostensibly anyhow.
To Paris then the rolling stone meandered again. So that
soon after he was offered and accepted the charge of a great
newly opened hospital for epileptics in London. That proved
merely an interlude and in 1863 we find him back in his father-
land (if we may hold France his motherland) as Professor of
Neuropathology at Harvard. In New York fame preceded him
now with a thousand trumpets, so that on the day of his arrival,
he was kept busy seeing patients until night, when he had to
desist because of exhaustion. But still he did not prosper. An
unfortunate second marriage almost broke his heart, and an at-
tempt to found in New York a new medical periodical, the
Archives of Scientific and Practical Medicine and Surgery, got
him into hot water. Not until the death of Claude Bernard in
1878 left vacant the chair of physiology in the College of France,
did he find peace and rest. He hastened to Paris, was appointed,
and lived, in spite of the most erratic of existences, to the ripe old
age of 78, working up to the last minute.
Addison's monograph stimulated Brown-Sequard, in the year
after its printing, to reproduce the fatal disease experimentally
by excising the suprarenal capsules in animals. Addison was
very modest in his monograph. He stated that the first case of
the malady had been reported by his great predecessor at Guy's
Hospital, London, Richard Bright, the describer of Bright's
Disease. Then he talks about the "curious facts" he had
"stumbled upon" and refers to an "ill-defined impression" that
these suprarenal bodies, in common with the spleen and other
organs, "in some way or other minister to the elaboration of the
blood." In the preface to his work he had spoken more confi-
1
HOW THE GLANDS WERE DISCOVERED 37
dently of the fact that Nature, as an experimenter and a vivi-
sector, can beat the physiologist to a frazzle. Indeed, he begins
like this: "If Pathology be to disease what Physiology is to
health, it appears reasonable to conclude that, in any given struc-
ture or organ, the laws of the former will be as fixed and sig-
nificant as those of the latter: and that the peculiar characters
of any structure or organ may be as certainly recognized in the
phenomena of disease as in the phenomena of health. Although
pathology, therefore, as a branch of medical science, is neces-
sarily founded on physiology, questions may nevertheless arise
regarding the true character of a structure or organ, to which
occasionally the pathologist may be able to return a more
satisfactory and decisive reply than the physiologist — these two
branches of medical knowledge being thus found mutually to
advance and illustrate each other. Indeed, as regards the func-
tions of individual organs, the mutual aids of these two branches
of knowledge are probably much more nearly balanced than
many may be disposed to admit: for in estimating them we
are very apt to forget how large an amount of our present physi-
ological knowledge respecting the functions of these organs has
been the immediate result of casual observations made on the
effects of disease." William James expressed the same thought
some decades later, when he emphasized that the abnormal was
but the normal exaggerated and magnified, played upon by the
limelight, and therefore the best teacher and indicator of the
exact definition and limitations of the normal.
Addison, speaking before the South London Medical Society
in 1849, declared that in all of three afflicted individuals there
was found a diseased condition of the suprarenal capsules, and
that in spite of the consciousness "of the bias and prejudice in-
separable from the hope or vanity of an original discovery . . .
he could not help entertaining a very strong impression that
these hitherto mysterious organs — the suprarenal capsules — may
be either directly or indirectly concerned in sanguification (the
making of the blood) : and that a diseased condition of them,
functional or structural, may interfere with the proper elabora-
tion of the body generally, or of the red particles more
especially. , ," A modern, acquainted with after developments,
would say that Addison was very hot upon the trail indeed. But
withal, though he must have been well aware of John Hunter's
advice to Jenner on vaccination, "Don't think, make some ob-
38 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
servations," his training in the indirect reasoning and deductions
of the clinician prevented him from going right on to a direct
experimental test of his theories.
This Brown-Sequard proceeded to do. Removing the adrenal
ghmds in several species of animals, he found, meant a terrible
weakness in twenty-four to forty-eight hours, and death shortly
after. If only one were removed, there was no change apparent
in the normal animal, but death occurred rapidly upon removal
of the other, even after a long interval. Furthermore, trans-
fusion of blood from a normal into one deprived of its supra-
renals prevented death for a long time, indicating that the
suprarenals normally secreted something into the blood neces-
sary to life.
The years 1855-1856 beheld two other important glands of
internal secretion, the thyroid, the gland in the neck astride the
windpipe, and the thymus, in the chest above the heart, make
their debut.
The thymus was introduced by the great classic monograph
of Friedleben on the "Physiology of the Thymus," in which he
mentioned the usual forgotten pioneers: Felix Plater, a Swiss
physician, who in 1614 had found an enlarged thymus in an
infant dying suddenly, and Restelli, an Italian, who interested
himself in the effects of removal of the thymus more than ten
years before. Friedleben believed that in the young without
a thymus, there occurred a softening of the bones, and general
physical and mental deterioration. He started the ball rolling
for a number of researches.
Moritz Schiff, of Frankfort-on-the-Main, showed that excision
of the thyroid gland in dogs is invariably fatal. A number of
physicians in the first half of the century had reported certain
remarkable symptoms associated with enlargement of the thyroid
gland, as goitre. In 1825 the collected posthumous writings of
b Perry, an eminent physician of Bath, England, recorded
eight cases, in which, together with enlargement of the gland,
developed enlargement and palpitation of the heart, a dis-
protrusion of the eyes from their sockets and an appearance
tat ion and distress. SchifT's paper was the first to throw
any light on the subject. But for some reason, probably the
same as in Berthold's forlorn experiments with the sex glands,
the work of a person of no importance was ignored, or perhaps
the mere charitable view is that it was forgotten. Yet the tide
of observation kept sweeping in relevant data.
HOW THE GLANDS WERE DISCOVERED 39
In 1850, Curling, an English pathologist, studying the cretinous
idiots of Salzburg, written about centuries before by Paracelsus,
discovered that with their defective brain and mentality there
was associated an absence of the thyroid body, and accompanying
symmetrical swellings of fat tissue at the sides of the neck.
Then Sir William Gull in 1873 painted the singular details of a
cretinous condition developing in adult women, a condition to
which another Englishman, William Ord, of London, five years
later donated the title of myxedema, because of a characteristic
thickening and infiltration of the skin that is one of its features.
Surgery then enters upon the scene. The great Swiss surgeon.
Theodore Kocher, performed the first excision of the thyroia
gland in human beings for goitre, in the same year. In 1882,
J. L. Reverdin, another surgeon of Geneva, noticed that in man
complete removal of the thyroid was followed by symptoms
identical with those collected under the name of myxedema, and
used the phrase "operative myxedema" to emphasize his convic-
tion of the connection between them. Then Schiff, in 1884,
neglected twenty-five years, came back, with an array of dem-
onstrations, proving that the various symptoms, tremors, spasms
and convulsions, following removal of the thyroid, could be pre-
vented by a previous graft of a piece of the gland under the skin,
or by the injection of thyroid juice into a vein or under the skin,
or by the ingestion of thyroid juice or the raw thyroid by mouth.
A crystallization of ideas about the true function of the thyroid
was now inevitable. In 1884, Sir Victor Horsley produced an
experimental myxedema by removal of the thyroid in monkeys,
resembling closely in its symptom-picture the disease as it
occurs in human beings. Mobius, a German neurologist, came
out boldly for the conception that a number of ailments could
be due to qualitative and quantitative changes in the secretion of
the thyroid, and that just as myxedema and cretinism were due
to an insufficiency of the secretion, Parry's disease was to be
ascribed to an excessive outpouring of it. The next steps were
easy. In 1888, Sir Felix Semon, as an outcome of a collective
investigation, established for all time that cretinism, myxedema
and post-operative myxedema were one and the same.
It was bound to occur to someone that if human myxedema
and animal experimental myxedema were one and the same,
Schiff 's procedure of prevention and cure by feeding thyroid gland
by mouth in the latter could be applied to the former. The idea
occurred to two men, Murray and Howitz, in 1891. Murray's
40 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
patient, a Mrs. H., was shown before the Northcumberland and
Durham Medical Society, an English country medical organiza-
tion, in February, 1891. She was forty-two years old and had
borne nine children. The illness attacking her had begun in-
sidiously, with a gradual enlargement and thickening of her face
and hands. She had become very slow in speech and gait, sensi-
tive to cold, and languid and depressed in spirit to the point of
inability to go about alone. Murray, employing the glycerin
extract of the thyroid gland of a freshly killed sheep, injected
twenty-four drops hypodermically, twice a week. There was
an immediate and marvelous improvement, which continued
steadily, Murray finding that it could be maintained by feeding
the gland by mouth. The features and skin returned to the
normal, speech quickened and she became able to walk about
and live her life without hesitation or assistance. She lived to
the age of seventy-four, dying in 1919. In the twenty-eight
years, during which it was always necessary to administer the
thyroid, she consumed over nine pints of thyroid, comprising the
glands of 870 sheep.
Giants and dwarfs and fat people have always interested people
as freaks, departures from the usual and the normal, and have
formed the stock of popular museum, circus and country fair.
Every mythology has concerned itself with them. The Titans
among the Greeks, Og, Gog and Magog among the Hebrews, are
examples of the fascination of the superlarge. John Hunter, the
founder of experimental surgery, spent a fortune in chasing after
the skeleton of a famous Irish Giant in 1783. Dwarfs have also
fascinated — witness the short-limbed satyrs of the Greeks and
the dwarf gods (Ptah and Bes) of Egypt, as well as the vogue
of the court dwarf-buffoons, of whom Velasquez has left us
some portraits. Fat people, obesity as a manifestation of per-
sonality, have aroused wonder and amusement the world over.
The Fat Boy has always furnished good sport to the Sam
Wellers.
All these characters, tall or short, fat or lean, are related to
the activity of a gland of internal secretion in the head, the
pituitary, which became a centre of interest in the late eighties.
Because of its situation, the opinion of the ancients was that it
was the source of the mucus of the nose, an opinion reinforced by
the greatest anatomist of the Dark Ages, Galen, and held up to
the seventeenth century. In other words, it was considered sim-
ply a gland of external secretion. Experimental removal of the
HOW THE GLANDS WERE DISCOVERED 41
pituitary was essayed by Horsley in 1886, the same man who
two years before had reproduced myxedema successfully in
monkeys. Others succeeded his attempt. But the conclusions
drawn were uncertain or contradictory, resulting from the
difficulties of the operative technique of getting at a gland placed
at the base of the brain. Not until 1908 was the problem solved
by Paulesco of Bucharest, who devised a way of reaching it by
trepanning the skull. He was thus able to prove beyond a doubt
that the pituitary gland was essential to life, and that without
it no animal could continue to live for any length of time. Soon
after, Harvey Cushing and his associates at Johns Hopkins Hos-
pital discovered that removal of part of the gland was followed
by a pronounced obesity and sluggishness. A basis for the under-
standing of obesity and growth was then established.
In the eighties, there came to the clinic of Pierre Marie in
Paris, a pupil of the great Charcot, various women complaining
of headache. They also told him about an enlargement of their
hands and feet, and an alarming change in the bones of the face.
He differentiated the affection from its imitators, and created its
present designation of "acromegaly" (enlargement of the extremi-
ties). Also he correlated their relationship to the giants who
have been mentioned. Acromegalics have been also likened to
the Neanderthal Man, who had probably, as the gorillas may
have, an excess of the pituitary in their systems. For four years
he studied the morbid phenomena in the tissues of these sufferers
at last consigned to their end. First one, and then another, and
then a third and a fourth exhibited a striking hypertrophy of
the pitu'tary body and a consequent widening of the portion of
the bas( of the skull which cradles the gland. He proceeded to
say so a the graduating thesis of his pupil, Souza Leite. The
inferem e was inevitable that the entire process was to be put
down to an overactivity of the pituitary. Ever since, too, the
growth of the skeleton has been accepted as controlled by that
gland.
About this time another set of old observations came to life
again, related to those of Docent Berthold on the auto-grafting of
the testes of a cock, with complete retention of its sexual char-
acters, which he said, must be due "to the productive action of
the testes, i. e., to its effect upon the blood, and thence to the
corresponding effect of such blood upon the entire organism."
Of course, stock raisers and poultry fanciers have noted the inter-
esting outcome of castration for about as long as their professions
42 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
have existed. And for ages the diminution of sexual activity as
a predecessor to the decadence of senility has been harped upon.
Rejuvenation, especially in connection with sexual activity, as
will as with tissue and spiritual elasticity, has been one of the
haunting phantoms of the imagination for as long as we have
.Is of articulate humanity. Together with El Dorado, the
Elixir of Youth has shared the honors with the Philosopher's
Stone. The idea of employing the chemical materials of the sex
is, the testes or the ovaries, to bring back youth, to restore
juvenility, had not, as far as we know, occurred to anyone who
at any rate put himself on record, by word or deed, until 1889.
The hero of the new departure was the hero of so many daring
adventures among speculative experiments, Brown-Sequard.
At this time the wanderer was an aged sage, seventy-two years
old, fit, as custom goes, only for retirement and resignation to
the fate of all flesh. The old passion of experimenting upon him-
self as well as upon the guinea-pigs, dogs, cats and monkeys, by
which he was always surrounded, was as alive and kicking as
ever. I suppose he had been thinking for years concerning some
method for the resumption of youth, for we find him exclaiming,
when the opportunity loomed of a great laboratory on Agassiz
Island, Long Island, on one of his recurrent flights to New York:
"Would that I were thirty!" And other passages in his personal
communications refer again and again to his consciousness of
growing old. The miracles that were being performed by inject-
ing thyroid and feeding thyroid in animals probably acted as
the spark to an inflammable mass of ideas long smouldering in
the subcellars of his mind. The effects were reported to the
Society of Biology in Paris, one memorable evening, June 1, 1889,
in two notes on the results of the hypodermic injection in man
of the testis juice of monkeys and dogs, and certain generaliza-
tions deduced therefrom. Such juices, he stated, had a definite
energy-mobilizing or, as he put it, dynamogenic action upon
the subject himself, stimulating amazingly his general health,
muscular power and mental activity.
These experiments, their nature, the manner in which they
conducted, the character and age of the experimenter, and
the results claimed, were exquisitely good stuff for ridicule. Car-
ets and reporters leaped upon the theme with the avidity of
rue-blue interviewer. Paris, where to be ridiculed is to be
killed in public with the most ignominious of deaths, reacted as
only the French temperament can react. The wits of the salons
HOW THE GLANDS WERE DISCOVERED 48
crackled, the bourgeoisie chortled, the proletariat roared. The
Elixir of Life had been discovered and it was excellent sport.
But Brown-Sequard remained unshaken. He had all the
roues of Paris running to him, and consequent charges of
quackery and charlatanism. How much of these unsavory epi-
thets really applied to him will not be determined until we have
a better acquaintance with his more intimate life. A biography
and collection of his letters is needed. But it is certain that the
general principles he arrived at, aided as much by the wings of
intuition as by the clues of incomplete and incompletely con-
trolled experiments, survive as the foundations of whatever we
know about the internal secretions, and all our present viewpoints.
He summed these up in 1891 as follows:
"All the tissues, in our view, are modifiers of the blood by
means of an internal secretion taken from them by the venous
blood. From this we are forced to the conclusion that, if sub-
cutaneous injections of the liquids drawn from these parts are
ineffectual, then we should inject some of the venous blood sup-
plying these parts. . . . We admit that each tissue, and, more
generally, each cell of the organism, secretes on its own account,
certain products or special ferments, which, through this medium
(the blood), influence all other cells of the body, a definite
solidarity being thus established among all the cells through a
mechanism other than the nervous system. . . . All the tissues
(glands and other organs) have thus a special internal secretion,
and so give to the blood something more than the waste products
of metabolism. The internal secretions, whether by direct favor-
able influence, or whether through the obstacles they oppose to
deleterious processes, seem to be of great utility in maintaining
the organism in its normal state."
The only part of this statement not conceded today is that
relating to the formation of internal secretions by tissues other
than those of which the cells are definitely glandular, that is
secretory: as can be determined under the microscope. Brown-
Sequard added to the concept of internal secretions, fathered by
Claude Bernard, the idea of a correlation, a mutual influencing
of them and of the different organs of the body through them.
The nervous system had hitherto been regarded as the sole means
of communication between cells, by its telegraphic arrangements
of nerve filaments reaching out everywhere, interweaving with
each other and the cells. The Brown-Sequard conception in-
ferred the existence of a postal system between cells, the blood
44 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
supplying the highway for travel and transmission of the post,
the post consisting of the chemical substances secreted by the
glands. To be sure, the doctrine was only an inference, though
well-founded, of which the direct experimental proof was not to
be obtained until the researches of Bayliss and Starling. Yet to
Brown-Sequard belongs the immortal credit, if not of the origina-
tor, at any rate of the resurrector of the idea of using gland
extracts to influence the body. The unwarranted hopes aroused
by his enthusiastic reports of rejuvenating miracles have long
since been dissipated. Moreover, they smeared the whole subject
with a disrepute which clings to certain narrow and unreasonable
minds to this day. But as every physiologist since has acknowl-
edged, he was and remains the great path-breaker in the conquest
of the internal secretions.
The Hormones
The problem of the internal secretions was now attacked from
another angle. A great Russian physiologist, Pawlow, called
attention to the fact that the introduction of a dilute mineral
acid, such as the hydrochloric acid, normally a constituent of
the stomach digestive fluid, into the upper part of the intestine,
provoked a secretion of the pancreas, which is so important for
intestinal digestion. He explained the phenomenon as a reflex,
a matter of the nerves going from the intestine to the pancreas.
His pupil, Popielski, threw doubt upon so easy an explanation,
by proving that the same reaction could be elicited even after all
the nerve connections between the gut and the spinal cord were
severed. If the relation was a reflex, it would have to be classed
now as one of those local nerve circuits, which are pretty common
among the viscera, a local call and reply as it were, without
mediation of the great long distance trunk lines in the spinal
cord and the medulla oblongata.
The work of Bayliss and Starling, two English physiologists,
was commenced then to test the hypothesis. They soon found
that the experiment could be so devised as to exclude any influ-
ence whatever on the part of the nervous tissues, and yet result
positively. Thus, if a loop of intestine was so prepared as to be
attached to the rest of the body only by means of its blood ves-
sels, all the nerves being cut, putting some acid into it was still
followed by a flow of pancreatic juice, no less marked than when
none of the parts about the piece of gut had been disturbed. It
HOW THE GLANDS WERE DISCOVERED 45
was evident that the stimulus to the pancreas was carried by
way of the blood stream. That the stimulating substance was
not the acid itself, was shown by the failure of the reaction to
occur when the acid was injected directly into the blood stream.
Since there was this difference in the effects between acid in the
intestine and acid in the blood, it was manifest that the active
substance must be some material elaborated in the intestinal
mucous membrane under the influence of the acid. So they
scraped some of the lining of the bowel, rubbed it up with acid,
and injected the filtered mixture into the blood. They were re-
warded by a flow of pancreatic juice greater in amount than any
obtained in their other experiments. From the filtered mixture
they isolated in an impure form, a solid substance which, when
introduced into the circulation, has a similar action. To this, of
which the exact chemical make-up is as yet an unknown, they
gave the name secretin.
Secretin and its properties they used to generalize as a per-
fectly direct and amply demonstrable example of an internal
secretion. Metaphors are no less valuable in physiology than in
poetry. They declared that the internal secretions appeared to
them to be chemical messengers, telegraph boys sent from one
organ to another through the public highways, the blood (really
more like a moving platform). So they christened them all
hormones, deriving the word from the Greek verb meaning to
rouse or set in motion. As a science is a well-made language, a
new word is an event. It sums up details, economizes brain-
work and so is cherished by the intellect. The study of the
internal secretions has advanced by leaps and bounds since it
became convenient to speak of them as hormones. Withal, the
brilliant work of Bayliss and Starling stands as the third great
foundation stone, the first Claude Bernard's and the second
Brown-Sequard's, in the architecture of the modern concepts of
the internal secretions.
CHAPTER II
THE GLANDS: THYROID AND PITUITARY
The glands of internal secretion, the history of which, as tools
of thought, I reviewed in the previous chapter, have each an
interesting evolutionary story. Without some acquaintance with
that story, the rough outline of their physical architecture, and
the particular work they are called upon to perform in the body,
no adequate understanding of their influence upon types of
human nature and personality is possible.
The Thyroid Gland
This gland consists of two maroon colored masses astride the
neck, above the windpipe, close to the larynx. These are bridged
by a narrow isthmus of the same tissue. They remind one of
the flaps of a purse opened up. The gland has always attracted
much attention because its enlargement constitutes the prominent
deformity known as goitre.
To begin with, the thyroid was once a sex gland, pure and
simple. In the lowest vertebrates and in the homologous tissues
of the higher invertebrates, the fractions of the thyroid are inti-
mately connected with the ducts of the sexual organs. They
are indeed accessory sexual organs, uterine glands, satellites of
the sex process. From Petromyzon upward that relationship is
lost, the thyroid migrates more and more to the head region, to
become the great link between sex and brain. How alive that
function still is, is grossly shown by the swelling of the gland
with sexual excitement, menstruation and pregnancy.
Relative to the body weight it is largest in the mammalia,
and smallest in the fishes. It therefore grows larger as the
f>rate ascends in the scale. It has, in fact, developed in
oportion to and side by side with the fundamental,
differentiating vertebrate characteristics. Of these, the posses-
sion of ;i dry hairy skin instead of a moist or mucus bearing,
chitinous skin, the ownership of an internal bony skeleton and
46
THE GLANDS: THYROID AND PITUITARY 47
a large skull, and a complicated development of brain, are the
diagnostic signs. Thyroid internal secretion has a very definite
controlling relation to all of them: to skin, its hairiness, mois- ~
ture and amount of mucus, to the growth and size of the bones,
especially the bones of the extremities and the skull, and to
intelligence and the complexity of the convolutions of the brain.^.
Injury to the thyroid, especially in growing animals, is followed
by profound retrogression or arrest of development in skin,-,,
skeleton and brain.
In the fishes and the cyclostomes the thyroid is represented
only by some small scrubby patches, little larger than the heads
of pins, scattered along the aorta, the great blood vessels from
the heart, and out a little way along each gill. It becomes larger
and more compact among the amphibians and reptiles, but still
remains quite small. Large and prominent among the birds and
mammalia, it is largest and most prominent among the primates
and man. It is hence permissible to think of the thyroid as a
dictator of evolution, to crown it as the vertebrate gland par
excellence, and to call the typical vertebrate brand marks sec-
ondary thyroid characteristics in precisely the sense of Darwin
classing the horns of cattle as secondary sexual characteristics.
In such enthusiasm for the thyroid as a determinant of evolu-
tion, its pillar of cloud by day and column of fire by night, one
should not forget the other glands of internal secretion. In them
all, we may suppose, Life, tired of inventing merely prehensile,
destructive and reproductive organs, hit upon the happy thought
of contrivances which are in essence chemical factories to speed
up the rate of variation and so of a higher evolution.
Creator of the Land Animal
According to this conception the thyroid played a fundamental
part in the change of sea creatures into land animals. Experi-
mentally, thyroid has been used to transform one into the other.
Thus the occasional change of a Mexican axolotl, a purely aquatic
newt, breathing through gills, into the amblystoma, a terrestrial
salamander, with spotted skin, breathing by means of lungs, has
long been known. Feeding the axolotl on thyroid gland pro-
duces the metamorphosis very quickly, even if the axolotl is kept
in water. In the reptile house at the London Zoological Gardens
full-grown examples of the common black axolotl and the pretty
white variety are exhibited. Some are nearly three inches long.
48 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
Alongside are shown several examples of the amblystoma stage,
produced in one of the laboratories of Oxford University and at
the gardens by thyroid feeding. A variation of the thyroid in
the direction of increased secretion was probably responsible for
the first land animals.
Thyroxin, Secretion of the Thyroid
Under the microscope, as in the test tube, the thyroid shows
remarkable and unique features. Closed spherules lined by a
single layer of cells enclosing a gelatinous material known as
colloid, which stains deeply with acid dyes, comprise the units of
its architecture. Essentially, it may be pictured as a series of
jelly bubbles secreted by outlying cells.
A relatively high percentage of iodine is the unique distinctive
fact in its chemistry. Discovered by Baumann in 1895, the
presence of the element has focused the intelligence of chemists
upon the gland, with the consequent demonstration of arsenic
also in it. It was soon manifest that the secretion of the gland
was dependent upon the iodine content for its activity. Active
extracts of the thyroid like thyreoglobulin and iodothyrin were
proven to contain iodine, and to become inactive when the iodine
was removed. Efforts to isolate the iodine containing active
principle in pure form were fruitless until the work of Kendall
at the Mayo Foundation. He obtained it as a white, finely
crystalline, odorless and tasteless substance, heat stable, and
analyzable. The free form separates as a sheaf of fine needles.
Kendall at first called it the a-iodine compound, then named it
thyroxin.
There are other internal secretions of the thyroid, with a func-
tion ef their own, that have no iodine. But they are secondary,
and obscure. Thyroxin is accepted today as the purified internal
secretion of the thyroid because all the effects of the whole gland
may be elicited with it. Thyroxin produces results with doses
amazingly minute compared with the quantity of whole gland
necessary. Moreover, a dose of thyroxin appears to last an
organism in need of it over a period of time; the other has to be
administered continuously.
Studies with thyroxin carried on in recent years have rounded
out the whole concept of the business of the thyroid in the body
my. One may sum it up by saying that the thyroid secre-
tion is the great controller of the speed of living. The more thy-
THE GLANDS: THYROID AND PITUITARY 49
roid one has, the faster one lives; the less one has, the more slowly •
one lives.
That is not to imply any direct proportion between the amount
of thyroid secretion in an individual, and the length of life to
which he is destined. The speed of living, in the chemical sense
(which is the fundamental s^nse), and the rate at which the
chemical reactions go on that constitute the process of life, are **
dependent upon the thyroid. When the reactions go faster, more
oxygen and food material are burned up or oxidized, more energy
is liberated, the metabolic wheel rotates more quickly, the indi-
vidual senses, feels, thinks and acts more quickly.
Likening one energy machine to another, the thyroid may be
compared to the accelerator of an automobile. That is a rough
and superficial comparison because an accelerator lets in more
of the fuel to be burned up, while the thyroid makes the fuel
more combustible. It thus resembles more the primer, for a rich
mixture of gasoline and air burns at a greater velocity than a
poor one. But the action of thyroid could really be simulated
only by some substance that could be introduced into the best
possible of gasoline mixtures, to increase its combustibility by a
hundred per cent or more. For that is what thyroid will do to
our food. Nor has it only this destructive or combustion side.
Withal there is at the same time a constructive action, for the
process frees energy to be used for heat, motion or other need.
The thyroid, therefore, in addition to its role as an accelerator, _
acts, too, as the efficient lubricator for energy transformations."*
So we see it as accelerator, lubricator and transformer of ouil.
energies.
The Gland of Energy Production
The isolation of thyroxin has made possible the determination
of the influence of the thyroid hormone upon the evolution of
energy in any higher animal organism. There is, for every indi-
vidual, a constant, known as the metabolic rate, or the combus-
tion rate, a reading of the rate at which his cells are consuming
material for heat. The metabolic rate is thus a gauge of the
energy pressure within the organism. It may be calculated by
measuring the amount of carbon dioxide gas exhaled during a
unit of time, and the number of calories of heat radiated by the
skin simultaneously. A simplified device has lately rendered it
practicable to make actual determinations by a few five-minute
50 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
readings of the rate of oxygen absorption by the lungs. Plummer,
also connected with the Mayo Foundation, has shown that what
would amount to less than a grain of the thyroxin would more
than double the amount of energy produced in a unit of time.
m To be exact, one milligram of thyroxin increases the metabolic
rate two per cent. That illustrates some of the power of the
internal secretion of the thyroid and its importance to normal
' life.
The Mobilization of Energy
But not only is the height of pressure of energy in the cells
controlled by the thyroid. The mobility of that energy is also
controlled. Without it, rapid and large fluctuations of energy
output, and elasticity and flexibility of energy mobilization for
any sudden mental or muscular act, let alone an emergency, be-
come impossible. A woman suffering with myxedema, the con-
dition described by the English physician Gull as a cretinoid
state supervening in the adult life of woman, has an insufficient
""amount of thyroxin in her blood and tissues. She is clumsy
and awkward and will stumble when endeavoring to walk up-
stairs. Any effort is almost paralyzed because the range of
fluctuation of energy, the ability to mobilize energy, in turn de-
pendent upon an ability to increase the metabolic rate, is limited.
In slang phrase, she cannot step on it. Her existence is set to go
at a rate in the neighborhood of forty per cent below the normal.
By the administration of thyroxin, her metabolic rate can be
raised to any desired figure, the spark can be adjusted, so to
speak, to any point we like, and it can be so maintained for
years.
In the normal animal, to be sure, the internal secretion of
the thyroid is not absolutely essential to life. So it contrasts
with the hormone of the minute parathyroids placed so closely to
it, a minimum dose of which is absolutely a prerequisite for con-
tinued life. The fundamental chemical reactions within the cells
occur in the complete absense of thyroxin. But they go on in
a relatively fixed, rigid and unvarying way, confined within the
narrow limits of a constant figure. Under such conditions, the
level of energy production is bound to be low, and to remain low,
and the modus of its mobilization slow and unwieldy. With
thyroid is introduced the trick of catalysis, or the speeding up of
the vital chemical reactions, through the agency of an intermedin
THE GLANDS: THYROID AND PITUITARY 51
ate which accelerates the process. It is par excellence the great
catalyst of energy in the body. (A catalyst is an intermediary
like the trace of water, which will bring about an explosion be-
tween dry oxygen and hydrogen that without it have stayed
inert with the strongest currents of electricity.) Thus it supplies
a mechanism not only for quantity output of that subtle reality
we label energy, but also an apparatus for varying the available
amount of it, and for permitting the maximum range in ease and
rapidity of its utilization. The thyroid is still another device of
life for procuring more and more variation and differentiation, its
goal, as far as we can peer through the opalescent screen upon
which its manifestations quiver.
From another point of view, the thyroid may be looked upon
as the organ evolved for maintaining the same amount of iodine
in the blood as there is in sea water. Sea water was our original
habitat, since, like Venus, we have all come up out of the sea.
The more intimate study of the composition of the blood has
revealed the most astonishing parallelism between it and the
compounds of sea water. The blood is sea water, to which has
been added hemoglobin as a pigment for carrying oxygen to
the cells not in direct contact with the atmosphere, nutrients to
take the place of the prey our marine ancestors gobbled up
frankly and directly, and white cells to act as the first line of
defense. To keep the concentration of iodine in the blood a con-
stant, the thyroid evolved, since there is no iodine in most foods
and very little in those which do contain it.
That a minimum amount of iodine in the food is necessary to
health is shown by the existence of goitre regions. Around some
of the Great Lakes in the United States, for instance, the water
does not contain enough iodine. As a result, numerous cases of
goitre occur. Iodine in the form of sodium iodide in small doses
will act as a prophylactic. The amount of iodine in the blood is
about one or two parts to ten millions, and that of the liver is
about three or four parts to ten millions. Since the liver is the
most complex and active chemical factory in the body, its
appropriation of a greater amount of iodine for itself is under-
standable.
When thyroxin is administered in a single dose, there is a dis-
tinct lag in the absorption of it by the tissues. A single dose does
not generate its maximum effect until the tenth day. This effect
continues for about ten days. Then there is a gradual decrease
in the intensity of reaction for another ten days. So that the
52 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
length of time a single administration of thyroxin functions with-
in the body is about three weeks. Again we have occasion to
notice a protective device of the cells. Since the presence of
thyroxin in the tissues determines the rate at which they burn
themselves up, it is obvious that if there were no mechanism
for retarding its action, and at need varying it, they really would
set fire to themselves. That is to say, if the tissues held a
maximum of the thyroid internal secretion, and had to take up
more and more as it was fed out to them by the thyroid through
the blood, the pressure of energy production would attain the
state of a boiler without a safety valve. Even if self-destruction
were avoided by the ingestion of the largest quantities of energy-
bearing foods, rest for the cells would be difficult, if not impos-
sible.
The thyroxin in the tissues diminishes after a period of great
exertion, the thyroxin probably being carried back to the thyroid
gland and kept there as reserve until further demand. So it has
been discovered that during the winter months, the thyroid glands
of beef, sheep and hogs all contain much less iodine than during
the summer months. During the winter months, manifestly, more
energy is required to maintain body temperature, hence the gland
surrenders more of its secretion to the tissues and so keeps less
• of it itself. There must be, too, a certain wearing out of the
potency of the iodine with time. Even dead inorganic catalysts,
made of simple elements, wear out after having been used time
and time again.
Though the thyroid is the supreme energizer, life is incom-
patible with a certain excess of it. Death can be produced by
successive daily injections of its internal secretion. But it has,
besides the energizing effect, certain formative and nervous influ-
ences equally marvelous. As illustrations, there are the cases of
thyroid deprivation in human beings, cretinism and myxedema,
as well as those in which it is believed there occurs an excess of
the thyroid secretion in the blood and tissues, the condition of
/it/pcrthyroidism.
Cretinism as Thyroid Deficiency
Not that there is any arresting contrast of startling difference
between the phenomena presented by different species. The
younger the animal, the grosser the morbid symptoms witnessed.
The animal fails to grow. The bones and cartilage, except of
THE GLANDS: THYROID AND PITUITARY 53
! the skull, fail to develop. The abdomen projects and becomes
j, large and flabby. The sex organs atrophy. There is sterility.
Pregnant rabbits abort, hens produce very small eggs or none
at all. These are the results of removing the thyroid in animals.
Apathetic, indifferent, dirty, awkward, apparently idiotic,
describe the human cretins. Their skin is rough and coarse,
peeling in sheets. In some it is considerably knarled and creased
as in the aged, and in others swollen, hard and resistant. The
hair becomes shaggy and rough, losing all luster, and tends to
grow irregularly and fall out. The temperature becomes sub-
normal and an anemia supervenes. There is a distinct reduction
in the resistance to infections and intoxications.
Cretinism in the human is a condition in which the burning
taper we call Life flickers and smoulders and smokes. Thirty
years ago it was an example of the most hopeless idiocy. Whole
populations were afflicted with it. But neither man of science,
nor bigot-fanatic, assured by the Divine Confidence of its mean-
ing as a visitation, believed it could be modified an iota. Today,
that inept word "cure" may be applied to our power of attack
upon it, provided it is permitted to attack early enough. Modifi-
cation, in the direction of the most surprising betterment, is the
miracle that has been wrought.
The history of a cretin runs somewhat as follows: A baby is
born, which in all appearances seems normal. Perhaps the nose
is a trifle squatter than even the average new-born's flat nose.
There may also be abnormal sleepiness, greater even than that
of the normal baby in the first month or two in that there is
no spontaneous awakening from the coma for food. But in most
cases this is put down to normal variability, or maybe to that
limbo of all a baby's troubles: weakness. After some months, it
is noticed that the infant is failing to grow at the normal rate,
either physically or mentally. Examination at this time reveals
a curious thickening of the dental ridges. Then the tongue takes
the centre of the scene, by becoming unusually thick and promi-
nent, to the point of projecting beyond the mouth at all times,
and interfering with breathing, when the infant is in a recumbent
position.
More and more of the characteristics of the affection turn up.
The queer, repulsive, pitiful face of the cretins, which makes them
all seem brothers or twins, shapes itself. A yellowish, white or
waxy pallor; rough, dry, scaly, bloated skin; swollen, often
wrinkled brow; watery eyes, often almost concealed by the thick-
64 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
ened eyelids; the depressed pug nose with its wide, thick nostrils;
large, erect ears; the wobbly, drooling tongue, sticking out at
one, yet not in derision; the hair thin, and like tow in texture
rather than human; eyebrows and eyelashes are scant, and often
absent; the nails short, thin and brittle; the teeth, very late in
coming, may be represented by a few sharp points, irregular,
decaying quickly, sometimes not succeeded at all by those of the
second dentition.
Whatever growth occurs is irregular and disproportionate. The
trunk, though small compared with the head, appears massive
against the background of the diminutive extremities. The back
is somewhat humped, arching at the waist-line, while the abdo-
men protrudes like a balloon, with a hernia, often, at the navel.
The extremities are short, bowed, cold, and livid, covered with
rolls of the infiltrated skin, rolls which cannot be smoothed out.
Hands and feet are broad, pudgy, and floppy, the fingers stiff,
square and spade-like, the toes spread apart, like a duck's, by
the solid skin. Above the collar bones there are frequently great
pads of fat which sometimes encircle the narrow bull neck.
* The mental state varies with the degree of deprivation of the
internal secretion of the thyroid. In the worst cases it is repul-
sively vegetable. Even the intelligence common to the higher
animals is wanting. The cretins of the "human plant" kind, as
they have been nicknamed, will not recognize mother or father
or any person about them, or even a person from an object, and
manifest no interest in anything or anybody, not even toys.
Hunger and thirst they manifest by grunts and inarticulate
sounds, or by screaming. They neither smile, cough, nor laugh,
but sit like sphinxes, breathing, but not reacting.
There are, of course, all grades and varieties. There are those
who recognize parents and familiar faces, and exhibit some evi-
dence of affection for them, acquire a limited vocabulary, and
then cease, no progress possible even with the alphabet. They
attain the size and age of two or three years and there stop alto-
gether, as if a permanent brake were applied to the wheels of
their growth. Some higher types may even come to speak con-
nected sentences, and exhibit a certain mild spontaneity, though
stupid nnd slow and abnormally deliberate, resembling the ac-
quired form of thyroid deprivation or insufficiency, for which
Ord invented the name myxedema.
I have filled in with some detail this thumbnail sketch of thy-
roid deprivation as it occurs in infancy to illustrate how wide a
THE GLANDS: THYROID AND PITUITARY 55
sweep the gland's lariat embraces. Skin, hair, bones, muscle and
: fat, brain and intelligence, growth and development, are modified
precisely as the size and shape of certain crystals are modified
by the presence or absence of ingredients in an apparently homo-
geneous solution. A fertilized ovum, in which the predecessor
of the thyroid gland is present, that is to say, in which there is
, the seed and soil for its sprouting, looks the same as one without
that formative material. Yet, when the time comes for the
internal secretion of the thyroid to put in its oar in the metabolic
game, its presence or absence makes all the difference in the world
to the individual.
In the middle of the nineteenth century, when the concentra-
: tion of phosphorus in the brain was established as significant,
the cry for the emphasis of that fact was — without phosphorus
no thought is possible. We can much more relevantly declare
that without thyroid, no thought, no growth, no distinctive
humanity or even animality is possible. For the epigram about
phosphorus was bombast, since it can be declaimed with equal
truth that without oxygen, without carbon, without nitrogen,
without any of the food elements that go to make up the chemical
composition of brain matter, no thought is possible. Indeed, if
r one were set upon the indictment of a single chemical element as
the begetter of consciousness, the prisoner at the bar would have
j to be copper. There is more copper in the brain by a considerable
\ degree than in any other organ of the body. Which perhaps
] will be exceedingly regretted by the patrons of the aristocracy of
I the soul who would have it as an emanation of a deposit in the
\ brain of silver at least, if not gold. They are like the old lady
who would never permit herself to be cured of her ailments
except by gold plated pills. Copper, however, is not necessary
to intelligence. Without thyroid there can be no complexity of
thought, no learning, no education, no habit-formation, no re-
sponsive energy for situations, as well as no physical unfolding
of faculty and function, and no reproduction of kind, with no
sign of adolescence at the expected age, and no exhibition of sex
tendencies thereafter.
Effects of Feeding Thyroid
How subtly the internal secretion affects every phase and
aspect of child as well as adult, by doing something to the speed
of activities in their cells, is told straightway by the effects of
56 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
it when eaten or introduced into the skin or blood of various
people. A cretin, idiotic, dwarfish, deformed, hopeless, an inces-
santly prodding burden of sorrow to the mother, who looks upon
the masterpiece she had labored to bring forth, and beholds a
terrible gargoyle, becomes transformed when fed thyroid.
In a few days the cretin will get warmer, and require much
less wrapping and bed-clothing. With the improvement in cir-
culation, the color becomes better and the extremities lose their
coldness. In a week or so, irritability and resentment at disturb-
ance appear. He will begin to recognize and know his parents,
smile and play. There is a gradual return to the normal of the
facial appearance, and a resumption of growth. All kinds of
marvelous growth effects occur. Twenty teeth may be cut in
six months. Coarse, rough dry, shaggy hair becomes fine, silken,
long and curly. The skin becomes soft, moist and roseate.
Inches in height may be added every month. Bright, active, even
talkative, are the descriptive terms an observer would apply
after a few months. A complete remaking of body and soul is
apparently affected.
Yet, should the administration of the thyroid cease, an almost
immediate reversion to the original vegetative condition is in-
evitable. After a few days, reactiveness slows down, the child
will speak only when spoken to, will sit quietly in a chair all day
and act semi-anesthetized. Gradually hair and skin return tc
the previous cold-blooded animal state, and the whole pic
of the cretin is in full bloom. Supplying the internal secre
of the gland promptly repeats the transformation.
One wonders what is to be the ultimate fate of these refor
cretins. Since the tale of the opening of life to them, once
sidered hopeless idiots, is scarce a generation old, we hav<
data, as yet, as to the character of their children or gr
children, their adventures and vicissitudes, in short, their
history. Those of whom we have any record are normal
healthy school children or workers, alive to the interests of cl
hood or their occupation and social circles. No one outside 1
family knows that they are cretins, and the most acute obse
would be hard put to it to suspect. What a theme for the re
tions upon appearances the eminent Victorians loved!
There are possibilities the imagination may envisage,
may suppose such a cretin, with all his other ductless gl
intact, grown successfully to manhood under careful me<
guidance. No one but himself is aware of his affliction, ou'
THE GLANDS: THYROID AND PITUITARY 57
of his medical advisers. Luck aids him to rise in the world, or
perhaps he has been born with a spoon of the precious metals in
his mouth. Adolescence, love and marriage dance their sequence.
Our hero of course keeps his dread secret to himself. Whether
such an omission of confidence would entitle his wife to a divorce
is something courts will be called upon to decide sooner or later.
But, without anticipating, the honeymoon involves a trip to the
South Seas. A storm and a wreck throws them alone on an
island, tropical, easy to live on, and rescue in the course of a
few months certain. The man, to his horror, discovers that he
has saved of his medicaments only a pill box containing half a
dozen of thyroid tablets, his requirement being one a day. He
sees them go day by day. Finally they are all gone. He feels
his faculties slipping hour by hour. Shall he tell her? Indecision
grips him, and he delays until the day when his consciousness
sinks to the point where his mind no longer grasps his problem.
The wife must endure the spectacle of the enchantment of her
husband, and his change from gallant lover to dull animal ogre.
A new version of Beauty and the Beast!
Cretinism as one manifestation of a soul without thyroid or
without enough thyroid is not all. The first great successes with
thyroid were achieved in adults, particularly adult women, ex-
hibiting a peculiar obesity, coldness, loss of hair and teeth and a
remarkable lassitude and torpor that might be summed up as a
chronic drowsiness, like a saturation of the blood with some
narcotic drug. Or there may be a melancholia, or a lack of ability
to seize the finer points of a mental process, or an argument
treated in the abstract. Children are said to be lazy, slow or
dull. They experience an irritating difficulty in understanding
questions and expressing their wants and desires, and so are de-
clared to be vicious, or stupid.
All these are grades of the degeneration which Ord, the English-
man, named myxedema. At its worst it is a sort of bloating and
drying of the body and the mind. Then there is infantilism,
which is helped by the giving of thyroid extract. It differs from
the ordinary cretinism in that, while one is reminded of the
latter by the physical stunting and the other stigmata, there is a
certain amount of intelligence which enables the individual to
hold his own while he is a child. He becomes a grown-up baby:
at twenty prefers the company of children of ten, and passes
under the evil influence of designing so-called normal persons.
So dominated he will lie, steal, start fires, commit almost any
58 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
crime, with no inherent flair for criminality, but because of a
lack of independent judgment and inability to resist suggestion,
and a desire to please friends. He is simply an overgrown child
who still loves to play with toys, laughs and cries, becomes angry
or afraid, unreasonably and ridiculously, and yells for mamma
when thwarted or scared.
So much for what happens when there is not sufficient of the
thyroid secretion in the blood and tissues. Now to consider the
effects of an excess of it, the condition called hyperthyroidism,
as the insufficiency of it is labelled subthyroidism. Too much
thyroxin can be introduced into the system of a normal indi-
vidual, or even a cretin by the simple administration of too
large doses or over too long a time. Also a train of symptoms
similar to those evoked by an oversecretion of the thyroid may
be mobilized by the taking of too much iodine. Great sorrow,
great joy, a sudden severe jolt to the nervous equilibrium, sexual
excitement, an overwhelming anger or grief may leave in their
wake a permanent hyperthyroidism. The symptoms are the
reverse of cretinism and myxedema. There is an over-excitability
of the nerves in place of sluggishness, and an over-reactivity of
the whole organism to its environment. The heart's action is
too fast, and under the slightest stimulus gets faster to the point
of obtruding itself into the conscious mind as a palpitation. In-
stead of the lowered temperature and coldness of the cretin, there
is a heightened temperature, one or two degrees above the normal,
and a feeling of heat. The individual has a high warm color,
does not sleep well, becomes or remains thin no matter how much
he or she eats, is abnormally susceptible sexually, may suffer from
a definite insomnia, is emotional, and perspires freely. Alert,
neurotic or high-strung, magnetic, and imaginative are some of
the descriptive adjectives applicable. The eyes are bright and
prominent, large and beautiful, when they have not reached the
stage entitled "pop-eyed." Or they may even become so pro-
tuberant and bulging as to develop the expression of one staring
aghast at some ineffable horror. The latter is the feature of only
the severest types, when there is an associated goitre, the com-
bination designated as exopthalmic goitre.
There are, too, individuals in whom hyperthyroidism and
hypothyroidism are mixed, or rather alternate. At one time they
nt the phenomena of the one, at another of the other. They
are the people who complain of the cyclic quality of their moods
and purposes. Their mood will be a heaven of exaltation and
THE GLANDS: THYROID AND PITUITARY 59
exhilaration, and then descend into a slough of despond from
which they feel themselves inextricable. They are always talk-
ing about the ups and downs of their mental states. Headache
and languor and fatigability, dry skin and lack of appetite for
food or exertion on one day or for one week, give way on the next
day, or for the next week, to an energetic gayety, and sweaty,
flushed skin, a prominent appetite for food and every sort of
activity. Driven to be forever on the go, for one period, in the
next they feel like lying down most of the day, with no inclina-
tion for any life whatever. The stage of depression may go as
far as a melancholia, the stage of stimulation as far as mania.
They may simulate manic-depressive or cyclic insanity. Some-
thing restrains them, and holds them bound as in a vise in the
one cycle. And then they are driven on beyond themselves by
some invisible whip in the next.
Thyroid as Differentiator
Besides the action of the thyroid as energizer, lubricator, and
growth catalyzer, it has a remarkable power as a differentiator
of tissues. It determines the embryonic etchings of the different
organs which in their totality comprise the unique individual.
Every multicellular animal must first have existed as a single
cell, the impregnated ovum. With the body and personality of
the ovum, the creature is one and continuous, literally something
the single cell has made of itself by sub-dividing and differenti-
ating. In the process, the cell mass often goes through stages
which stand out as individualities in themselves, that appear
on the surface absolutely unrelated. So the caterpillar and the
butterfly, to the naive child, seem as far apart as worm and
bird. In the case of the frog, the tadpole as a first sketch seems
completely an impossible and wild absurdity. Yet we know
that there is an orderly progression of events, a propagation of
cells, a forward going arrangement of chemical reactions, that
results in expansion and intricate complication of the organism.
Just what the forces at work in this most mysterious of all natural
processes are, has been an intellectual mystery that the best
minds of the race have attempted to get rid of with words like
pangenesis (Darwin). Words of Black (Mediterranean or
Greek and Latin) origin, as Allen Upward has named them,
always cover a multitude of ignorances. The glands of internal
secretion, here, as in so many other dark places, provide the open
60 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
sesame to certain long closed doors of biology. They offer them-
selves to us as the first definitely tangible agents which are
known to keep the process of growth going, and undoubtedly
initiate the marvelous unfolding of tissues and functions, organs
and faculties summed up as development or differentiation.
Thus by the direct feeding of thyroid at particular points in
the differentiating history most curious effects have been elicited.
If the gland is made part of the nutriment, the bathing environ-
ment, of the tadpole, a hastening of its metamorphosis is attained.
The tadpole lives not out its day as a tadpole, but precociously
turns into a frog. But such a frog! It is a miniature frog, a
dwarf frog, a frog seen by looking through the wrong end of the
telescope, a frog not magnified, but micrified. Frogs have been
so created the size of flies. There has occurred a splitting of the
two reactions which ordinarily go hand in hand: the reaction of
growth which is just brute increase of total mass or weight and
volume, and the reaction of differentiation which is the finer
process. The picture is a frog, but a frog the size of a tadpole,
a frog which has missed its childhood, adolescence and youth,
skipping over these transition stages into the adult age, as a
pigmy.
It is all as if a baby were suddenly to grow a beard and
moustache, evolve and shed teeth, and acquire the manner of an
earnest citizen, and yet retain the height and weight of a baby.
That the spectacle of such a superbaby is not quite the most fan-
tastic of all improbabilities is shown by the condition of progeria,
first recorded by the Briton, Hastings Guilford. A queer spec-
tacle in which a child incontinently grows old without having
lived — in the course of a few weeks or months. You look upon
him and see senility on a small scale, but with all its peculiari-
ties: wrinkled skin, apathy, gray hair and all the rest of it.
All we can say about it is that it is probably due to a paralysis
of all the glands of internal secretion, a removal of their influence
upon the cells. Contrariwise to the feeding of thyroid, removal
of the thyroid of tadpoles will prevent their development into
frogs. If iodine is then fed to them, say mixed with flour, normal
metamorphosis will occur. If Body is the tool chest which we
carry about with us, as Samuel Butler said, then to the thyroid
belongs the name of tool-maker.
Another function of thyroid that must be taken into considera-
tion is what has been spoken of as its antitoxic function — in
THE GLANDS: THYROID AND PITUITARY 61
plainer English, its power to prevent poisoning, or to increase
I- resistance against poisons, including the bacteria and other liv-
ing agents which cause the infectious diseases. Each molecule of
I food, ingested for assimilation into our substance, accumulates a
i history of wanderings and pilgrimages, attachments and trans-
; formations beside which the gross trampings of a Marco Polo
i become the rambling steps of a seven-league booted giant. In
the course of its peregrinations, it becomes a potential poison,
potential because it is never allowed to grow in concentration to
the danger point. The thyroid plays its role of protector like all
I the internal secretory machines. In an animal deprived of a
i thyroid the feeding of meat shortens life — a single sample of how
it works to guard against intoxication from within. The feeding
of thyroid will also raise the ability of the cells to stand poisons
introduced from without — intoxications of all sorts. Alcohol and
morphine will affect in much smaller doses the subthyroid person
than the normal or the hyperthyroid. As regards the infections,
which directly or indirectly kill most of us, the injection of
thyroid will increase the content in the blood of the protective
antibodies which preserve us, temporarily at any rate, against
malignant invaders. The opsonins, for example, those substances
which butter the bacteria so that the appetite of the white cells
for them is properly roused, are mobilized by thyroid feeding or
injection. Other substances in the blood which destroy and dis-
solve bacteria are also increased. The thyroid probably per-
forms these functions by sending its secretion to the cells directly
responsible for the immunity reactions, and stimulating them to
activity.
A sketch of the thyroid like the foregoing shows it as the won-
drous controller of vitality and growth, and indefatigable pro-
tector against intoxicants and injuries. When it is sufficiently
active, life is worth while; when it is defective, life is a difficult
threatening blackness. That would make it out as the gland of
glands. It is tremendously important, without a doubt, in normal
everyday life. But no more so than the other members of the
cast. The position of star it may claim, but in vain. The other
glands of internal secretion to be sketched will each, when the
marvels of its business in the cell-corporation are considered,
present itself as candidate for the honors of the president. Jus-
tice should give fair credit to all the organs which fabricate the
reagents of individuality, and the regulators of personality.
62 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
The Pituitary
In the human skull, the pituitary is a lump of tissue about
the size of a pea lying at the base of the brain, a short distance
^behind the root of the nose. It is of a grayish-yellow color,
unpretentious and insignificant enough in appearance, and so
long neglected by the scientists who boast their immunity to the
glamor of the spectacular. Guesses at its nature date back to
Aristotle.
Like most of its colleagues among the glands of internal secre-
tion, it is really two glands in one, two glands with but a single
name. At least it consists of two different parts, distinct in their
origin, history, function and secretions, but juxtaposed and fused
into what is apparently a homogeneous entity. They are conven-
iently spoken of as the anterior gland and the posterior gland.
In the embryo, the anterior gland is derived by a proliferation
of cells from the mouth area. The posterior gland represents an
outgrowth of the oldest part of the nervous system. When it is
traced back along the tree of the vertebrate species, it is found
to be present in all of them. An ancient invention, its precursor
has been identified in worms and molluscs and even among the
starfish. "The pituitary is practically the same, from myxine to
man." A trusted veteran, therefore, among the internal secre-
tory organs, its importance can be surmised.
To understand the story of the pituitary, variously acquired
bits of information concerning it have been assembled and fitted
together like the fragments of a picture puzzle, as Cushing has
so well put it. Here and there pieces stick out, obviously out of
place. The relations of some of them to one another or to the
whole design are not at all clear. Parts appear to have been
irrevocably lost, or not yet to have turned up. Chance bystanders
will select odd figures and articulate them into a new harmony.
Yet out of the jumble of fragments, a fairly respectable insight
has been gained in less than a half century.
The pituitary is cradled in a niche at the base of the skull
which, because of its form, is known as the Sella Turcica or
Turkish saddle. So situated, an operative approach to it is
overwhelmingly difficult. On the other hand, X-ray studies are
favored. "Nature's darling treasure" it might be called, since
Hi. M has been provided a skull within the skull to shelter it.
Under the most highly magnifying lenses of the microscope,
three kinds of cells have been distinguished. The anterior gland
THE GLANDS: THYROID AND PITUITARY 63
is a collection of solid columns of cells, surrounded by blood
spaces into which their secretion is undoubtedly directly poured.
A gelatinous material, presumed to be the internal secretion of
the gland, has, in fact, been observed emerging from the cells
into the blood spaces. The posterior lobe, or gland, consists of
secreting cells producing a glassy substance which finds its way-""
into the spinal fluid that bathes the nervous system. The spinal ^
fluid itself is a secretion of another gland at the base of the brain,
the choroid. Nerves and internal secretion are associated here
with a closeness symbolic of their general relations.
From each portion of the gland (to stick to the accepted nom-
enclature of speaking of the two glands as one) an active sub-
stance has been isolated. Robertson, an American chemist,
separated from the anterior lobe a substance soluble in the fat
solvents, like ether and gasoline, which he christened tethelin.
But P. E. Smith has shown that the active material is soluble
neither in boiling water nor in boiling alcohol, the typical
fat solvent. A number of facts favor the idea of the anterior""
lobe cells as stimulants of growth of bone and connecting and_^
supporting tissues generally. From the posterior lobe, pituitrin,
believed its internal secretion, has been obtained in solution.
Pituitrin is a substance of many marvelous functions. In gen-
eral, it controls the tone of the tissues, of involuntary or smooth m
muscle fibres of the blood vessels and the contractile organs of
the body like the intestines, the bladder and uterus. When in- -m
jected, it will slowly raise the blood pressure and keep it raised
for some time, and will increase the flow of urine from the kid-
neys and of milk from the breasts. It will also cause an intense
continued contraction of the bladder and the uterus. It is also
said to control the salt content of the blood upon which its
electrical conductivity and other properties depend. Normally,
there is a certain fixed ratio of the salts in the blood, which keeps
them like the ratio in sea- water. Again, we have an example of
the curious atavism of the internal secretions. The thyroid,
remember, keeps the iodine concentration of the blood like that of
the ocean, our original habitat. Pituitrin likewise does its part
to maintain our internal environment as near as possible to what
was once the surrounding medium. A substance somewhat similar
has been found in the skin glands of toads.
The extraordinarily well protected position of the pituitary, its
persistence throughout life, and its abundant blood supply, em-
phasize its vital importance. No other gland of internal secretion
64 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
can adequately substitute for it. Complete expiration means
death, in two or three days, with a peculiar lethargy, unsteadiness
of gait and loss of appetite, emaciation, and a fall of temperature,
so that the animal becomes cold-blooded, its temperature the
same as that of the atmosphere it occupies. If only part of the
anterior lobe is taken away, there occurs a remarkable degenera-
tion of the individual. The degeneration is not a mucinous infil-
tration of the skin and the internal organs which occurs with
thyroid deprivation, but a fatty degeneration, with a tendency to
inversion of sex. A singular somnolence, a dry skin, loss of
hair, a dull mentality, sometimes epilepsy, and a noticeable crav-
ing for and tolerance of sweets appear. These are but a few of
the observations obtained in experimental sub-pituitarism, that is,
underaction or insufficient secretion of the pituitary, produced by
removing part of the anterior gland.
If such an experimental sub-pituitarism is started in infancy,
for instance in puppies, there is a cessation, or marked hindering
and slowing of growth. That is, dwarfs are artificially created.
Apropos, pathologists have shown that in several true human
dwarfs the gland is rudimentary or inadequate. All of which
goes hand in hand with the evidence that the skeleton stands
-directly under the domination of the pituitary.
Regulator of Organic Rhythms
There are certain other singular by-effects of the gland in its
relation to the periodic phenomena of the organism like hiberna-
tion, sleep, and the critical sex epochs of both sexes. In hiberna-
tion, or winter sleep, the animal in cold weather passes into a
cataleptic state in which it continues to breathe, more deeply'
but more slowly than when awake, but shows no other signs of
consciousness or life. A lowered blood pressure and a marked
insensitivity to painful and emotional stimuli go with it. There
is a preliminary storage of starch in the liver, and of fat through-
out the fat depots of the body. These are so like what happens
after part of the pituitary is removed, that a comparison of the
two becomes inevitable. Common to both conditions is a drop
in the rate of tissue combustion or metabolism, which can be
relieved by injection of an extract of the pituitary, a rise of
temperature occuring simultaneously. Moreover, examination of
the glands of internal secretion of hibernating species, like the
ffoodchuck, during the period of hibernation, shows changes in
till of them, but most marked in the pituitary, the shrunken cells
THE GLANDS: THYROID AND PITUITARY 65
staining as if they too were asleep, or in a resting stage. The
characteristic alive qualities of these cells return, without relation
to food or climate, when the animal comes to in the spring, at
the vernal equinox. Hibernation may, perhaps, be put down
to a seasonal wave of inactivity of the pituitary gland.
Now winter sleep may be looked upon as an exaggeration of
ordinary night sleep, the latter differing from the former only in
its brevity. In the natural sleep of non-hibernating species there
occurs, too, a fall in temperature. Moreover, they all, even man,
have a certain capacity for winter sleep, as the experiences of
travellers and explorers in the arctic regions indicate. In certain
parts of Russia, where there is a scarcity of food during the
winter months, the peasants pass weeks at a time in a somnolent
state, arousing once a day for a scant meal. Just as the sex
glands influence the body and mind profoundly with a certain
cyclic periodicity of activity and inactivity (rut, heat, menstrual
period and so on), which has been demonstrated to have a very
close functional relationship with the pituitary, so sleep and
hibernation will bear interpretation as products of a temporary
dormancy of the same gland. We have, then, to set up in the
place of Morpheus and Apollo, the new gods of the internal secre-
tion of a chemical-making bit of the brain, as an explanation of
the rhythms of sleep and wakefulness.
There are individuals who go about outside of hospital walls,
quasi-normally, who are semi-hiberaators or partial hibernators,
and who are really in a state of subpituitarism. They are people
who may have something wrong or inferior with their pituitary,
but not to the extent of interference with their daily life. They
go about with their type stamped upon them for the seeing eye.
The classical type is obese, with fat distributed everywhere, but
more so in the lower abdomen and the lower extremities. They
are slow and dull, and sexually inactive, often impotent. They
are sometimes tall, but most often dwarfish, and may be subject
to epileptic seizures. They recall the picture of what happens
to young dogs partially deprived of the pituitary. Dickens
delivered a perfect likeness of an extreme degree of the condition
in the Fat Boy of the "Pickwick Papers," whose employment
with Mr. Wardle consisted in alternate sleeping and eating.
When the Pituitary Overacts
All grades of overaction of the pituitary exist. Then its pecu-
liar power to act as a stimulant to the growth of bone and the
66 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
soft supporting and connecting tissues like tendons and ligaments
^ comes into play. If the overaction or excess of secretion begins in
childhood or adolescence, that is, before puberty, there results a
great elongation of the bones, so that a giant is the consequence.
Now giants have always appealed to the imagination of the little
man, and have had all kinds of wonderful abilities ascribed to
them by him. The giants and ogres of folk-lore and fairy tales
are favored with the most extraordinary mental advantages.
Direct and analytic acquaintance with the giants of our own
day, as well as a probing of their conduct in the past, has shown
that normal giants — persons of exceptional size free from physical
or mental deformities — are rare. There are people with hyper-
pituitarism who exhibit the highest mental powers. In them is an
increased activity of the posterior lobe in association with en-
largement and hyperfunction of the anterior, overgrowth is not so
marked, and the individual is lean and mentally acute. But the
ordinary giant is one in whom there is degeneration of the pitui-
tary after too much action of the anterior and too little of the
posterior glands. A tumor or disease process in the gland is most
often responsible.
If the overaction of the anterior happens after puberty, when
the long bones have set, and can not grow longer, a peculiar
diffuse enlargement of the individual occurs, especially of his
hands and feet and head. The nose, ears, lips and eyes get
larger and coarser. As these people are rather big and tall to
begin with, the effect produced is that of a heavy-jawed, burly,
bulking person, with bushy overhanging eyebrows, and an aggres-
sive manner. For there is, too, something distinctive about their
mentality which has been as often portrayed as those of the path-
ologic giant. Rabelais' most famous character, Gargantua, be-
longs to the group. We recruit more drum-majors than prime
ministers from among these people. They often suffer much from
torturing boring headaches, and a consequent despondency and
feeling of hopelessness which colors gray the entire spiritual
spectrum. Up to a certain point these sufferers have a remark-
able alertness and capacity. When conscious of the malady, they
often meet it with a doggedly courageous optimism, which is an-
other characteristic, although women occasionally commit suicide.
In both the semi-hibernators who remind one of cattle, and in
the giant or acromegalic types who remind one of the anthropoid
», ape, there develops a distinct diminution of sexual life. An ab-
normal process in the anterior gland, whether of oversecretion
THE GLANDS: THYROID AND PITUITARY 67
or of undersecretion, may interfere with the proper functioning
of the posterior gland, the secretion of which is tonic not only
to the brain cells, but also to the sex cells. Thus, young animals
deprived of the pituitary will not, if male, grow spermatozoa, nor
ripe ova in the female. Moreover, the feeding of pituitary in-
creases sexual activity. In the case of hens, this has been demon-
strated to be about thirty per cent by a pretty experiment. At a
time of the year when eggs diminish, six hundred and fifty-five
hens laid two hundred and seventy-three eggs upon an ordinary
diet. When pituitary was added to their food for four days,
the number of eggs rose to three hundred and fifty-two, an in-
crease of seventy-nine. In addition, the fertility of the chicks
born of these eggs was augmented, especially if both parents
had been fed on pituitary. There are other aspects of the rela-
tion of the pituitary to sex, which will be treated in another
chapter.
The Bony Cradle of the Pituitary
Always, in attempting to understand the pituitary, it is neces-
sary to remember that it is tightly packed in the bony cradle,
the Turkish Saddle or Sella Turcica. Should some stimulus, local,
or in the blood, arouse the gland to growth, a good deal will
depend upon whether it has room to grow in, or it will make
room by eroding the bone. With space for the formation of a
large anterior and posterior pituitary gland, there will be
created the long, lean individual, with a tendency to high blood
pressure and sexual trends, great mental activity, initiative, irri-~
tability and endurance. An outstanding trait of these favorites
of fortune is that they remain thin no matter how much food they
consume, and they have the best of appetites. They often are
subject to severe headaches because of intermittent swelling of
the gland against the bone of its container.
If the bony container is or becomes too small for its contents,
it is interesting that along with the other signs of pituitary insuf-
ficiency, such as undersize, obesity, and asymmetry, there devel-
opes conspicuous moral and intellectual inferiority. The unfor-
tunates suffer from compulsions and obsessions and lack inhibi-
tions. They are the pathological liars with little or no initiative
or conscience — amoral, not merely theoretically, but instinctively
and unconsciously, with all the certitude and perfection of the
unconscious accomplishment.
68 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
Thyroid and Pituitary
The thyroid and the pituitary have often been compared. The
anterior gland and the thyroid arise from almost the same spot
in the embryonic oesophagus, the thyroid being an outgrowth
in front, the anterior pituitary an outgrowth behind of the same
soil. They both control growth marvelously, also the differentia-
tion, the mass and intricacy of the tissues. But they differ in the
site of their control. The thyroid bears more directly upon the
inner and outer coverings of the body, the skin, the skin glands
and the hair, the mucous membranes, and the irritability and the
preparedness for response of the nerves. The pituitary acts more
upon the framework of the body, the skeleton and the mechan-
ical supports and movers. Bone and ligament, muscle and tendon
seem to be within its immediate sway. The secretion or secre-
tions of the pituitary diffuse directly into the fluid bathing the
nervous system, supplying beneficent stimulants and aiding in
the abstraction of harmful waste. So while the thyroid raises the
energy level of the brain, and the whole nervous system, as a by-
product of its general awakening effect upon all the cells of the
body, the pituitary probably stimulates the brain cells more
directly, perhaps in the manner of caffeine or cocaine.
The difference between the thyroid and the pituitary might be
put this way: that while the thyroid increases energy evolution
and so makes available a greater supply of crude energy, by
speeding up cellular processes, the pituitary assists in energy
transformation, in energy expenditure and conversion, especially
of the brain, and of the sexual system. In short, the thyroid
facilitates energy production, the pituitary its consumption. The
pituitary appears therefore as the gland of continued effort.
Hence fatigability, an inability to maintain effort, is one of the
prominent complaints when there is destruction or an insufficiency
of it for one reason or another. As such, it contrasts with the
glands of emergency effort, known as the adrenals.
CHAPTER in
THE ADRENAL GLANDS, THE GONADS, AND THYMUS
Like the pituitary, each adrenal gland is a double gland, that
is, consists of two distinct portions, united together, one might
say, by the accident of birth. It would be confusing, however,
to speak of each as two glands, because there are, as a matter
of fact, two separate adrenal glands, one in the right side of the
abdomen, and the other in the left. Each gland is composite, or
duplex. How the two parts came to be united is a long story,
interesting but too long to be recounted here. In fishes they are
apart and independent.
Each adrenal is a cocked hat shaped affair, astride the kidneys,
easily recognized because of its yellowish fatty color. Indeed,
for centuries the glands were not given a separate status as
organs, but were passed up as part of the fat ensheathing the
kidney. In childhood and youth, in common with the other
glands, they are relatively larger and more prominent than in
the adult. Also, at every age, the amount of blood passing
through them is very large compared to their size. Their tre-
mendous importance in the body economy accounts for their
being so favored.
The two parts of which each gland is composed, are known as
the cortex or outer portion (literally the bark) and the medulla
or inner portion (literally the core). No clean-cut boundary
sharply delimits the two, as strands and peninsulas of tissue
of one portion penetrate the other. In the history of their devel-
opment in the species and the individual, and in their chemistry
and function, a sharp difference contrasts them.
In the embryo, the cortex is derived from the same patch that
gives rise to the sex organs, the ovaries in the female, and the
testes in the male, described as the germinal epithelium. How
intimately the two sets of glands are connected is neatly pointed
by this fact of a common ancestor. All vertebrates possess
70 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
adrenal glands. In the lowest of the vertebrates, Petromyzon, the
two parts are distinct, the cells of the cortex-to-be are situated in
the walls of the kidney blood vessels, projecting as peninsulas in
the blood stream, the blood sweeping over and past them. The
medulla-to-be consists of cells accompanying the vegetative
nerves. Among reptiles, the two become adjacent for the first
time, and among birds one part occupies the meshes of the other.
The size of the cortex varies directly with the sexuality and the
pugnacity of the animal. The charging buffalo, for example,
owns a strikingly wide adrenal cortex. The fleeing rabbit, on the
other hand, is conspicuous for a narrow strip of cortex in its
adrenal. Human beings possess a cortex larger than that of
any other animal.
No definite chemical substance has as yet been isolated from
the cortex. That remains a problem for the investigator of
the future. But certain observations, especially concerning the
relation between the development and behaviour of the so-called
secondary sex characteristics, those qualities of skin, hair and
fat distribution, physical configuration and mental attitudes,
which distinguish the sexes, and the condition of the gland,
indicate clearly that an internal secretion will be isolated, and
that it will in its activity furnish certain predictable features.
Three different layers of cells, arranged in strings, that inter-
penetrate to form a network directly bathed by blood, that
breaks in upon them from open blood vessels, compose the
cortex. Most remarkable is this method of blood supply for it is
exceedingly common among the invertebrates and rare among
the vertebrates.
In certain disturbances of these glands, especially when there
are tumors, which supply a massive dose of the secretion to the
blood presumably, peculiar sex phenomena and general develop-
mental anomalies and irregularities are produced. If the disease
be present in the fetus, taking hold before birth, and so brought
into the world with the child, there evolves the condition of
pseudo-hermaphroditism. The individual, if a female, presents
to a greater or less extent the external habits and character of
the other sex. So that she is actually taken for a man, although
the primary sex organs are ovaries, often not discovered to be
such except when examined after an operation or death. How
closely such an occurrence touches upon the problems of sex
rsion and perversion comes at once to mind.
If the process involving the adrenal cortex attacks it after
THE ADRENAL GLANDS 71
birth, the symmetrical correspondence and harmony of the pri-
mary sex organs and the secondary sex characters are not affected.
But there follows a curious hastening of the ripening of body
and mind summed up in the word puberty, a precocious puberty,
with the most startling effects. A little girl of 2, 3, or 4 years
of age perhaps will come to exhibit the growth and appearance
of a girl of 14. She begins to menstruate, her breasts swell, she
shoots up in height and weight, sprouts the hair distribution of
the adult, and the mentality of the adolescent, restless, acquiring,
doubting, emerge. A tot bewitched into puberty ! A boy of six
or seven may suddenly, in the course of a few weeks or months,
become a little man, robust, rather short and stocky, but mous-
tached, with the muscular strength and sexual powers of a man
and thinking as a man. It is all as if into some fermentable
medium or solution a little yeast were dropped that changed
the quiet calm of its surface into a bubbling, effervescing revolu-
tion. It suggests at once that maturation, the transformation-^"
of the child into the man or woman, must be due to the pouring
into the blood and the body fluids of some substance which acts
like the yeast in the fermentable solution. The adrenal cortex is
one source of the maturity -producing internal secretions. . —
If trouble in the adrenal cortex starts after puberty, phenomena
of the same type, but of a different order, exhibit themselves.
A woman, say in the thirties, becomes thus afflicted. Slowly or
quickly her body will be covered by an abundant growth of hair,
more or less of a beard and moustache appear upon the face, her
voice will become deep and penetrating, her muscles will harden,
and she will show a capacity for hard physical labor. Sexually
she appears to be made over, masculinity now predominates in
her make-up. Virilism is the name by which the French in
particular have popularized the knowledge of the condition.
Virilists have to shave or be shaved regularly and are not both-
ered in the least by the cares, responsibilities, jealousies and—
anxieties of personal beauty, for the change in their spirituality
makes them immune to the preoccupations of the feminine. The
cause of such a transformation in a previously entirely normal
woman has been found to be a tumor of the adrenal cortex.
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
72 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
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 adre-
~ nal 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 degene-
ration 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-fiower. 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 sys-
tem, 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
meo made the subject of an astonishing number of researches,
considering the short period of scarce three decades that inten-
eive sci. centered its barrage upon it.
THE ADRENAL GLANDS 73
In the first place, the medulla contains numerous nerve cells,
belonging to the vegetative, also called the sympathetic nervous
system. But these nerve cells are merely minor notes of the
symphony. The motif is settled by a majority of large, granular
cells, which stain a- distinctive yellowish-brown when the gland
is fixed in a solution of bichromate of potash. All chromium
salts, in fact, stain the therefore labelled chromaffin cells. The
characteristic staining power appears to be dependent upon, or
correlated with, the presence of the internal secretion of the
medulla of the adrenal, adrenalin. For the content of adrenalin,
as calculated chemically, and the depth of stain as seen under
the microscope, rise and fall together. Chromaffin reaction and
adrenalin content go together. The poisonous skin glands of the
toad have been found to give a marked chromaffin reaction, and
to contain a large amount of adrenalin. Other masses of cells
in the human body, especially along the course of the sympathetic
nervous system, have been shown to give the reaction and to
contain adrenalin.
The erratic Brown-Sequard pounded and hammered away for
more than thirty years on the importance to life of the adrenal
glands, since death occurred so quickly after their removal. But
it was not until Schaefer, the Scotch physiologist, (who has done
more than any other living man to stimulate study of the internal
secretions) found that an extract of them, when injected into a
vein, produced a remarkable though temporary rise of the blood
pressure, that a real enthusiasm for its investigation was gener-
ated. As the upshot, a number of other significant properties
besides the first of blood-pressure raising, have been put down
to its credit. Chemical tests demonstrated that it originated in
the medulla. The exact amount of it present in the medulla, in
the blood issuing from the adrenals and in the circulation in
general have been determined. The concentration in the blood
is about one part in twenty million, while there is about a
hundred thousand times as much stored in the gland as reserve.
In infections and intoxications, after muscular exertion, and
with profound emotions, there is a decrease of it in the gland and
an increase in the blood. Pain and excitement, especially fear?*^
and rage, will bring about its discharge from the gland. With -
its entry into the blood, there is a tremendous heightening of the
tone, a tensing, of the nervous system. The nerve cells become *"~
more sensitive to stimuli, more sugar is poured into the blood
from the liver, more red blood corpuscles are squeezed into the
74 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
circulation from the blood lakes of the liver and spleen. There
a redistribution of the whole blood mass, a good deal of it
being withdrawn from the internal viscera, and hurried to the
^-skeleton muscles and the brain. The heart beats more strongly,
the eye sees more clearly, the ear hears more distinctly, and the
breathing is more rapid. The temperature rises, the hair of the
-head and the body becomes erect, the skin gets moist and greasy.
It will help a fatigued muscle to regain its normal tone. In
short, it has a reinforcing action upon the nutritive properties
of the blood, the tone of the muscles, and the activity of the brain
and the vegetative nerves.
Chemists set themselves the task of discovering just what was
the substance possessed of such extraordinary and hitherto un-
imagined properties. The pure adrenalin was isolated, capable
of evoking all the reactions of the impure adrenal extract mix-
tures. The final triumph was the preparation of it artificially
in the laboratory, its synthesis. When a substance can be synthe-
sized in the chemist's laboratory, it means that its composition
has become thoroughly understood. Here at last was an example
of those mysterious internal secretions, the existence of which had
indeed been postulated and proven, but which had never actually
been inspected by the eye of mortal man. To have it in a test-
tube, indeed to possess it in large quantities in bottles, to be able
to manipulate and examine it without fear of the co-action of
admixed impurities, to see it with the eye, and to taste it with
the tongue, was truly a marvel. The miracle aroused at once
scores of researches.
The Gland of Combat and Fight
Considering its effects, one is reminded at once of the similarity
to the expression of a primitive emotion like anger or fear. So,
by turning a relation upside down, it was argued that if artificial
adrenalin could produce all these effects of an emotion like fear,
the emotion itself should produce an increase of the natural adre-
nalin in the blood. This was found to be the case. Cannon of
Harvard has built up an entire theory of the adrenal as the
gland of emergencies upon the basis of these effects. In the
facing of crises the adrenal functions as the gland of combat.
And indeed, as I have mentioned, the more combative and pug-
nacious an animal, the more adrenal it has, while the timid and
meek and weak have less.
THE ADRENAL GLAttDS 75
The Glands of Combat, the glands of emergency energy, the
glands of preparedness, — such are the adrenal glands when
viewed from the adrenalin standpoint. A picture of its activity -
in the evolutionary scheme of struggle and survival is something
like the following: meeting an enemy, the animal is put in danger.
It must fight or flee for its life. In either case, certain conditions
must be fulfilled, if the body of the animal endangered is to be
saved. To prevent injury to itself, and to do as much injury as
possible to the foe — that becomes its immediate urge and neces-
sity. Of the two animals, if in one the heart should begin to
beat more strongly, the blood pressure to rise, the blood to flow
more rapidly through the attacking instruments, the muscles,
the teeth and claws, the brain and its eyes, while the other animal
experiences none of these, the former will be the victor in fight
or flight. Adrenalin may be looked upon as the invention for the •■-*
mobilization at a moment's notice, or as we say, after generations *.
of use, by instinct, of all these visceral and blood advantages
in the struggle of combat or flight.
The nature of instinct, in its relation to the glands of internal
secretion, is a problem for another chapter. But we may note
that the James-Lange theory of an emotion regards it as a
consciousness of the very changes in the organism adrenalin
causes. Since adrenalin is the starter of the whole process, and
since McDougal has defined emotion as the feeling aspect of an
instinct, just as an instinct may be defined as the motor aspect
of an emotion, the adrenals as emotion-genetic, and instinct-gene-
tic, play a part in the most profound processes of the subcon-
scious and unconscious.
The Mechanism of Fear
We may therefore visualize a mechanism of fear. An instant
excess of adrenalin occurs in the blood of, say, a cat when it is
alarmed by the sight of a dog. In that cat, at the image of its
hereditary enemy, certain brain cells vibrate. A nerve tract, in
use as the line for that particular message in a hundred thousand
generations of cats, whirrs its yell to the medulla of the adrenal
gland. Through the tiny, solitary veins of the glands, an in-
finitesimal quantity of the reserve adrenalin responds. And with
what an effect! The blood, that primary medium of life, the
precious fluid that is everything, must all, or nearly all, be sent
to the firing line, the battle trenches, the brain and muscles, now
76 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
or never. So the blood is drafted from the non-essential indus-
tries— from the skin where it serves normally to regulate the heat
of the body — from the digestive organs, the stomach and intes-
tine, which must forsooth stop now, since if the organism will
die, their last effort of digestion has been done — from the liver
and spleen, great chemical factories in normal times, but now
of no moment. Besides, should they be wounded, it is better
they should be bloodless, and so run the least chance of bleeding
to death, or getting infected, for the more tissue there is around,
the greater the danger of infection. So, like the skin, the liver
which usually holds in its great lakes and vessels about a quarter
of all the blood in the body, is almost drained and blanched.
At the same time, its great storehouses of sugar open their
sluices and pour into the blood, increasing its sugar content by
about a third -because the combustion of sugar is the easiest way
of getting energy free in the cells, sugar being the most quickly
burned up of all the foods, and so the great food of the muscles
and the heart. The poisons of fatigue, acid products of the con-
traction of muscles, are antagonized and neutralized by sub-
stances formed in the course of the oxidation of the sugar. Adre-
nalin, too, is directly fatigue antagonist. It causes the blood to
clot faster than under ordinary circumstances. It erects the hair
of the animal, and dilates the pupils of the eyes. There is an
increase of the apparent size, all of which are to intimidate the
enemy, like an Indian's painting of his face blue and green. It
also — but what else does it not do?
The story of adrenalin would have delighted the heart of
Samuel Butler. His "Note Books," opulent as they are, would
have been the richer in pages and pages with his comments on it.
Contending as he did with the pompous, dogmatic mechanism
worship of the new scientific clique of his time on the one hand,
and the superstitions of the old theological caste on the other,
he had to fight the hardest kind of guerrilla warfare in defense
of the Purpose of Life. Adrenalin, that weapon of a gland
tracing its ancestry back to the begetter of the brain itself, for
brain and adrenal gland both have evolved from the small nerve
•i of the invertebrates, would have backed up to the hilt
his argument, which he had to elaborate on the indirect grounds
of analogy and induction. Essential for defense, and for protec-
tion,—an organ in which everything necessary for the stratagems
of retreat, or the offensives of attack, are supplied ad libitum,
THE ADRENAL GLANDS 77
while everything non-essential or detrimental to the matter of
the moment is inhibited, arrested and suppressed — no more per-
fect sample of the design with which Life is drenched could be
imagined by the most closeted of passionate idealists.
Failure of the Adrenals
As the gland of acute stress and strain, the adrenals in modern
life are called upon to function more heavily and frequently than
in the past. As a matter of fact, the life of the beast of jungle
and field, as well as of savage and barbarian, is just as full of
emergencies and shocks as that of the average city man or
woman. In the case of the latter, however, inhibitions, education,
and the conditions of modern living, improper food, sedentary
indoor confinement, and universal rack and noise, have undoubt-
edly made greater and greater demands upon the adrenal glands.
Chemical quantitative studies have shown that by repeated
stimulation, the adrenal glands may be exhausted of their reserve
supply of secretion, which returns only insufficiently if not enough
time is given for recuperation. There results a condition of
temporary or chronic adrenal insufficiency, supposedly an insuf-
ficient functioning of the gland as a whole. In persons so afflicted
there appears a fatigability, a sensitiveness to cold, cold hands
and feet, which are sometimes mottled bluish-red, a loss of ap-
petite and zest in life, and a mental instability characterized by
an indecision, and a tendency to worry, a weepishness upon the
slightest provocation.
A certain number of the temporary breakdowns or nervous
prostrations, which seem to be growing more common or fashion-
able, may be sometimes traced to such a deficiency of normal
response to the needs of everyday conflict by the adrenal gland.
In some, mental and physical elasticity are totally lost, and
even the slightest exertion in either field often causes so much
weariness and exhaustion as to be prohibited. Depression and
even melancholia are associated with the fear of not being able
to accomplish good work hitherto easy and enjoyed. Sometimes _
they are obsessed with the thought that they have lost their nerve
completely, and so dread to commit themselves in even the most^
trivial of situations. The vacillating frame of mind is so distress-
ing at times as to arouse thoughts of suicide. When thes^g.
symptoms concur in the type of personality whom I shall describe
78 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
as the unstable adrenal-centered individual, there is evidence for
explaining the process as the effect of an insufficiency of secretion
by the adrenal gland.
Shock, collapse, heart failure and sudden death following ab-
normal emotion, like an attack of rage, or the terrors of a railroad
accident, or bad news, or excessive exertion like running a long
race or climbing a high mountain when in poor general health,
as the phrase goes, or in the terminal stages of infections like
epidemic influenza or Asiatic cholera, have been put down to an
acute insufficiency of the adrenal gland. A lowered temperature,
blood pressure, and blood vessel tone, exhibited in tests of the
response of the skin to stroking, are present in all of these and
point the same moral.
In the second half of the 19th century, an American physician,
Beard, described Neurasthenia, a general disturbance of the body
and mind, not properly classifiable as a disease, but serious
enough to incapacitate or at least greatly limit the sufferer. The
neurasthenic is to be recognized by the fact that the most pains-
taking objective examination of his organs reveals nothing the
matter with them. Yet, according to his complaint, everything
is the matter with him. He cannot sleep when he lies down, he
cannot keep awake when he stands up. He cannot concentrate,
but still he is pitifully worried about his life. The slightest irri-
tant causes him to go off the handle. As he works himself up into
his hysterical state as a reaction to a disagreeable person or prob-
lem, irregular blotches may appear on his face and neck. Gen-
erally, his hands and feet are clammy and perspiring, his face is
abnormally flushed or pallid, the eyes are worried or starey, un-
wonted wandering sensations involving now this area of the body,
or now that obsess him. As the blood pressure is too low for
the age, the circulation is nearly always inadequate and palpita-
tion of the heart is a frequent complaint. So frequent, that
attention is often centered upon the heart, a diagnosis of heart
disease is made, and the unfortunate is doomed for life — to brood
over horrible possibilities. The brooding over themselves and
their troubles is one of the distinctive features of the whole com-
plex. Neurasthenia may masquerade as any organic disease. An
individual with a soil for a neurasthenic reaction to life will
ome neurasthenic when confronted by any stone wall, includ-
ing a serious ailment within himself.
- Beard's Neurasthenia leaped at once into the limelight. It
was seized upon and applauded in Europe as a good new name
THE ADRENAL GLANDS 79
for an old condition, observed particularly in Americans abroad
to rest from the fatigues of the get-rich-quick games of industrial
speculators. In fact, the name of the American Disease was given
to it. Various theories about the effects of climate, sunlight per
square inch and unit of time, oxygen content of the air, and so
on, were offered up upon the altar of scientific explanation. Sir
Arbuthnot Lane, famous protagonist of Lane's intestinal kink,
said that all Americans were neurasthenic. Neurasthenia became
one of the most popular of diagnoses, and remains so today.
Neurasthenia, regarded as a reaction of people to the stress
and strain of life, has without a doubt increased. The most
casual of observers will tell you that the generation of the Great
War is a neurasthenic generation. It takes its pleasures too
intensely, its pains too seriously, its troubles too flippantly. But
what is neurasthenia? Beard himself regarded it as a chronic
fatigue and loss of tone of the nervous system, a literal interpreta-
tion of his term. That the conception, as far as it goes, is valid
is proved by the fact that it is the neurasthenics who furnish
the majority of the clientele of the cujt^the Christian Scientists,
the osteopaths and the chirnoracfet& and who are the subjects
of the faith and miracle cures, like those of Lourdes. That is
because their particular disease, or what appears to them to be
their very own disease — and they certainly cherish their ail-
ments— is but an expression of, a compensation for, indeed a
consolation for, the underlying feelings of insufficiency or infe-
riority. Were there no moral code, were there no social system,
nor the consequent inculcated conscience to be responsible to,
there would be no such disguising symptom as the disease which
preoccupies the consciousness. The feeling of insufficiency would
be there, and would be recognized as in itself the disease. To the
physiologist and the psychologist, the feeling of insufficiency is
the disease, no matter how spectacular the overlaying phenomena
— a cripple on crutches or a man blind and speechless. Shell
shock is now acknowledged to belong to this group.
Now one of the outstanding effects of disease of the adrenal
glands is the feelings of muscular and mental inefficiency. And
as a matter of fact, a good number of observations conspire for
the idea that a certain number of neurasthenics are suffering-
from insufficiency of the adrenal gland. The chronic state of the-
acute phenomenon, known as the nervous breakdown, really rep-
resents in them a breakdown of the reserves of the adrenals,
and an elimination of their factor of safety. In the light of that
80 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
conception, the great American disease — dementia americana —
is seen to be adrenal disease — and the American life to be the
adrenal life, often making too great demands upon that life, and
so breaking down with it.
Adrenal Excess
The converse of adrenal insufficiency, that of adrenal excess,
also exists. In certain types of the middle-aged, "a high blood
pressure, accompanied by a great capacity for work, has been
shown to be associated with hypertrophy of the cortex. In women,
there is a degree of masculinity, as the adrenal in women makes
for masculinity, neutralising more or less the specifically femi-
nine influences of the internal secretions of the ovary. Such
women possess a vigor and energy above the normal, and com-
mand responsible positions in society, not only among their own
sex, but also among men. They are the ones who, in the present
overturn of the traditional sex relationships, will become the
professional politicians, bankers, captains of industry, and di-
rectors of affairs in general.
The Gonads
(Sexual, Puberty or Interstitial Glands)
— - The gonads is the name applied to the generative or repro-
ductive glands considered collectively. In the male, they are the
__ testes; in the female, the ovaries. They are, therefore, sometimes
^ called the sexual glands. As they possess definite canals for the
removal of their gross secretion, the specific reproductive cells,
- ova or spermatozoa, to a surface of the body, they are first of all
glands of external secretion. But they have been also found to
hold secretory cells not concerned with the making of the repro-
ductive corpuscles, but, as all the evidence indicates, with the
manufacture of an internal secretion. These interstitial cells form
the interstitial gland. A classic example of a gland of internal
secretion lodged in the interstices of a gland of external secretion
is thus furnished by the gonads.
Origin of Sex Traits
WW history of sex goes back far in the scheme of life. The
immortality of the ameba was at one time one of the indisput-
THE ADRENAL GLANDS 81
ables of biology. Then some observations were made which
threw doubt upon a long accepted fact, now declared a dogma.
Lately, opinion has veered back to immortality. But in the case
of a close relative of the ameba, the one-celled animal known as
the Paramecium, union with another Paramecium, true conjuga-
tion, has been proved necessary to prevent death sooner or later.
Sex here appears in its most primitive form, on the basis of ex-
change of necessary materials, between individuals to prevent
death, their own having been, so to speak, worn out, in the course
of metabolism.
Specifically different sexes come later, when mortality is a uni-
versal fate, as a means of rebirth and escape from death. Then
the sexes develop their latest function, most prominent among
the younger vertebrates, of acting as nature's most potent method
of variation and differentiation. In the pursuit of the different,
nature has exalted sex, and the intensity of the sex life. As far
as the preservation of a species is concerned, and the reproduc-
tion of the individual, the asexual methods, budding, for example,
would have done well enough. But when it comes to enacting
a different individual apart from the effects of environment, sex
stands out as the favored method of Life.
The development of the sexes and the sexual life brought a new
element of conflict into the living world. Before the advent of
the sexes the conflict was essentially for the means of existence,
food alone. But with the sexual life came a conflict for sex
pleasure, a competition among members of the same species for
the same individual as their sex partners. The result was the
introduction of a factor in evolution which Darwin examined so
closely in the "Descent of Man."
The sex conflict has been the cause for the origin and the
survival of certain physical and mental traits, helpful in sex
attraction, sex combat, the growth of the embryo, and the nutri-
tion and safety of the young of a species, — in short, the whole
process of sexual selection. The proportions of the skeleton, the
distribution of hair and fat, the construction of organs of attack
and defense, the color of the skin, the cyclic processes of prepara-
tion for impregnation, the oestrus or heat period in animals, the
menstrual period in the human being, the psychic reactions to
danger and combat have all been thus determined. That man is
bearded while woman is not, — that woman has potentially func-
tional breasts while man has not, — the aggressive pugnacity of
man contrasted with the more passive timidity of woman, have
82 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
all been evolved in the sex struggle, surviving because most effec-
tive in that struggle. These so-called secondary sexual character-
istics are an expression of the influence of the internal secretion
of the gonads, or the interstitial glands. Some call them puberty-
glands, because their ripening initiates puberty.
We know that these interstitial glands, to stick to that name,
(rather than to the name of the puberty glands, since they serve
not only to induce puberty but to maintain maturity) are the
actual primary dictators of the process by which male and female
are distinguished, if not created. Castration was probably the
first surgical operation carried out for experimental purposes,
suggested no doubt by a curiosity concerning its effects. Trepan-
ning of the skull, the geologic record indicates, wa^ done even by
the cave man. But as an experimental operation, castration
seems to hold the primary position in the annals of surgery.
Its effects noted, the satisfaction of one of the lower human
instincts, jealousy, popularised it. From the days of Semiramis,
eunuchs have been commonplace figures of the East, their func-
tion definite: to guard the harems of the powerful. The age of
Abdul Hamid witnessed no diminution of the barbaric tortures
by which children are prepared for the profession. It is to the
credit of England that in its dominions in the Orient the practice
has been abolished. But it goes on even today. According to
the best authorities, four out of five of these victims at the
auto-da-fe of a vicious human instinct die immediately or soon
after from exhaustion due to pain and infection. Not all of the
ancient nations countenanced the brutal horror. The Hebrews
placarded castration an unpardonable sin, making it a sin to cas-
trate even animals. Nor was any man so mutilated permitted
to worship in the house of the Lord (Deuteronomy xxiii, 11).
Yet we have evidence that the latter Jewish kings employed
foreign eunuchs in their harems, who often held the most im-
portant positions as ministers of the court.
Besides the eunuchs, another group of people have presented
material for the study of the interstitial glands. These are the
Skoptzi of Russia and the Lipowaner of Roumania. Among them
castration is a religious ritual. Mankind has always been most
brutal to itself in the name of the ideal. These sects were founded
because in the eighteenth century an antipode of Joseph Smith
and Brigham Young discovered this passage in Matthew xix, 12.
"For there are some eunuchs which were so born from their
mother's womb, and there are some eunuchs which were made
THE ADRENAL GLANDS 83
eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs which have made them-
selves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is
able to receive it, let him receive it."
He decided that he was inspired to spread the gospel of cas-
tration. A sect was founded who thought that surgery was the
easiest way to enter the gates of Paradise, and they multiplied
and fructified. The sect exists today, and some of the most inter-
esting studies of the internal secretion of the interstitial glands
have been made among them.
Related to acquired eunuchism is the condition of eunuchoid-
ism, the eunuchs which were so born from their mother's womb.
Baron Larey, the great surgeon of Napoleon's armies, was their
first painter. He was the only altruist Bonaparte said he had
ever met in his life. He portrayed a group of soldiers with pecu-
liarly high-pitched voices, smooth and hairless skins, and
atrophied generative organs. A somewhat similar picture is
evolved in certain types of insufficiency of the pituitary gland.
Features of the picture are exhibited with disturbances of the
other internal secretory glands also, like the thymus.
But a host of experiments and data prove the interstitial glands* -
to be the direct controllers of elementary sexuality and the
specific sex traits of male and female. Beginning with Berthold -
back in the first half of the nineteenth century, who studied the
fowl, a number of observations have been made on the effects of
excision, translocation and transplantation of these glands.
The results of the experiments and observations can be summed
up as follows: if the male individual is castrated before puberty^
that is, before the advent of the sexual life, secondary sex qualities
do not develop. In males, the generative organs do not grow,
hair on the face does not appear, hair elsewhere on the body re-
mains generally scanty, the voice continues as high-pitched as the
child's, there is more or less muscle weakness, obesity, and mental
sluggishness. In other words, we have an effeminate man, tech-"
nically a eunuch. In the castrated female, the pelvis does not-
grow to the normal feminine size, the breasts do not swell as they
should, more or less hair comes out on the face, the voice is low-
pitched, and tends to be rather husky, the legs are longer, and
again, the mentality is dulled. That is, a masculine sort of.
woman is produced.
In short, the castrated male takes on a feminine type, and the
castrated female, a male type. In either case there is also an
infantilism, a retention of the infantile mental traits, a lack of
84 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
development of the adult mental attitudes and reactions. Now,
if in the castrated male is transplanted an ovary, the positive
characteristics of the female are evoked, such as enlarged mam-
mary glands, and a tendency to secretion of milk. Experiments
have also been reported in which a uterus was also placed in such
an animal, with a means of entry, and pregnancy followed. If in
the castrated female a testicle is planted, the masculine traits
become much more marked and striking. A direct exchange of
the male and female roles can thus be achieved. Castration after
puberty cannot modify profoundly structures like the skeleton
which are already completed. Yet it may unquestionably bring
about definite retrogressive changes in the secondary sex charac-
ters: reduction or loss of virility, diminution of facial and body
hair, and a general presenility or hastening of senility.
How remarkably these interstitial cells influence the entire
structure and vitality of the organism is indicated by these facts.
How much they have to do with sexual impulses, sexual excite-
ment, and sexual desire, what the Freudians have popularized as
the libido, and how subtly they act upon the coming and duration
of adolescence and maturity, as well as sexual precocity and pe-
versions, we shall consider in a later chapter. But it is enough
now to remember that these interstitial glands are the primary
dictators of the genital sense and flair of the individual. In any
attempt at measurement of men and women, the quality and
quantity of the internal secretion of the interstitial cells must be
respected as a fundamental consideration. The womanly woman
and the manly man, those ideals of the Victorians, which crum-
bled before the attack of the Ibsenites, Strindbergians and Sha-
vians in the nineties, but which must be recognized as quite valid
biologically, are the masterpieces of these interstitial cells when
in their perfection. They are such solely because of the right
concentration in the blood of the substances manufactured not
only by these cells, but by all the glands of internal secretion.
For it cannot be repeated and emphasized too often that the
interstitial cells of the sex glands are most sensitive to all kinds
of other influences, and, in particular, the other internal secre-
tory organs. They may indeed be watched as an index scale or
barometer of the general tone of the whole internal secretion sys-
tem. Sex variations offer a variety of clues to variations, dis-
turbances, predominances and abnormalities in all the compo-
nents of the ductless gland association.
To take a single instance, the development of the long bones
THE ADRENAL GLANDS 85
is dependent upon the handling of food lime by the body. Eunuchs
and eunuchoids, that is, individuals with insufficient internal
secretion of the interstitial cells, have longer bones and more
fragile bones than the normal. Vice versa, those with an excess
of the secretion have shorter and thicker bones. The earlier the
onset of menstruation, which means puberty, the shorter the
extremities, as the action of the internal secretion of the ovaries
closes the story of the growth of the long bones.
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 sug-
gestion 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 ap-
pears 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 rJlaced between the sex cells, are peculiarly
86 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
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.
Concerning the exact function of the thymus, we are a good
deal at sea. The latest opinion about the results of extirpation
even in young and growing animals is that they are nil. Yet there
is a certain justification for proclaiming the thymus the gland
of childhood, the gland which keeps children childish and some-
times makes children out of grown-ups. There is a quantity of
data for that proposition. In the first place, the curve of rise of
growth of the gland seems to coincide with the period of child-
hood, the curve of its decline with the period of adolescence and
the rise of the sex glands. In the past, it was accepted, that
with puberty the thymus atrophied and was replaced by some
sort of fatty tissue. Nowadays, it is held that secretion cells
persist throughout life. When the extent of this persistence is too
great, the gland being from five to ten times as large as the
normal, a number of other features become prominent to make
the extraordinary individual, the status lymphaticus, who amid
the hazards of life will react in an extraordinary way. He will
be taken up in the consideration of internal secretion person-
alities.
Then there are the varied and remarkable phenomena of
thymus enlargement and hyperactivity in childhood itself. When
an enlarged thymus is present in an infant, the initiation of
breathing in the new-born, the introduction of the newcomer t
the oxygen of the air, may be an exceedingly prolonged, difficult,
matter. Such a baby is said to be born blue, and the breathing
may be stridorous for days, becoming normal for a time, to be
followed later by spells of trouble in breathing, breathlessness
or breathlessness with blueness, and threatened extinction. Some-
times these spells come out of a clear sky in an apparently healthy
child. That some poison, probably an oversecretion of the
thymus, is responsible is shown by the relief obtainable by X-ray
shrinkage of the gland, or the surgical removal of a part of it.
Moreover, the gland is influenced by and influences the factors
of body weight and growth with an extreme readiness and
lability. Deficient general undernutrition leads to rapid decline
THE ADRENAL GLANDS 87
in its weight. Back in 1858, the pioneer student of the thymus,
Friedleben, declared that the size and condition of the thymus is
an index to be the state of nutrition of the body. Underfeeding
for four weeks will reduce it to one thirtieth the normal. It
seems to act as a storage and reserve organ, affording some
protection against the limitation of growth by lack of food
material. In exhausting or wasting disease, the weight of the
gland sinks much more quickly than other glands. Scattered
instances have been reported of children growing, putting on
inches in height and expanding mentally, when thymus was fed
to them, in whom every other measure previously tried had
failed. A French study of over four hundred idiotic children
with normal thyroids reported that over three fourths had no
thymus at all. Everything points to the most direct and close
relation between the gland and nutrition and growth, but with
nothing tangibly definite like our knowledge of the thyroid and
the pituitary.
There is evidence that the thymus is involved in the health and
efficiency of muscle cells and muscularity. Certain tumors of the
thymus, presumably destructive of the gland substance proper,
and thus cutting off its secretion, are accompanied by a singular
muscle weakness and atrophy of the muscle cells, entirely out of
proportion to the general damage suffered by the other cells of the
body when affected by the poison of a malignant growth. Also,
the thymus has been discovered diseased in certain mysterious
progressive muscular wastings. A remarkable fatigability of
muscles, which appears after the slightest exertion, is a feature.
The feeding of thymus has caused muscle cramps which appar-
ently depends upon an increased excitability of the muscle nerve
endings.
Feeding of thymus to some of the lower* creatures of tlie animal
kingdom will completely hold up differentiation. Take the un-
folding of the specialized tissues and organs which transform the
tadpole into the frog and the chrysalis into the butterfly. A
tadpole kept supplied with enough thymus in a nutrient medium
will swell into an extraordinary giant tadpole, but will not change
into a frog. Recently, this experiment has been contradicted.
Yet this effect corresponds to the conception of its importance in
childhood as a retardant of precocity, physical and mental.
Clinical observations emphasize that in childhood it is the chief
brake upon the other glands of internal secretion which would
88 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
hasten development and differentiation, checking them perhaps
for a given time and so profoundly influencing growth.
The Pineal
The pineal is another gland which has been credited with
similar abilities and a like holding-the-reins-tight-in-childhood
function among the cells. Like the thymus, it has been supposed
one of the distinctive organs of childhood and to die with it.
Generations of anatomists solemnly asserted, repeating each
other's mistakes with the aplomb of the historians who declare
that history repeats itself, that the pineal body was a useless,
wastefully space consuming vestige of a once important struc-
ture. That was the view in that century of grandly inaccurate
assertions, the nineteenth. Not that they relegated it with that
statement to the limbo of the dull and the uninteresting. Quite
the contrary. They conferred upon it a distinguished romance
and mystery by identifying it as the last heir and vestigial rem-
nant of a third eye, situated in the back of the head, which may
still be observed in certain reptiles. Imagine it! Somewhere,
stuck away in a cranny of the floor of your head and mine, is
this descendant of an organ that once sparkled and shone, wept
and glared, took in the stars and hawks and eagles, and now is
condemned to eternal darkness and an ineffectual sandiness.
Today, we have not discarded that view of its history, but we
know a little more regarding its composition and function.
What and where is the romantic object? It is a cone-shaped
bit of tissue hidden away at the base of the brain in a tiny cave
behind and above its larger colleague, the pituitary. Microscopic
scrutiny reveals that it is made up in part of nerve cells contain-
ing a pigment similar to that present in the cells of the retina,
thus clinching the argument for its ancient function as an eye.
But the outstanding and specifically glandular cells are large
secreting affairs, which too reach back to the tidewater days of
our vertebrate ancestors, when Eurypterus and other Crustaceans
were engrossed with the fundamental problems of brain versus
belly. Besides these, there are the singular masses upon which
has been fastened the unnecessarily opprobious epithet of brain
sand. These, noted and commented upon from the earliest times,
consist of collections of crystals of lime salts, sometimes small,
lying about in discrete irregular masses, and sometimes grouped
THE ADRENAL GLANDS 89
into larger mulberry-like concretions, varying much in size.
These brain sand particles have become of practical importance
in the detection of pineal disease because they, like all lime salts,
will stop the X-rays, and so can be photographed.
For a long time, indeed up to scarcely more than a few decades
or so ago, the pineal was believed to have no present function
at all, or at least no ascertainable or accessible duty in the body
economy. That it might perhaps be, in a sense, a gland of inter-
nal secretion was a despised theory. Then a classic case, the
most extraordinary and curiosity-piquing sort of case, with symp-
toms involving the pineal gland, in a boy, was reported by the
German neurologist, Von Hochwart. That boy provoked a little
army of researches. He came to the clinic complaining about
his eyes and other troubles which pointed pretty definitely to a
brain tumor as the diagnosis to pigeon-hole him. Nothing extra-
ordinary about him in that respect. But the story told by his
parents was quite extraordinary, even to the jaded palate of the
clinic professor and his assistants. They said that he was a
little over five years old, a statement conclusively proved correct
at his death. Up to the time at which his illness began, he had
been quite normal in size, intelligence and interests. But with
the onset of his misfortune, he had begun to grow, and rapidly
until now he looked and corresponded in all measurements to a
normal boy of twelve or thirteen. Hair developed all over his
skin, most prominently and abundantly in the typically hairy
places of adults. His voice became low-pitched, and most re-
markable of all, his sexuality and mentality precocious. He
became capable of true sexual life and is said to have asked many
questions about the fate and condition of the soul after death.
On one occasion he remarked reflectively: "It is odd how much
better I feel when I let other children play with my toys than
when I play with them myself." Other statements attributed to
him imply the most astounding maturity of thought and mental
process. Headaches finally came, and he died about four weeks
later. The cause of the whole bizarre tragedy was found to be a
tumor of the pineal gland.
As has happened before in medical history, no sooner was the
one prodigy reported, than a score of others of the same ilk
sprang into the limelight. Cases of precocious genital develop-
ment, especially, some of them occurring as early as the second
year of life, were linked with them. It is an interesting point to
be noted that in these, as in those started by an overaction of the
90 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
adrenal cortex, it is premature masculinity that is stimulated.
The adrenal cortex must be classed as a gland of masculinity.
The pineal possibly acts as a brake upon the adrenal cortex.
Very soon after the report of Von Hochwart's prodigy ap-
peared, an experimental research on the pineal was begun in New
York. The pineal glands of a number of young bullocks were
obtained and used for feeding, to see whether an overaction of
the internal secretion could be produced. Guinea pigs, kittens
and rabbits were used. The experiments covered about two
years in time. Of a dozen small kittens, the subjects outgrew
the controls rapidly in activity, size, intelligence, and resistance
to intercurrent disease. Of ten small rabbits, the controls weighed
about a third less than the subjects, which were strikingly clean,
active, fat and salacious.
Feeding of the gland was then extended to a particular class of
defective children, children with well-shaped heads, normal eyes,
symmetrically functioning limbs, excellent digestion, strong
muscles and generally^ normal, sometimes rapid growth. It is to
them, particularly when mental normality has progressed up to
the eighth, tenth or twelfth year and stopped, that the term
"moron" has been applied. They have been a hopeless lot, be-
longing to the limbo of the incurables. Moreover, they, em-
phatically the physically normal ones, differ from one another
enormously in the extent to which mental operations are possible.
As all transitions and degrees exist, no definite classification and
subdivision of them has been made. Yet ever since the cretin,
once looked upon as an eternally damned defective, was trans-
formed by thyroid feeding into an apparently normal being, there
has been no dearth of effort to find the '•ight kind of internal
secretion to fit their desperate situations, but in vain. In defec-
tives with definitely, organically damaged brains, no result of
course was to be expected. In those of any class over fifteen,
no response has been elicited by feeding pineal gland. In the
others the results have been contradictory.
A set of observations have related the pineal to muscle func-
tion, inviting comparison of it with the thymus. There is a
singular muscle shrinking and deforming disease, known as
progressive muscular dystrophy, hitherto a complete and unsolved
mystery. Newer studies of the pineal in this disease during life
by means of the X-ray have shown it calcified, that is, buried in
lime salts, which signifies put out of business. Recently thus
another hint as to its function has been ferreted out.
THE ADRENAL GLANDS 91
The tadpole as a reagent to test out the growth effects of differ-
ent glands of internal secretion has also been employed for the
pineal. Ten-day-old tadpoles fed on pineal present a marked
translucency of the skin due to a retraction of the skin pigment
cells. Now without a doubt a number of as yet unknown growth
and metabolic effects follow exposure of the body to the complete
gamut of light rays. The interesting suggestion follows that the
pineal influences the body by varying the degree of light ray
reaction.
The pineal, the ghost of a once important third eye at the
back of our heads, still harks back in its function to a regulation
of our susceptibility to light, and its effect upon sex and brain.
So it becomes one of the significant regulators of development,
with an indirect hastening or retardation of puberty and maturity
according as it works in excess, or too indolently. It appears
thus the blood brother of the adrenal cortex which also influences
the skin pigment and so susceptibility of the organism to light,
brain growth and sex ripening. It is interesting that Descartes,
in 1628; considered the pineal the seat of the soul.
The Parathyroids
Sometimes imbedded within the substance of the thyroid in the
neck, sometimes placed directly behind it upon the windpipe,
are four tiny glands, each about the size of a wheat seed,
the parathyroids. For long they were swamped in the nearness
of their great neighbor, and considered merely a variable part of
it. There are some who contend that even today. But it has
been proven that they are separate, individual glands, with a
structure and function of their own, and a definite importance
to the body economy.
On the animal family tree they appear early, contempora-
neously with the thyroids. In the embryo they develop from
about the same sites. And very often they look very much alike
under the microscope, especially when the cells are in certain
quiescent stage of secretion. Yet they are wholly independent in
nature, activity and business.
First experimenters upon the effects of removal of the thyroid
were confused by contradictory findings with different animals
because in some they would take out the parathyroids at the
same time without knowing it, and in others they would not.
That possibility suggested, more careful dissectors accomplished
92 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
the job of extirpating the thyroid while leaving the parathyroids
intact and vice versa. In consequence some definite information
about the parathyroids is available, even though their internal
secretion has never been isolated, or its existence established as
more than an inference.
When the parathyroids are removed, an astounding increase
in the excitability of the nerves follow. It is as if the animal
were thoroughly poisoned with strychnine. The slightest stimu-
lus will make him jump, or throw him into a spasm. When the
excitability of the nerves is measured by an electrical instrument
it is found augmented by from five hundred to one thousand per
cent. The reflexes, those automatic responses of brain and spinal
cord to certain stimuli and situations, become enormously sensi-
tive, so that merely letting the light into a darkened room will
make the subject of the experiment go into a series of convul-
sions.
On the chemical side, an explanation for these nervous phe-
nomena has been advanced. Lime in the blood and cells appears
to be necessary in a number of ways. In the making of bone
and teeth, in the coagulation of the blood, in the keeping of fluid
within the blood vessels, and in maintaining the tone of the
nerves, it plays a major role. Now the parathyroids, among all
the glands of internal secretion, seem to act as the prime regula-
tors of the amount of lime held within the blood and cells. For
when the parathyroids have been completely and aseptically ex-
cised, without injuring any other organ, immediately the body
begins to lose lime. Something has gone out of it that helped
it to bind lime, and without that essential something, the internal
secretion presumably of the parathyroids, the lime departs. As
a conspicuous consequence the teeth fail to develop properly,
particularly as to their enamel, for which lime is an essential
constituent. Hair is lost, there is a general wasting, the nails
get brittle, and the bones soften, and the animal dies. Supplying
lime directly, particularly by direct injection into the blood, will
relieve the symptoms.
In man, a condition of nervous over-excitability has been
described as tetany. It occurs most often in the young, the preg-
nant, or in vomiting after operations. All sorts of tests have
related the malady to the phenomena succeeding parathyroic
deprivation, and they are now looked upon as aspects of it
Individuals havo been reported suffering from an insufficiency o:
the internal secretion of parathyroids, with a sudden extreme de-
THE ADRENAL GLANDS 93
pression, nervousness and restlessness, an inability to sleep or
sit still, and a tremulous handwriting. Such reports round out
the evidence for the importance of the parathyroids in an
understanding of the factors which control growth, especially as
regards lime utilization, for without lime properly handled no
building of cells is possible. Also the parathyroids are necessary
to a steadiness of muscle and nerve.
The Pancreas
The business of the parathyroids concerns the keeping of lime
in the body. Another gland, the pancreas or sweetbreads, this
time within the abdomen, a close neighbor of the solar plexus,
alias the abdominal brain, is occupied with holding and hoard'ng
sugar in the body, particularly in the liver, the great sugar ware-
house. This matter of retaining sugar and controlling its output
is one of the utmost significance for growth and metabolism, the
resistance to infections, the response to emergency situations, and
in general to the mobilization of energy for physical and mental
purposes. For without sugar sufficiently at hand for the cells,
no muscle work or nerve work, the essentials of the struggle for
existence,, are possible.
The pancreas is an organ with both an internal and external
secretion. The external secretion, long known, evolved by the
major portion of the gland, is poured into $ie small intestine
to play the star in digestion. Scattered here and there among
the definitely glandular cell groups creating the external secre-
tion are smaller collections of cells, called the islets of Langer-
hans, which have been demonstrated to elaborate the internal
secretion. There are about a million of these islands in each
gland. The hormone has been called insuline. Unlike most of
the glands with a double secretion in which the internal is abso-
lutely independent, and so to speak, unconscious of the external,
these two of the pancreas are often disturbed together, perhaps
because trouble easily hits them both together.
Quite the most well-known disease due to disturbed internal
secretory function of the pancreas is diabetes. An enormous
amount of work has been spent upon the various aspects of it
as a mystery. Hundreds of papers in a dozen languages upon
the subject are in existence. In a nutshell, they have established
pretty well that diabetes is a disease in which there is an excess
of sugar in the blood and urine because of an insufficient amount
94 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
of the secretion of the islands of Langerhans in the pancreas.
Removal of the pancreas makes the body, essentially the liver,
unable to retain sugar, as well as unable to burn up sugar for
energy. The situation is comparable to a locomotive with its
coal bins leaking, and the coal itself acting as if made of slate
or some equally uncombustible or only partially combustible
material.
The control of sugar mobilization from the liver, where it
is stored as glycogen or animal starch, is divided between the
pancreas and the adrenals, the pancreas acting as the brake, the
adrenals as the accelerator of the mechanism. Adrenal and pan-
creas are therefore direct antagonists, the pans of the scale which
represents sugar equilibrium in the organism. Diabetes may be
regarded as a disturbance of the adrenal-pancreas balance,
assisted by events which produce adrenal overwork like great
or prolonged emotion, or by strain of the pancreas, effected by
over-eating for example.
There are other minor glands of internal secretions. But those
considered are by far the most important and the -most recently
explored. In a summary, one would classify them as follows:
Name
Secretion
Function
1. Thyroid
Thyroxin
Gland of energy pro-
duction
Controller of growth
of specialized or-
gans and tissues-
brain and sex
2. Pituitary-
anterior
posterior
Unknown
Pituitrin
Gland of energy con-
sumption and
utilization — con-
tinued effort
Growth of skeleton
and supporting tis-
sues
Nerve cell and invol-
untary muscle
cell, brain and
sex tone
TH
E ADRENAL GLA
NDS 95
3.
Adrenals
The Gland of
Combat
cortex
Unknown
a. Brain growth — tone
development of
sex glands
medulla
Adrenalin
b. Energy for emer-
gency situations
4.
Pineal
Unknown
a. Brain and sex de-
velopment
~
b. Adolescence and
puberty
c. Light and matur-
ity
5.
Thymus
Unknown
Gland of Childhood
6.
Interstitial
Testes in male
Glands of secondary
glands of
Ovaries in female
Sex traits
7.
Parathyroids
Unknown
a. Controllers of lime
metabolism
b. Excitability of
muscle and
nerve
8.
Pancreas
Insulinf
Controller of sugar
metabolism
CHAPTER IV
THE GLANDS AS AN INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATE
Now in considering each gland of internal secretion as a sep-
arate entity, and labelling it with certain properties and actions,
we of course commit the usual sin of the intellect: the sin of
abstraction and isolation of its material. This crime of analysis
the intellect commits every day in the search for truth. Before
its dissection, it seems to have to dip the elusive article in a fixa-
tive, and bottle it in a vacuum.
Yet nothing in reality is more of a changing flux than the body
in all of its parts and tissues and organs. And of all these, the
glands of internal secretion stand out as the most susceptible to
change. Made to react to stimuli of offense and defense, instan-
taneously responsive to situations involving energy exchanges and
protective reflexes, they are never for any minute the same or
alone. They never function separately. Each influences the
other in a communicating chain. Let one be disturbed, and all
the others will feel the impact of the disturbance and vibrate
with it.
Any break in the somatic or psychic equilibrium, a blow or an
infection, or a startling thing seen, or a worrisome thought felt,
will start a process going. This will only wind up when every
gland has been somehow touched, and a final equilibrium re-
established. The thyroid, maybe, was first excited, and then in
turn the adrenals, with a boomerang reinforcing effect upon
the thyroid, and at the same time a stimulating effect upon the
pituitary. Each gland is thus influenced and influencing, agent
and reagent in the complex adjustments of the organism.
Endocrine Co-operations
The body-mind is a perfect corporation. Not quite perfect,
for continually there arise little insurgencies, inadequacies and
frictions to which in time it will succumb. Yet, in the efficiency
of its co-operations, and in the co-ordination of the needs and
96
GLANDS AS AN INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATE 97
supplies of producer, middle man, and consumer, there is no
one of the great organizations of the captains of industry which
can for a moment approach it.
Of this corporation the glands of internal secretion are the
directors. But the huge corporation, not to topple over with
its own unwieldy size, must be composed of smaller units, each
within itself a corporation, and governed by a directorate. There
are, in the corporation-organism, different departments and
bureaus, subdivisions of function, which constitute the smaller
corporations within the larger corporation. These subsidiary
companies have their own glands of internal secretion as their
directors.
Thus, the growth of the brain is presided over by the adrenal
cortex, the thyroid, the thymus and the pituitary. They deter-
mine the size of the brain, the number of its cells, the complexity
of its convolutions and the speed of its chemistry, which means
the speed of thought and memory and imagination. As its direc-
torate, therefore, they may be entitled. The disturbance of one
of them means the disturbance of all of them, and a consequent
deleterious effect upon the brain. Now take the burning up of
sugar in the organism, the great material source of energy, which
is controlled by the pancreas, the adrenals and the liver, the
thyroid and the pituitary. Together they form the directorate
of sugar metabolism. But, as is evident from a glance at the
membership of the growth directorate, and comparing it with
the directorate of sugar metabolism, there are some members
who are present on both boards. An infection, an illness, an ail-
ment, an exaltation or intoxication of such members will produce
reverberations in both directorates. A disturbance of sugar
metabolism might then cause a disturbance of growth. The
advantages and disadvantages are before us of having, in the
glands of internal secretion, an interlocking directorate, rulers
over all the varied and manifold activities of the organism.
Behind the body, and behind the mind is this board of gov-
ernors. Indeed, from the administrative and legislative points
of view, the body-mind may be said to be governed by the House
of Glands. It is the invisible committee behind the throne.
Upon the throne is what? Man, the most baffling of complexi-
ties. Man who is not a mind, but. owns a mind — Man who is not
a body, but possesses a body, just as he might have a motor car,
a fortune or a calamity. Back of all his daily activities, behind
the life of body-mind is the mysterious unique individuality, the
98 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
Ego, the Psyche or the Soul. Lately, a competitor with these
ancient and honorable terms has come upon the scene as the
Subconscious. In that darkened No Man's Land is determined
a man's destiny. The endocrine association stands out as at
least the most important physical determinant of the states and
processes of the subconscious.
Antagonisms and Co-operations
As within a corporation there are factions and cliques, influ-
ences that always work together, and forces that are always
pulling in opposite directions, so within the interlocking direc-
torate of the ductless glands there are antagonisms and inhibi-
tions, co-operations and compensations. One gland will assist
the action of another's secretion with its own, or will in turn be
stimulated to secrete by it. Another will throw out its secretion
in order to neutralize the effects produced. Or its own activity
will be depressed or completely inhibited by it. Thus the pitui-
tary arouses the interstitial glands and vice versa, whereas the
pancreas and the thyroid are mutually inhibitory. Indeed, whole
systems of glands may work in unison, or be pitted against each
other in certain situations, especially when the organism is sub-
jected to conflicting impulses with the clash of opposing instincts,
like fear and anger. In general there is reciprocity and team
work among the internal secretions.
A certain minimum amount of each must be present if life
is to continue along the normal lines. Whether there is ,to be
an excess of any one secretion above this minimum, or a de-
ficiency below it, decides the fate of the individual. If there is
deficiency of one, the other members of the directorate attempt
to make up for what has been lost, and to carry on its work by
an extra effort, to substitute. Or, released from the discipline of
the deficient member, or the necessity for antagonizing it, they
may be released from its stimulus to secrete, and produce less of
their own specific secretion. A general reaction all along the line
will accompany overaction, oversecretion, of one gland. Due to
consequent stimulations and depressions of other glands, some
m:iy be excited by the event to overwork — some to assist —
others, to act as antidote for — the excess secretion, while still
others, relieved of a burden, do not have to supply as much of
quota under the circumstances and so shut down, or limit
their output.
GLANDS AS AN INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATE 99
It is important to get clearly in mind these subtle inter-reac-
tions of the different ductless glands. They may be antagonistic
in their end effects because of the opposed functions of the nerves
or organs stimulated. There are inhibitions and restraints pro-
duced when a gland will send out its secretions to stop another
gland secreting. There are compensations resulting when be-
cause of insufficiency of a gland, others will endeavour, by manu-
facturing more of their own secretion, to compensate for the loss.
There are mutual co-operations, partnerships, when a gland will
oversecrete to assist another, or in response to another which is
also oversecreting. There are losses of balance, so that when
one gland ceases secreting, another will simultaneously or soon
after. Normal secretion, oversecretion or undersecretion are
thus adjusted, but leave a train of after effects.
So with loss or insufficiency of the thyroid, there may be
pituitary overgrowth, because the pituitary may act as vicar
for the thyroid. The thyroid and thymus are antagonistic, for
the thyroid hastens differentiation, puberty and the coming of
sexual maturity, while the thymus delays and retards them and
prolongs the period of childhood. The thyroid and the pancreas
are antagonists, for when the thyroid has been excised, the
pancreas appear no longer necessary to act as a break upon the
mechanism of sugar liberation into the blood from the liver.
The thyroid stimulates the interstitial glands, for menstruation
and pregnancy are impossible with no thyroid or an insufficient
thyroid. Removal of the pituitary makes the thymus shrink
because the restraining influence of the latter is no longer needed.
But there is an enlargement of the thyroid to compensate. In
castrates there is an increase in the size and number of the cells
of the anterior pituitary, again a compensation or substitution
effect. The pituitary and the adrenal cortex are mutually assist-
ant, alike in their influence upon the tone of the brain and sex
cells.
The Kinetic System
So there are combinations of glands to assist or restrain others,
or to control a body function, or to determine the domination
or abeyance of an instinct. One such has been named the kinetic
system because it comes into play in situations which demand
prompt adaptation without hesitancy, and a consequent imme-
diate transformation of static or stored energy into kinetic or
100 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
active energy. According to this conception the brain, the
adrenals, the liver, the thyroid and the muscles together con-
stitute a machine very much like an automobile. The self-
starter of the machine is the brain, with storage battery (com-
posed of stored past memories) and ignition combined. The
thing seen without, or the idea felt within, act as the initial
sparks, while the adrenals, as the carburetors, permit the freer
flow of fuel, sugar, from the liver. The thyroid works as the
accelerator, the original impulse finally landing upon muscles
keyed up and supplied with food to meet the situation, be it
that of removing a poison, removing an aggressor (attack) or
removing the individual himself (running away). When one is
exhausted by exertion and emotion, injury, intoxication or infec-
tion, it is these members of the kinetic system, the brain, the
adrenals, thyroid and liver, which are exhausted. Exhaustion
diminishes when the activity of the brain is diminished by
anesthetics, and cured when it is abolished by sleep.
If the adrenal gland may be called the Gland of Emergency
energy, the Kinetic System is entitled to the name of Council of
Emergency Defense for the organism. The Kinetic Drive is the
name that has been given to the whole system at work. It is
one of the best examples we have of inter-glandular co-operations
and reactions in reply to the threat of danger or the hint of
pleasure.
The Check and Drive System
Another instance of the complexity of these inter-glandular
reactions is furnished by the thyroid and the adrenals. The
thyroid and the adrenals are mutually stimulating — when the
thyroid oversecretes, the adrenal dittos, and vice versa. Yet
they have directly opposed effects upon the economy — because
they act upon antagonistic portions of the involuntary or vege
tative nervous system, the system which is independent of the
will. Before proceeding further, it is worth while sketching this
division of the nervous system.
In the construction of a motor car from the point of view oi
absolute control of it at every moment, the first thought of the"
mechanic is an adequate brake and an efficient regulator of speed
instruments antagonistic, but necessary to work simultaneously
or alternately. The involuntary or vegetative nervous system is!
built upon the same principle. It supplies every organ in the
GLANDS AS AN INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATE 101
body beyond the control of the will (that is to say, the brain)
with two sets of filaments which have opposing functions. One
group of filaments in general increases or activates the function
of the organ to which it is distributed. The other group of
filaments, when tingling, inhibits or prohibits that function.
They are like the two buttons on the wall which regulate the
supply of electricity to incandescent bulbs, one switching on the
current, the other switching it off. It has been agreed to call the
stimulative or activating portion the autonomic or drive system.
To its antagonist has been left the older name of the sympathetic
or check system. It is because they do not both act upon these
two components of the vegetative nervous system, but only upon
one, that the thyroid and adrenal though in themselves comple-
mentary, come to exert opposite effects. For the internal secre-
tion ol the thyroid has a selective affinity for the autonomic or
activating system, while that of the adrenals has a selective
affinity for the sympathetic or inhibiting system.
In the stomach, for instance, extracts of the adrenal glands
have been proved to intensify the function of the sympathetic or
check system in different degrees, so that there is a lessening of
the amount and acidity of the gastric fluid. On the other hand,
thyroid extracts will intensify the action of the autonomic or
drive system, so that the amount and acidity of the digestive
juice is increased.
The stomach cell may, therefore, be regarded as a test-reagent
for the different internal secretions, as they affect the check and
drive systems.
These constitute an automatic device for regulating the activi-
ties of every organ. Three factors enter into the mechanism.
One is the amount of the circulating internal secretions. Another
is the organic and functional integrity of the nerve filaments
comprising the check and drive systems. The third consists
of the number and vitality and limitations of the terminal re-
ceiving cells acted upon by the nerve filaments, which in their
turn have been acted upon by the internal secretions. Upon
every organ, including the mind, through the brain, a stimulus
from without or within will act according to its ability to influ-
ence one or others of these factors.
Normally, the check and drive systems are properly balanced.
But under stress and strain the balance is upset. Indeed, the
Kinetic Drive may be defined as a mechanism contrived in the
course of evolution as the normal, healthy mode for meeting
102 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
stress and strain. The Kinetic chain of organs, brain, adrenals,
liver, thyroid and muscles, began working together in desperate
situations for their possessor ages ago. Successful in helping him
to survive, they have survived as a functional unit.
It was probably evolved in the Post-Tertiary Era, about twenty
million years ago, when the coming of the carnivores introduced
direct body-to-body conflicts, and their concomitants, a quick
and versatile nervous system. During the Tertiary epoch the
earth basked in the heat of a tropical sun nearly everywhere on
its surface. The luxuriant vegetation of the torrid zone flourished
and swarmed, for the temperature all over was what it is today
at the equator. Gigantic vegetarians were the animals, creatures
like the dinosaurs, enormous, gargoylean monsters, of an in-
credible size and strength, but clumsy and grotesque, with small
brains and little intelligence. For what need was there for brain
and intelligence when food lay about so abundantly at hand for
them to gorge themselves. As there was no competition for food,
there were no enemies.
Then as the earth evolved and grew cooler, vegetation failed,
the ancestors of the present carnivora appeared, the fathers of
the wolf and tiger, light, lithe and pugnacious, with senses acute
and ferocious weapons of attack, who set out to destroy every-
body. They destroyed pretty nearly all of the huge leaf-eating
species, and only the more plastic and smaller ones, who were
more keen-sensed and swift- footed (of whom the deer and ante-
lope, horse and ox are the descendants), escaped. The smallest
either took to the air to become the bat, or, like the forerunners of
the squirrel and ape, took to the trees.
It was the coming of the carnivores, therefore, that accelerated
the development of brain matter, and started the process which
created man. But in the millions and millions of years of con-
flicts, instincts grew into being that sank deep into bone and
marrow. The most fundamental reflexes, those immediate re-
sponses to irritation or danger, were laid down, and among them
the drive and check system. When the animal had decided to
fight its enemy or was forced to fight, or determined to prey,
then was the time for the drive system to do its utmost to speed
up everything that would help in the fight, while the check
system came into play to hinder whatever would interfere
or burden in the fray. First the drive mechanism must have
hit upon, and then the value of the check devices must
have been found in fear and flight, and especially in hiding and
GLANDS AS AN INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATE 103
simulation of death, when even breathing had to be inhibited.
Until finally there developed, for everyday use, a complete check
and drive nerve machinery for every organ, to be used according
to the exigencies of the moment, with the thyroid as the primary
stimulant and controller of the drive system and the adrenal
as the primary dictator over the check system.
The Harmony of the Hormones
All the glands, in fact, work in unison, with a distribution of
the balance of power that diplomatists might envy. In the co-
ordinating synchronism, the vegetative nervous system plays the
part of an agent that acts as well as is acted upon. The chemical
interaction of the internal secretions is not the only way in
which they influence each other. For, as the case of the thyroid
and the adrenal so well shows, secretions which, when directly
interacting, are mutually reinforcing, when affecting nerves, may
become clashing opponents.
The Kinetic Chain is about as good a case as there is of the
glands of internal secretion co-operating. The Check and Drive
systems, with the adrenals and thyroid opposed, are one of the
best instances of their antagonisms. Besides, there are a number
of other relationships between them that might be cited. They
all bear with more or less pressure, positive or negative, upon
the sex glands which will be considered in its place. If one
wished to consider all the glands in their pro and anti relations,
a separate volume would be required.
The Vegetative Apparatus
The combination of the internal secretions and the vegetative
system has been spoken of as the vegetative or autonomic appa-
ratus. The vegetative apparatus is the oldest part of the nervous
system. And some acquaintance with its constitution is neces-
sary to any understanding of the possibilities of control of human
nature.
For modern thought does not regard the brain as the organ of
mind at all, but as one unit of a complex synthesis, of which
mind is the product, and the vegetative apparatus is the major
component. That involves the blasting of the last current super-
stition of the traditional psychology, the dogma that the brain
is the exclusive seat of mind.
104 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
That an animal is a vast concourse of cells is one of the ac-
cepted fundamentals of biology. What is not so generally taken
into consideration is that the assemblage is formed by the
agglutinations of millions of years, and that it is hence composed
of parts of different ages and pedigrees, some exceedingly ancient
and hoary, some middle-aged, and some relatively new and recent.
In the invertebrates, who date further back in the history of
the planet than any vertebrate, the nervous system consists of
discrete patches of nerve cells, the ganglions composing the
ganglionic system of which the vegetative or autonomic nervous
system of man is the direct descendant and representative. The
brain and central nervous system are definitely later acquisitions,
imposed upon the original stratum of the check and drive
machine.
The primitive chassis of the mechanism, so to speak, is the so-
called vegetative nervous system. Grouped with that system
are the primeval breathing, feeding and reproducing inventions,
the viscera boxed up in the chest and abdomen. The third
partner is the glands of internal secretion, which act upon the
viscera both directly and indirectly through the check and drive
effect upon the vegetative nerves. The glands are like tuning
keys, by which certain strings in the instrument may be tight-
ened, so that its vibratory activity is increased, or they may
be loosened, the vibrations decreased, the activity lessened.
Tuning up the motors is a constant process in the organism.
Finally, there are the large nerve masses at the base of the
brain known as the basal ganglia, which contain the nerve
centers for the co-ordination of the other three. All these to-
gether constitute the oldest family of the corporate organism.
Beside them, the brain and the face and the prehensile organs
are mere parvenus.
The Oldest Part of the Mind
Granted, then, that this vegetative apparatus is the most
deeply rooted core of our being. What warrant is there for the
grandiloquence of the phrase: the Oldest part of the Mind?
There is, indeed, room for rhetoric, even poetry, here. For all
the evidence points to it as the rightful occupant of the throne
upon which Shelley placed his Brownie as the Soul of the Soul.
Or to put it in another way, we think and feel primarily with
the vegetative apparatus, with our muscles, especially the invol-
GLANDS AS AN INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATE 105
untary, with our viscera, and particularly with our internal
secretions. Whenever there is thought and feeling, there is move-
ment, commotion, precedent and concomitant, among these.
They are the oldest seats of feeling, thought and will and con-
tinue to function as such.
Just what evidence is there for this conception? In the first
place, there is the fascinating story of the origin of vertebrates
from invertebrates of the sea scorpion or spider type. Then there
is a whole group of data which demonstrate that the primitive
wishes which make up the content of a baby consciousness are
determined, settled by states of relaxation or tension in different
segments or areas of the vegetative apparatus. According to
this, the brain enters as only one of the characters in the play
of consciousness. It is just the organ of awareness by the organ-
ism of itself as an integer which must adjust itself to the specific
condition within the disturbed vegetative apparatus. Conse-
quently the brain emerges not as the master tissue, but as merely
the servant of the vegetative apparatus. ~
Consciousness is a circuit. Swinging around in it are the .
wish-feelings generated by the vegetative dynamo. From each
viscus, from the stomach and intestine, from the kidneys and
bladder, from the liver and spleen, from the blood-vessels, from
all the glands of external and internal secretion, there flow along
the vegetative nerves, to and from the brain, energies of various
qualities and intensities. All the members of the vegetative
apparatus are more or less active, and so all our wishes are all
more or less active. All our working hours we are aware of
hunger, satiety or indifference, of a desire to empty the intestine
or bladder, or of a lack of necessity of doing so, of a state of
tranquillity of the blood-vessels and sweat glands, or of a per-
turbation of them, of a varying tensity of even the muscles that
are, as we say, under the control of the will, of the state, in
fact, of all the elements of the vegetative complex. The stream
of feeling which constitutes the undertow of consciousness
originates outside of the brain altogether, and is composed of
currents arising from viscera, muscles, blood-vessels and glands.
Now the component currents are of different sizes and positions
and variable degrees of warmth. That is another way of saying
that whether or not a current is to become the center of the
stream, or to approach it, or whether it is to be hot, cold, or
tepid, depends upon the degree of activity of the various parts
of the vegetative apparatus. A convenient name for this is
106 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
tonus. Tonus can be experimentally watched and measured.
Thus hunger, the most primitive of the wish- feelings, has been
found to be simultaneous with certain characteristic contractions
of the stomach. Stop those contractions, and you stop the hunger.
The contractions begin slowly and weakly, and no awareness of
them occurs in the mind. As they grow stronger, consciousness
becomes a sensation rather like an itch somewhere in the upper
abdomen, and accompanied sometimes by a sense of general
weakness. The vegetative activity going on as a current almost
on the outside of the stream of feeling has swelled and warmed,
and so forced itself, in a manner of speaking, into the center of
the stream. Or if you will, the rest of the stream has to arrange
itself around it as the center. A similar mechanism for the tonus
of the other members of the vegetative system, and how they
determine consciousness and behaviour is understandable. It has
been shown that when the bladder tone and the intestinal tone
are of a definitely measurable size, one has the desire to empty
them. The same applies to the sex glands. The pressure within
a viscus is dependent upon the ratio between the amount of
contraction of the involuntary muscle in its walls, the external
pressure, and the quantity of its distending contents, the internal
pressure. The resultant quotient, the internal pressure divided
by the external pressure, measures the intravisceral pressure.
The primitive wish-feelings are the direct expressions of the
various intravisceral pressures, or tones. The primitive soul is
an awareness of the fused primitive wish-feelings of themselves
as a whole, and of the struggle between them for recognition,
isolation, and, as we say, satisfaction. This satisfaction consists
in a degradation of the highest intravisceral pressure to a point
at which some other intravisceral pressure becomes higher and
therefore predominant.
Physics of the Wish
Mind, consciousness, may then be portrayed as an ocean com-
prised of mobile current layers, complexes built up around the
awareness of different intravisceral pressures. A shifting hier-
archy of such pressures form the points of focusing of conscious-
ness that result in conduct. Behaviour may be defined as the
resultant of the organism's pressure against the environment's
counter pressure until there is a sufficient reduction of the specifi-
cally exciting intravisceral pressure. Just as water flows to its
GLANDS AS AN INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATE 107
own level, so will conduct flow to reduce intravisceral pressure
to its own level. A physics of the soul comes into prospect, in
which a mathematical analysis will state the process quanti-
tatively in terms of some common unit of pressure.
Not only conduct, but also character, because it is past con-
duct repeated, associated, and fixed, will be so statable. For
intravisceral tonus or pressure is not simply or only an acute or
passing affair. There is for it a persistent or average figure, the
so-called normal for it, below which or above which the acute
situation will bring it. Character is a matter then of standards
in the vegetative system. Character, indeed, is an alloy of the
different standard intravisceral pressures of the organism, a
fusion created by the resistance or counter pressure of the ob-
stacles in the environment. Character, in short, is the grand
intravisceral barometer of a personality.
Thus the comfortable, healthy, happy, well-balanced, progres-
sive, constructive, virile personality is one in whom there is a
continuously harmonious reduction of the intravisceral pressures
in the environment called society. For in a gregarious creature,
like man, fellow beings are the most powerful determinants of
negative and positive vegetative pressures. Not so well rounded
are other types existing because of inferiorities or excesses of the
Standard visceral tone. There is, for instance, the sexually cold
type, comfortable by creating for itself an anaphrodisiac en-
vironment composed of pressures that can be fitted into its own.
Or there may be an insufficiency of standard pressure in the
alimentary tract, and we have the ascetic, mal-nourished, striv-
ing, uplifting type. Different types will be made by the permu-
tations and combinations of factors that determine the intra-
visceral pressure and the environmental, i. e., social resistances
or counter pressures.
Internal Secretions Determinants of Vegetative Pressures
Now of all the different factors which determine the tones, that
is to say, the internal pressures, of the various parts of the vege-
tative apparatus (including all structures not controlled by the
will in the term), the internal secretions or hormones are by
far the most important. This significance is conferred upon them
because it is by their activities primarily that these pressures
are produced, regulated, lowered and heightened; in short, con-
trolled. We have seen how the thyroid and adrenal hold the
108 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
reins of the drive or check systems in the vegetative apparatus.
Together with the other ductless glands, they decide the advance
or halt, forward or retreat, tension or relaxation, charge and dis-
charge, of the visceral — involuntary muscle — blood vessel com-
bination which is at the core of life. Here again they emerge as
the directorate.
Carlson, the Chicago physiologist, who probably knows more
about being hungry than any other man on the planet, once
demonstrated that the injection of an ounce -or two of the blood,
which means the internal secretion mixture, of a starving animal,
into one not starving increased the signs of hunger and the ac-
companying hunger contractions of the stomach. There can be
no doubt that hunger is the expression of a certain specific con-
centration of internal secretion or secretions in the blood. When
the quantity, in the cycles of metabolism, becomes sufficiently
great, it stimulates the stomach to contract in a way which
augments the pressure within it to a point at which the feeling
of hungriness, and the wish to satisfy it, or to get rid of it,
becomes imperative, and the dominant of consciousness.
Without doubt the sexual cravings are likewise so determined.
Sex libido is an expression of a certain concentration, a definite
amount peculiar to the individual, of the substance manufac-
tured by the interstitial cells, circulating in the blood. It arouses
its effects probably by (1) increasing the amount of reproductive
material in the sex glands in a direct chemically stimulating
effect upon the germinative cells, and so raising the internal
pressure within them, (2) stimulating the involuntary muscles
within the walls and the canals of the sex glands, and so, by
augmenting the tenseness of the muscles, elevating the total intra-
visceral pressure, (3) by a direct chemical and indirect nervous
effect upon the brain, the muscles, the heart, as well as the
other glands of internal secretion stimulating the organism as
a whole. Though the isolation in pure form of the substance or
substances involved has never been scientifically achieved, their
inference is entirely justified. It is indeed the only compre-
hensible mechanism conceivable that will fit all the known facts
about the matter. And even though the assertions of Brown-
Sequard were only the exaggerations of a semi-charlatan, it is
certain that some day in the near future the particular sub-
stance, that he claimed he had discovered, will be handed about
in bottles for the inspection of the curious.
Besides thyroxin, adrenalin, and the libido-producing secre-
GLANDS AS AN INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATE 109
tion of the interstitial cells, the substance produced by the paired
glandlets, situated behind the thyroid, the parathyroids, have a
profound influence upon the vegetative apparatus and the vege-
tative nervous system. These direct the lime exchanges within
the cells of the organisms, including the nerve cells. It has
been shown that lime is, relatively, a sedative to cells. It raises
the threshold or strength of stimulus necessary to evoke a reac-
tion. Removing the parathyroids means removing the lime
barrier, for with their deficiency there is a change in, and then
an escape, from the blood, of the lime, by way of the kidneys.
The result is sometimes an enormous increase in the excitability
of all the cells, and especially of the vegetative apparatus. What
that means for the individual whose comfort depends upon a
stability of the intravisceral tones and pressures may be readily
imagined.
The pancreas likewise acts as a sedative to the vegetative
apparatus. In particular, this applies to the sugar mechanism in
the liver under the discipline of the check and drive organiza-
tion. The adrenal and the pancreas are the direct antagonists
in the struggle for control of sugar. Removal of the adrenals
will cause a decrease in the amount of sugar in the blood, while
removal of the pancreas will produce an increase. Excess of
sugar in the blood may thus be concomitant with changes of
character considered incorrigible.
In different locales of the vegetative apparatus, as indeed of
the body in general, the directorate seems to be handed over to
a committee of control, generally made up of two members work-
ing in opposing directions. Such a division of power in the gen-
eral directorate is analogous to the small holding corporations
which divide functions in, for example, the United States Steel
Corporation. The relative ratios of tonus in these smaller
internal secretion balances are of the utmost significance as
causes of differences in the vegetative apparatus, which are the
basis of differences in structure, power, and character between
individuals.
The General Laws of the Directorate
Our knowledge of the glands of internal secretions as an inter-
locking directorate presiding over all the functions of the organ-
ism is still exceedingly meagre. As yet, we seem to be knocking
at the portals of the chemistry of the imponderable. There are
110 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
holes in the bronze doors, and we glimpse the unfathomable dis-
tances of unexplored regions. But we do see something, and we
do glimpse a beginning. Already the outlines of a differential
anatomy, and a different physiology and a differential psy-
chology, which will explain to us the unique in the constitution,
the temperament and character of an individual, emerge. It is
worth while, before proceeding to the details, so valuable to a
society which would become rational, to summarize the general
principles emerging, expressing the directing powers of the duct-
less glands over the individual. They may be regarded as the
present postulates of a new science of the whys and wherefores
separating and setting apart, as so recognizably distinct, those
peregrinating chemical mixtures: men and women.,
1. The life of every individual, in every stage, is dominated
largely by his glands of internal secretion. That is, they, as a
complex internal messenger and director system, control organ
and function, conduct and character. The orderliness of human
life, in the sequential march of its episodes, crises, successes and
failures, depends, to a large extent, upon their interactions with
each other and with the environment.
2. One or several of the glands possesses a controlling or
superior influence above that of the others in the physiology
of the individual and so becomes the central gland of his life,
its dominant, indeed, so far as it casts a deciding vote or veto,
in its everyday existence and incidents as well as in its high
points, the climaxes and emergencies.
3. These glandular preponderances are at the basis of per-
sonality, creating genius and dullard, weakling and giant,
Cavalier and Puritan. All human traits may be analyzed in
terms of them because they are expressions of them.
4. Specific types of personality may be directly associated
with particular glandular prominences, so that we have the
thyroid-centered types, the pituitary-centered types, the adrenal-
centered types, etc. These are the classic Three, the prototypes in
their purity most easily described and recognized.
5. Combinations of these, as well as of other glands — with
joint predominance — occur and indeed form the majority of
populations. The phenomena of varieties in species are thus
explained.
6. Internal secretion traits are inherited, and variations in
heredity are essentially the structural representation of the re-
sultant of a parallelogram of forces exerted by each of the
GLANDS AS AN INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATE 111
parental prepotent glands. If they are of the same type, they
may reinforce each other: if not, inhibitions and compensations
will come into play. Mendelian laws may apply.
7. The process of evolution, as the play of natural selection
upon these variations, becomes comprehensible from a new stand-
point.
8. Certain diseases, and disease tendencies, both acute and
constitutional, as well as traits of temperament and character,
and predetermined reactions to certain recurring situations in
life, are rooted in the glandular soils that compose the stuff of
the individual.
9. The subconscious, of which the vegetative apparatus is
the physical basis, leads back to the internal secretions for the
profoundest springs of its secrets. We shall see how and why.
10. Given the internal secretory composition, so to speak, of
an individual — his endocrine formula — and so his intravisceral
pressures, one may predict, within limits, his physical and psychic
make-up, the general lines of his life, diseases, tastes, idiosyn-
crasies and habits.
11. Within limits, if the previous history of an individual is
known, his physical appearance may be approximately described,
and his future outlined.
12. Conversely, given the physical and psychic composition
of an individual, and his past history, one may deduce the in-
ternal secretion type to which he belongs.
Examples:
A. One Thyroid-centered Type has -
B. One Pituitary-centered Type
'Bright eyes
Good clean teeth
Symmetrical features
Moist flushed skin
Temperamental attitude
toward life
Tendency to heart, in-
testinal and nervous
disease
Abnormally large or
small size
Musical — acute sense of
rhythm
Asymmetrical features
Tendency to cyclic or
periodic diseases
112 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
C. One Adrenal-centered Type
Hairy
Dark
Masculinity marked
Tendency to diphtheria
and hernia
These are some of the master types. They have their variants
depending upon the influences of the other glands, especially the
interstitial cells of the sex glands.
Ante-Natal Development
In their ensemble, the glands of internal secretion wield a de-
termining influence upon the development of the individual from
his very inception. If his various powers may be conceived of
as an orchestra, they may be said to conduct it from the very
beginning of its movements, and to cease only with its termina-
tion. From the moment when the spermatozoon penetrates and
fecundates the ovum, the fate of the future being is settled by
their disposition. The seal of his destiny is soaked with their
substance.
Post-Natal Development
Every particle of protoplasm, every granule of the impreg-
nated ovum carries the representatives of the parental ductless
glands. As a consequence, they transmit chemically, with no
figure of speech involved, the peculiar familial, racial and
national characters from progenitors to offspring. They confer
upon the child a number of the properties commonly recognized
as inherited. All those features which distinguish Caucasian
from Mongolian, Scandinavian from Italian, Italian from Jew
are determined by them.
In short, at every step of his life, in every relation and asso-
ciation, in every expression of the inner forces that control his
being, the normal individual is influenced by his internal secre-
tions. Let us now see how.
CHAPTER V
HOW THE GLANDS INFLUENCE THE NORMAL BODY
The origin of the remarkable differences between individuals
that distinguish species, varieties and families, has long been one
of the chief puzzles of biology. It may indeed be called the lead-
ing puzzle, which led Darwin on to the collection of the data that
culminated in the "Origin of Species." The why of the Unique
is the fundamental problem of those who would understand life.
An explanation is an attempt at a consistent and persistent,
sometimes an obstinate clarity of mind. A vast number of ob-
servations gathered by laboratory experimentalists as well as by
those naturalists of the abnormal, physicians in active practice,
prove that the construction of the individual both during de-
velopment before maturity, and maintenance during maturity,
his constitution, in short, is directed by the endocrine glands.
It is possible now to present an explanation of the individuality
of the individual.
To assert that variation is responsible for the individual, that
it is the mechanism which isolates him as a being like none other
of his fellows, not even his parents, brothers, and sisters, is
merely to beg the question. What is variation? The internal
secretion theory of the process offers, for the first time, an
explanation that is coherent and comprehensive, based upon con-
crete and detailed observations. It provides an adequate inter-
pretation of the numberless hereditary gradations and transi-
tions, blendings and mixtures. It suggests a control of heredity
in the future.
The Pure Types
In the pure types, only one gland, either by being present in
great excess above the average, or by being pretty well below
the average, comes to exercise the dominating influence upon the
traits of the organism. As the strongest link in the chain, or as
the weakest, it rules. The others must accommodate themselves
to it. Among them as commanders of growth, development and
113
114 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
normal function, it holds the balance of power. In every emer-
gency it stands out by its strength or by its weakness. It thus
creates its own type of man or woman, with attributes and char-
acteristics peculiar to itself. These pure types, as we have
seen, are mainly the thyroid, the pituitary, and the adrenal-
centered.
Each with the signs peculiar to it can be identified among
the faces that pass one in the street. And they differ so mark-
edly among themselves that they provide a new and accurate
means of classifying varieties among the races of the species:
man. The thyroid type differs as much from the adrenal type as
does a greyhound from a bull-dog. The greyhound has a certain
size, form, character and capacity. The bull-dog has similar
qualities which are yet quite different. Each is built for a
particular career. Among human beings, the pure thyroid type
is easily distinguished from the pure adrenal type, and both of
these from the pure pituitary type. Each is stamped with a
significant figure, height, skin, hair, temperament, ambition,
social reactions and predisposition to certain diseases,
The Mixed Types
Among the mixed types, the lines of distinction are less clear,
and so they are more difficult to classify. The mixed types may
be said to be hyphenated. In them, two or even three of the in-
ternal secretory glands conflict for predominance. The combined
action makes for a resultant modification in the primary glandular
markings and effects, A hyphenated classification thus becomes
inevitable. Especially is this so if the two glands are mutually
antagonistic and inhibitory. A compromise effect is then neces-
sitated. Or an individual may be dominated by one gland at one
period of his life and by another at a later period. One of the
glands, the thyroid, for example, will show, by the traces it has
left upon the earliest developing features, that it was in control
at the very earliest dates of his history, while other signs will
disclose the more recent influence of the adrenal or of the pitui-
tary. The combination becomes classifiable as the thyroid-
pituitary type, or as the thyroid-adrenal type.
That the external features as well as the chronic diseases of
human beings are controlled by some common factor has long
been suspected. Inquiries into morbid phenomena with a heredi-
tary trend yielded information that has paved the way for the
HOW GLANDS INFLUENCE THE NORMAL BODY 115
internal secretion theory. It has long been known that certain
diseases effect only certain individuals of a definite constitution.
Apoplexy, diabetes, arteriosclerosis, Bright's disease, are met
with almost exclusively in what the older clinicians talked about
as the apopleptic type. On the other hand, they said, anemias,
tuberculosis, hemophilias, scrofulas occurred more among the
lymphatic type. But they had no idea whatever of the true func-
tional basis of the two different types. The truth as we of today
view it is that these two types represent different textures of
human beings, fabricated of different internal secretions. They
are really two different breeds of the species Homo Sapiens.
The materials being different, the color and feel of them is
different, and the resistance to wear and tear is different.
Endocrine Analysis
The modes of classification glimpsed at are certainly exceed-
ingly broad and sweeping. It is well enough to establish types
and classes. But beneath them are sheltered the infinite possi-
bilities of permutations and combinations, which explain the
countless variety and complexity of form and function. Every
individual born among the vertebrates, for example, must have
a certain definite amount and percentage of pituitary gland,
anterior and posterior, pineal, thyroid, parathyroid, thymus,
adrenal, pancreas, interstitial and so on. Now if, to state it in
terms of percentages, for the sake of argument, the pituitary is
25, the pineal 10, the thyroid 36, the parathyroids 15, the thymus
29, the adrenals 60, the pancreas 49, the interstitials 72 (the
gland when acting maximally to be graded as 100), we see at
once how different such an individual must be from one who has,
say, pituitary 84, pineal 39, thyroid 26, parathyroid 42, adrenals
96, pancreas 22 and interstitials 89. One obtains at once from
the contrasts of such figures some idea of the possibilities. As
each point plus or minus must count to produce some difference
in the individual, the results are manifest. Varying within the
numerical limits imposed by genus, species, variety and family
(which limits are probably responsible for the persistence of the
particular genus, species, variety, or family) the individual be-
comes an individual because of the relative values of the per-
centages in his blood and tissues of these different internal secre-
tions. We thus begin to gain an insight into the patterns accord-
ing to which men, women and animals are woven.
116 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
Wo are, as yet, far from an exact endocrine analysis of the
individual. But we know that the endocrines rule over growth
and nutrition, a vast dominion which incorporates every organ
and every tissue. By enhancing or retarding the nutritional
changes, the growth of the organ or tissue is favored or re-
stricted. The size and shape of an individual, as a whole, as well
as of the specialized cell masses composing him, as hands and
feet, the nose and ears, and so on, are therefore controlled by
them. Whether an organism is to be tall or short, lean or corpu-
lent, graceful or awkward, is decided by their interactions.
These, like human covenants, vary with the different reactions of
the parties to the contract. And so a great deal depends upon
whether they work harmoniously or discordantly, and upon
which does the most work and which the least.
Undersecretion and Oversecretion
It is when a gland, either in the course of development, or be-
cause of the influence of starvation, shock, injury, poisoning or
infection, begins to undersecrete or oversecrete that its effects
upon growth and nutrition become grossly manifest. A veritable
transfiguration of the individual may occur, the black magic of
which may perplex him for a lifetime. A man, made eunuchoid
by an accident or by mumps, will observe in himself astonishing
changes in his constitutional make-up, mentality and sexuality.
He would be more astounded to learn that beneath the appear-
ances, the changes, so alarming him, there are profound altera-
tions in the rate at which he is taking in oxygen, burning up
sugar, accumulating carbon dioxide and excreting waste by-
products through the kidneys, which are responsible for them.
The differences between the normal and abnormal are only a
matter of degree. And so, to be sure, are differences between
types. But it is hard to realize that the striking distinctions
between the thyroid type and the pituitary, comparable, as said,
to the differences between a greyhound and a bull-dog, are de-
pendent solely upon quantitative variations in the general and
local speeds of metabolism, among the cells.
Division of Labor
Besides the antagonisms and co-operations between them, there
are certain lines along which the glands, in their effects, special-
HOW GLANDS INFLUENCE THE NORMAL BODY 117
ize. The thyroid, for instance, is concerned specially with the
regulation of the shape, form and finish of an organ. The pitui-
tary shines at the periods of developmental crises, determining
them and modifying them. It exerts the greatest influence upon
the time of eruption of the teeth, both the temporary and the
permanent, the onset of puberty, the recurrence of menstruation
in women, and the time of occurrence of labor. The interstitial
glands distribute the basis of the powers and limitations of mas-
culinity and femininity. Abnormalities of these glands also
affect the individual all along the line, in all of his aspects. So
affected he may apparently change into a wholly different being.
He may change in size, in the shape of his head, feet and hands,
as well as in his habits, aptitudes and dispositions. So he may
find it necessary to purchase an entirely different size of hat,
more commodious clothes, and newly fitting gloves and shoes.
At the same time, his family, relatives and friends, discover that
the erstwhile generous, frank, neat and punctual and liked, has
become stingy and suspicious and slovenly and hated. And all
because a gland has begun to undersecrete or to oversecrete.
The transformation will be slight or marked, depending entirely
upon the extent of impairment, positive or negative, of the gland
involved.
But it is not only in the shaping of the normal individual's
architecture that the internal secretions dominate. Over that
subtle something known in all languages as vitality, expressive
of the intensity of feeling, thought and reactions in cells, they
rule supreme. Gay vivacity and grim determination, the tem-
perament of a Louis XIV, and the soul of a Cromwell, are the
crystallizations of these chemical substances acting upon the
brain.
Internal Secretion Varieties
There is no better way of illustrating the influence of the
internal secretions upon the normal than the analysis of the
variation of traits with variations in glandular predominances.
The general build of an individual, his skeletal type, the pro-
portion between the size of his arms and that of his legs, as well
as that between his trunk and his lower extremities, whether he
is to be tall, lanky and loutish, or short, squat and dumpy, are
to be considered. Different facial types are the expressions of
underlying endocrine differences. The head and skull offer a
118 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
number of clues to the controlling secretions in the blood and
tissues. Whether the forehead is to be broad or narrow, the
distance between the eyes, the character of the eyebrows, the
shape and size and appearance of the eyes themselves, the mould
of the nose and jaws and the peculiarities of the teeth, are all so
determined. The skin, in its color, texture, the quantity and dis-
tribution of its fatty and other constituents, eruptions and
weather reactions, is influenced. Also the mucous membranes,
the color and lustre and structure of the hair, as well as its
general distribution and development, are hieroglyphics of the
endocrine processes below the surface. Whether the muscles are
massive or sparse, atrophied or hypertrophied, soft or hard,
easily fatigable or not, bespeak conditions in the glandular chain.
In short, we must regard the individual as an immensely compli-
cated pattern of designs traced by the hormones as the primary
etchers of his development. Though it must be admitted that
the number of unknown and unsolved relations in the pattern are
still enormously great, enough has been established to make
possible a rough working analysis of the particular, unique
organism placed before us for examination as Mr. Smith, Mrs.
Jones, or Miss Smith-Jones.
What Is the Normal?
Anthropologists, from the beginning of anthropology, have
battled in vain for a satisfactory inclusive definition, or, at least,
description of the normal. With the introduction of the biometric
method, the goal at last appeared within sight. A cocked hat
curve expressing the distribution and range of the normal looks
formidable. The attainable turned out a mirage, for the curves
construe table by the measurement of traits of a population only
proved the truth of the old axiom that all transitions and varia-
tions between extremes exist. The Problem of the Normal
seemed more elusive than ever. And the best that could be done
for the elucidation of its mystery, was to apply and observe the
law of averages.
From the endocrine standpoint, the reason for this becomes
clear. The biometric method concerned itself with externals,
with, as it were, symptoms. Since these external signs are but
manifestations of the inner chemical reactions, of which the
internal secretions are the determining reagents, or factors, with
permutations and combinations possible in all directions, the
HOW GLANDS INFLUENCE THE NORMAL BODY 119
diversity and variability of each individual and his traits stands
explained and understandable. The normal, as the perfect or
nearly perfect balance of forces in the organism, at any given
moment, emerges as a more definite and real concept than that
which would abstract it from a curve of variations. Moreover,
since the directive forces within the organism are pre-eminently
the internal secretions, the normal becomes definable as their
harmonious balancing or equilibrium, a state which tends not to
undo (as the abnormal does) but to prolong itself.
The potential combinations and compensations, antagonisms
and counteractions, attainable within the endocrine glands as an
interlocking directorate, point the cause for the elusive quality
of the normal. Tall men and short men, blonde women and
dumpy women, lanky hatchet-faced people, stout moon-faced
people, Falstaff and Queen Elizabeth, George Washington and
Abraham Lincoln, Disraeli and Walt Whitman, Caesar and
Alexander, as well as Mr. Smith and Miss Jones come within
the range of the normal. There are all kinds and conditions
and sorts of men and women, and all kinds and sorts and con-
ditions of the normal, because an incalculable number of har-
monious relations and interactions between the endocrines are
possible, and do actually occur. The standard of the normal
must obviously not be a single standard, but a series of stand-
ards, depending upon which glands predominate, and how the
others adapt themselves to its predominance. Adrenal-centered
types, thyroid-centered types, pituitary-centered types, thymus-
centered types, as well as hyphenated compounds of these, such
as the pituitary-adrenal types, exist as normals. They can be
conceived of as normal types because they exist as normal types.
The Skeletal Types
Now men, for as long as we have any knowledge of their
thoughts and classifications and attitudes, have been accustomed
to first think of one another, to classify and size one another
as tall or short, slender or broad, thin or corpulent. The bio-
logical necessity, indeed, instinct of the one animal to relate
the other animal to aggressive or harmless agencies in his sur-
roundings, accounts for this. Relatively, of course, for all these
modes of description imply offensive or defensive possibilities of
the stimulus for the recorder in relation to himself. The interest
in stature is fundamental, and has persisted in the most civilized
120 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
nations. The relationship of height and weight, as well as of
length and breadth, to other physical traits, have formed the
subject of scientific study. There is, for instance, the classifi-
cation of Bean, who divided mankind generally into two types,
those of a medium size, stocky long legs and arms, large hands
and feet, short trunk, and face large in comparison to the head
(the meso-onto-morphs) and those who were either tall and
slender, or small and delicate, with the smaller face, eyes close
together, long, high, narrow nose, and trunk longer as compared
with the extremities (the hyper-onto-morphs) . Bean showed,
too, that the hypers (to use a short word to contrast with the
mesos) were present to the extent of almost a hundred per cent
in a series of tuberculosis, and about ninety per cent in a series
of central nervous system disease. All of which is exceedingly
interesting and suggestive, but throws no light upon the under-
lying mechanisms of statures.
Stature and Growth
Stature is essentially determined by the growth of the long
bones. They are the pace-makers, and the muscles and soft
tissues follow the pace they set. Now ithe primary determinant,
catalyst or sensitizer of the growth of the long bones is the
anterior pituitary. All statures should therefore be first scruti-
nized from the point of view of the pituitary. Individuals over
six feet tall or under five feet five inches should be looked upon
as having a pituitary trend. This pituitary trend may be pri-
mary, due to its own undergrowth or overgrowth, or it may be
due to lack of inhibition from the sex glands such as occurs in
eunuchs and eunuchoids, or excessive or premature inhibition
from them as happens in certain salacious dwarfs.
The long bones grow at a point of junction between the bone
proper and an overlying layer of gristle or cartilage, known as
the zone of ossification. It is upon this zone of ossification that
the various growth influences appear to focus and concentrate
their efforts, among them the internal secretions. After growth
has been finished, that is, after adolescence, these zones of ossifi-
cation close, so that growth is no longer possible unless they
become reactivated. Upon the zone of ossification must act the
pituitary, and indirectly the thyroid, the interstitial cells, the
thymus and the adrenals. Individuals oversized or undersized
either belong to the pituitary type, or if hyphenated, have the
HOW GLANDS INFLUENCE THE NORMAL BODY 121
pituitary as one of the dominants in their composition. The
necessities of child-bearing determine a greater angle between
trunk and lower extremities in the female. Underactivity of
the pituitary, for instance, will prevent the development of the
normal angle. The ratio in length of the upper limbs to the
lower is a fairly constant relationship for each sex normally.
Deviations occur with a break somewhere in the chain of co-
operation of the internal secretions controlling the growth of
bone.
Hands, Fingers and Toes
The size and shape and general configuration of the hands,
fingers and toes are details that tell an endocrine tale. Students
of hands naturally have grouped them as the long slender and
the short, broad, the bony and the well-filled out, the tapering
fingers and the stumpy. The character of a hand is determined
anatomically by the length and breadth of the bones, the amount
and distribution of fat, and the thickness and elasticity of the
skin. Over these, the essential control lies in the pituitary and
the thyroid. So we find that pituitary types have, when there is
overseer etion, large bony, gross hands, spade-shaped, or when
there is undersecretion, hands that are plump, with peculiarly
tapering fleshy fingers. The hyperthyroid has long slender
fingers, the subthyroid pudgy, coarse, ugly foreshortened hands,
often cold, and bluish.
Facial Types
An artist will see in a face the past history of generations, a
narrative of the adventures of the blood, a record of tears and
smiles, wrinkles and dimples, the victories and defeats of buried
drudgery and romance. These signatures which the Faculty of
Life have scribbled or engraved over it as upon a diploma, be-
speak for him spiritual moments. To the student of the internal
secretions the lines, expressions, attitudes are important for they
tell of the state of tensions and strains in the vegetative appa-
ratus with which they are inseparably connected. It is when one
comes to the consideration of the face as a complex of brows,
eyes, nose, lips and jaws that he becomes most interested. For
in the modeling and tone of every one of the features each of the
endocrine glands has something to say. In consequence there
122 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
has been discribed the hyperpituitary face, and the hyperthyroid
face, the subthyroid face and the subpituitary face, the adrenal
face, the eunuchoid face and the ovarian face and also the
thymic.
To bring to mind an immediate complete image of the hyper-
thyroid face, one should think of Shelley. The oval shape of it,
with the delicate modeling of all the features, the wide, high
brow, the large, vivacious, prominent eyes with the glint of a
divine fire in them and the sensitive lips all belong to the classi-
cal picture. Generally flushed over the cheek-bones, there is
undoubtedly a certain effeminate effect associated with it. At
least, it is the least animal and brutish of the faces of man.
On the other hand, the subthyroid face is that of the cretin
and cretinoid idiot, in a mild degree. So characteristic that we
recognize the portrait in the descriptions of Pliny in early Roman
times and of Marco Polo in his Asiatic travels. Coarseness, dull-
ness, pudginess are its keynotes. Irregular features, tendency to
wide separation of the eyes and pug nose, sallow, puffy com-
plexion, waxy thickened nose and eyelids, deep-set, listless, lack-
lustre eyebrows, and thick prominent lips comprise the catalogue
of the physiognomy. On the whole, the sort of face one passes
in the street as stupid and common. But there are a number
of fascinating and marvelous varieties of the stupid and common.
The adrenal face is most often dark or freckled. It tends to
be irregularly broadish. It is hairy, one is struck forcibly.
There is a low hair line, which makes the brow appear rather
low, and there is a good deal of hair over the cheek bones. The
adrenal type is round headed.
The face of the hyperpituitary is striking and pretty sharply
defined. It is long and narrow, with a tendency to prominence
of the bony parts. Square, protruding jaw, high, thin, straight
nose, emphasized eyebrows, and marked cheek-bones, comprise
the leading points in its composition. On the other hand, the
subpituitary is more rounded and trends toward the full moon
effect, the chin recedes, the cheek-bones are buried under fat, the
nose spreads more and is flatter. In its general expression, there
is a complacence and tranquillity which is often mistaken for
sleepiness, and often actually is dullness.
The eunuchoid face is usually fat with puffy eyelids. The
skin is smooth and cool, marble-like often, poor in pigment and
color. Sometimes it is sallow, wrinkled and senile in a man in his
early twenties. At others, it is distinctly feminine in its hair-
HOW GLANDS INFLUENCE THE NORMAL BODY 123
lessness, and the delicate texture of the skin, as well as in the
clean-cut patterning of the features. Every gradient between
premature senility and sex inversion is encountered.
The thymic face frequently stamps its possessor at sight. Its
owner has a smooth, soft skin, with little or no hair, and a dead
white or "peaches-and-cream" complexion. One wonders, when
unacquainted with the type, who the man's barber is, or where
he learned to shave himself so well. It may be curiously velvety
to the touch and swept by a faint sheen. Among children occur
the most exquisite samples of the kind designated as the angelic
child. The face is finely moulded and beautifully proportioned,
features artistically chiselled, eyes blue or brown with long
lashes, cheeks transparent with rapid, fleeting variations in color-
ing, thin lips, and oval chin. In the adult, the chin is receding,
and the mouth seems underdeveloped in one variety.
The Teeth
As closely connected with the internal secretions as are the
bones of the face and the skull are the teeth. Tooth formation
is essentially a modified bone formation. And as the bones of
the face are influenced, so are the teeth influenced. But as each
tooth is a miniature organ, inspectable by the eye as a unit, the
action of the ductless glands is more obviously reflected for the
observer to read. By their teeth shall ye know them. Upon the
whole history of the evolution of each tooth, in the growth of the
dental follicle and its walls, the fruition of the dentinal germ,
the making of the enamel organ, the dental pulp, the cementum
and the peridental membrane, the endocrines leave their mark.
There are certain general statements about the teeth and the
internal secretions that can be made. The teeth of the thyroid
types are pearly, glistening, small and regular; in other words,
the teeth to which poets have devoted sonnets. The pituitary
types have teeth that are large and square and irregular, with
prominence of the middle incisors, and a marked separation or
crowding of them. The interstitial types have small irregular
upper teeth, with turned, stumpy or missing lateral incisors.
The thymus types have youthful, milky white teeth that are
thin and translucent, and scalloped or crescentic at the grinding
edge. The teeth of the adrenal type are all well-developed, tend
to have a yellowish color, with a reddish tinge to the grinding
surfaces.
124 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
The degree and regularity of development of the middle upper
cutting, biting teeth, as distinguished from the grinding molars,
the middle and lateral incisors, and the canines offer further
guides to the endocrine constitution analysis. The size of the
central incisors seems to be directly proportional to the degree
of pituitary predominance. On the other hand, the size and
regularity of the lateral incisors seem proportional to the
influence of the interstitial cells. When these are inferior in the
make-up of an individual, the lateral incisors are nearly always
distorted. The size of the canines appears to be a measure of
adrenal activity. Long sharply pointed canines mean well-
functioning adrenal gland equipment to start in with, inherited
from a bellicose progenitor.
No individual peculiarities of the teeth are accidental. Just
as the absence of hair on the face in a man or a moustache effect
in a woman stand for some definite stress or strain in the
mechanics of interaction of the internal secretions, so likewise
do variations in dentition, as to the time of eruption of the
teeth, their position and quality, and their resistance to decay.
Proper balance between the thymus and pituitary will permit
the eruption of the teeth within the normal time limits, both the
milk teeth and the permanent teeth. When there is equilibrium
between the pituitary and the gonads, the teeth will be regular
in shape and position. Carious teeth, in children and adults, some-
times indicate endocrine imbalance. Thyroid and adrenal bal-
ance determines the resistance to decay of the molars. Early
decay of the molars in children is significant of insufficiency of
the thyroid. When the first permanent molar, which should
appear in the upper arch in its usual position between the sixth
or eighth years, does not, there has been a prenatal disturbance
of the pituitary, according to Chayes and others. Rapid decay
of the teeth in childhood should always call attention to the
parathyroids.
In pregnancy, the teeth suffer particularly because of dis-
turbances 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 abnormali-
ties or divergences from type. The teeth thus furnish a good
deal of information concerning the distribution of the balance of
power among the hormones.
HOW GLANDS INFLUENCE THE NORMAL BODY 125
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 ex-
pression of the blending action of the different internal secre-
tions. 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 per-
centages of the pigments in each particular skin, can be deter-
mined by means of a rotating disc. Thus a white person's skin
may have the following composition:
Black >t. . . 8% Red 50%
Yellow sh. . . . 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 hyper-
thyroid and the subadrenal is soft and moist, because of their
antagonistic effects upon the sympathetic system. The sub-
thyroid 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.
There is a curious variation among the different internal secre-
tion types in the reaction of the skin to stroking. When the
skin, especially the skin over the shoulders, the breasts and the
abdomen, is stroked with some blunt object, the blood vessels
react either by a greater filling up or emptying of themselves.
126 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
The latter occurs most regularly in the subadrenal types, the
former in the hyperthyroid. Both forms of reaction run parallel
to the different check or drive effects of the vegetative apparatus.
With too much drive, that is, too much thyroid, there is the
flushing reaction; with too little check, that is, with too little
adrenal, there is the whitening. These differences probably ex-
plain the emotional reactions of the face. In anger, for example,
some people become a dead white, others a fiery red. Whether
one will do one or the other may depend upon the relative pre-
dominance of the thyroid or of adrenal in the individual.
In the distribution of fat beneath and throughout the skin all
of the endocrine glands appear to have a voice. The typically
hyperthyroid and hyperpituitary individuals tend to be thin,
as well also as those who have well-functioning or excessively
functional interstitial cells. In all of these the administration
of the respective internal secretions increases the burning up of
material in the body, and all of them have a higher rate of tissue
combustion than their confreres, with a subthyroid or sub-
pituitary keynote in their cell chemistry, or with insufficient in-
terstitial cell action. Generally the latter have a very dry skin,
the former a moist skin. With delayed involution of the pineal,
obesity results.
The elasticity of the skin is another quality that varies with
the concentration in the blood of the internal secretions. Elas-
ticity of the skin, its recoil upon being stretched like a rubber
band, may be taken as a measure of the activity of all the
endocrine glands. For, as can be noticed especially upon the back
of the hand, the older a man grows, the less elastic becomes the
skin. In older people, raising the skin upon the back of the hand
will cause it to stand up as a ridge for a few seconds and then
slowly to return to the level of the surrounding skin. Whereas
in a youthful person it will quickly snap back into place. This
quality of elasticity of the skin is due to the presence in it of
the so-called yellow elastic fibres, cell products, with a resilience
greater than anything devised by man. The preservation of the
resilience is a function of the internal secretions. Thus, after
loss of the thyroid, the ridging effect characteristic of senility
can be produced in one young as measured by his years. It
has been said that a man is as old as his arteries, and also
that as he is as old as his skin. It might better be said that
he is as old as his elastic tissue, young when he is rich in it, old
when poor and losing it. And as elastic tissue and internal secre-
HOW GLANDS INFLUENCE THE NORMAL BODY 127
tions stand in the relation of created and creators, or at least
preserved and preservers, a man may be said to be as old, that
is as young, fresh and active as his ductless glands.
The Hair
There is no characteristic of the human body, except perhaps
the teeth, more influenced in its quality, texture, amount and
distribution than the hair. And again, each of the glands of
internal secretion plays a part, but most importantly the thyroid,
the suprarenal cortex and the interstitial sex glands. All con-
tribute their specific effect, and the blend, the sum of the addi-
tions and subtractions constituting their influences, appears as a
specific trait of the individual, a trait so significant as to be
used by the professionals absorbed in the study of man, the
anthropologists, as a criterion of racial classifications.
Some acquaintance with the history of the normal growth of
hair is necessary to its understanding. There develops during
the life of the fetus within the womb a curious sort of wooly hair
everywhere over the entire body (excepting the palms and soles
which remain hairless throughout life) , remarkably soft and flut-
tery — the lanugo. At about the eighth month of intra-uterine
existence, a good deal of this lanugo is lost, to be replaced on the
head and eyebrows by a crop of thick, coarse, pigmented real
hair. So it happens that at birth the infant's hair is a queerly
irregular growth, a mixture of what is left of the general lanugo
development, and the localized patches of the more human hair.
Until puberty this children's hair remains the same, although at
times, particularly after dentition, and after infectious diseases
which undoubtedly alter the relations of the internal secretions,
changes of color and texture occur. Then, with sexual ripening,
there appear in males the so-called terminal hairs, over the
cheeks and lips and chin, and, in both sexes, in the folds under
the shoulders and over the lower abdomen, the hair which might
be distinguished as the sex hair in contradistinction to the juve-
nile hair of the head, the extremities and the back.
Now the smoothness of the face in children is connected with
the activity of the thymus and pineal glands. Among individuals
in whom the juvenile thymus persists after puberty, no growth
of hair occurs on the face, and in precocious involution or destruc-
tion of the pineal, hair appears on the face and in other terminal
regions in children of six or less, a symptom classical in the child
128 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
who suffered from a tumor of the pineal, and discussed immor-
tality with his physicians. It is probable that these thymus
and pineal effects are indirect through their action upon the sex
glands. For in the types with persistent juvenile thymus there
occurs a maldevelopment of the sex glands, while in those with
early pineal recession the sex glands bloom simultanously with
the appearance of adolescent hair and mental traits. The hasten-
ing of sexual hair by tumors of the adrenal gland may also be
put down to a release from restraint of the interstitial sex cells.
There are certain spheres in the hair geography of the body,
over which particular glands may be said to rule or to possess
a mandate. The hair of the head seems to be primarily under
the control of the thyroid. Thus in cretins reconstructed by thy-
roid feeding, the straight, rather animal hair becomes lustrous
and fine, silken and curly. In the thyroid deficiency of adults,
a prominent phenomenon often is the falling out of the hair in
handfuls. Baldness is frequently associated with a progressive
decrease of the concentration of thyroid in the blood. At the
same time, there tends to be a thinning of the eyebrows, especially
of the outer third.
The hair of the face in males, and the other terminal hairs in
both males and females, is regulated by the sex glands primarily.
In the female, the ovary, that is to say, the interstitial cells of
the ovary, inhibit the growth of hair upon the face. In destruc-
tive disease of the ovaries, as well as in other affections of it,
hair in the form of moustache, beard and whiskers may appear in
female. That is why in women after the grand sex change of
life, the menopause, hair often grows in the typically male regions
because of loss of the inhibiting influence of the ovarian internal
secretion upon them. After castration of the ovaries, the same
may result. Removal of the male sex glands, or disturbances of
them, will interfere with the proper development of the normal
facial hair. Of the hair of the chest, the abdomen and the back,
the adrenals seem to be the controllers. Adrenal types have
hairy chests in males, and hair on the back in females. They have
also a good deal of hair upon the abdomen. The hair on the
extremities varies a good deal with the pituitary. People with
hair upon hands, arms and legs, alone, are generally pituitary, or
have a striking pituitary streak in their make-up.
When the adrenals increase in size in childhood, a remarkable
triad follows — general hairiness, adiposity and sexual precocity.
One fact should be noted. When the adrenals evoke precocity
HOW GLANDS INFLUENCE THE NORMAL BODY 129
and an early awakening of the secondary sex characteristics, it is
a masculine precocity, and an approximation to the masculine
even in females. There is a definite trend toward an increase
of the male in the individual's composition at the expense of the
female. We shall have to consider this in greater detail when
we analyze the internal secretion basis of masculinity and fe-
mininity. In general, the degree of general hairiness is an index
to the amount of adrenal influence upon the organism. All the
endocrines which affect the hair growth also act upon the seba-
ceous glands which oil the skin.
The Eyes
Eyes present clues to internal secretion constitutions dependent
upon influences of architecture and function. The thyroid eye is
typical. It is large, brilliant and protruding. The individual is
"pop-eyed." On the other hand, subthyroidized eyes tend to be
sunken and lustreless. The eyes of a pituitary type are either
set markedly apart, or close together, with the hair at the root
of the nose so prominent as to constitute a separate bridge known
as the nasal brow. The size of the pupil, and its humidity, which
have so much to do with the expression of the eye, vary directly
with the activities of the driving and checking divisions of the
vegetative system, and are a pretty good index as to which, at the
time of observation, is predominant. When the check system is
in control, the pupils are large and dilated. When its antagonist
and rival, the drive system, is on top, the pupils are small and
contracted. The reactions of the pupils when charged by strong
emotion, like fear or anger, likewise turn upon the status of check
or drive internal secretions in the economy of the organism at the
time the exciting agent presents itself.
Muscles
It would seem, at first sight, that organs like muscles, mechan-
ical instruments for the manipulation of the organism in space,
would be more or less independent of the subtler processes of inter-
nal chemistry of the blood and tissues. But no assumption would
be more beside the mark. Just as much as the bones and viscera,
the teeth and the hair, they show grossly how they are being
influenced by all the endocrine glands. So thyroid types generally
have a skeleton sparsely covered with a muscular mantle. Pitui-
130 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
tary types have large well-developed muscles. The pineal gland
has some definite relation to muscle chemistry not yet probed.
Thus, it has been shown that when the pineal has been completely
destroyed prematurely by lime deposits in it, there is con-
comitant a wasting of muscles in places. This waste is
sometimes replaced by fat. Pictures and images in wood and
stone of these muscle freaks dating from the fifteenth, sixteenth,
and seventeenth century are in existence. Then there is the extra-
ordinary fatigability of the muscles which occurs in the thymus
types, who nevertheless have large well-rounded muscles, a
paradox of contradiction between anatomy and physiology. Such
a type, for instance, may be picked out by a football coach for
an important position in a line-up, simply on the tremendous
impressiveness of the muscle make-up, only to see him bowled
over and out in the first scrimmage. The tone of muscles, the
quality of resisting firmness or yielding softness, is essentially
determined by the adrenal glands, especially in time of stress
and strain.
Brown-Sequard was the first to show that extracts of sex glands
could increase the capacity for muscular work. Whether this
was a direct effect upon the muscles, or indirect through the
nerves or other endocrines, no one can say. Certainly the car-
riage of an individual, outer symptom of the inner tonus among
his muscles and tendons, may be said to be as distinctively an
endocrine affair as the color of his skin. And like its variations,
variations of their tone, development, reactivity, fatigability,
and endurance may be traced to corresponding states of overac-
tion, or underaction, and odd combinations of the different hor-
mones. Much remains to be learned about them and the manner
of their control. Such an affliction as flatfoot, dependent upon a
laxity of the ligaments in one who seems perfectly healthy and
strong, may lead the analyst back to a thymus-centered person-
ality. That is but one example.
Since, too, muscle attitudes, muscle tensions and muscle relaxa-
tions play so large a part in the production of fundamental mental
states: the attitudes, moods, memories and will reactions, the
vegetative apparatus enters, to play its part as a determinant.
Sex
Over no domain of the body have the endocrines a more abso-
lute mandatory than over that of the whole complex of sex. Both
HOW GLANDS INFLUENCE THE NORMAL BODY 131
as regards the primary reproductive organs, their size and shape,
and the character of their implantation, malformations and anom-
alies, as well as the physical and mental traits lumped as the
secondary sexual, puberty, maturity, and senility, voice changes
and erotic trends, virility and femininity, the internal secretions
are dictators at every step. So significant are these, that even
a rough summary of the discoveries and the outlook in the field
involves some consideration of the details.
CHAPTER VI
THE MECHANICS OF THE MASCULINE AND THE
FEMININE
It needs a poet to chant the epic of sex. The mystery of it
puzzled the minds of the earliest Sumerian thinkers. As a
source of deepest excitement, it generated the most revolting
ceremonies, bizarre customs, astounding cruelties and incompre-
hensible stupidities of the race. Men and women, as soon as they
have done with their usual business of keeping themselves free
of disagreeable sensations, hunger, cold, fear of enemies, betake
themselves to it as a primary interest all over the world. The
most advanced psychologists of the day link the sex impulse
with the windings and twistings of all human activity.
Yet the Homer of sex through the ages is still to come. But
at all times the mystery evoked speculation and attempt at
explanation. Acting upon their theories as to the nature and
function of sex, men have, ever since the passing of the primeval
matriarchates, segregated women, equalized them, worshipped
them, or enslaved them. Opinions have varied from ancient
national aphorisms to the effect that women have no souls to the
most ultramodern utterances of biologist-publicists that the dif-
ferences between men and women are the differences between two
species. There are other epigrams, vast sweeping generalities,
extant concerning the nature of sex, and women particularly. All
partake of the complexity of truth and therefore own a certain
validity. Still, since as a matter of fact, these items have been
based upon superficial observations colored by the tradition and
verbiage of the milieu, they are valuable more as human docu-
ments, as material for the psychologist, than as scientifically
obtained data, able to stand unblinking before the rays of the
critical searchlights.
Science vs. Art
Not that all the vast accumulation needs to be thrown pell-mell,
higgledy-piggledy into the discard. The love lyrics of the poet,
132
MECHANICS OF THE MASCULINE AND FEMININE 133
the magic of the emotions of Shelley and Poe, for instance, with
their marvelous music and exquisite intonings of feeling, furnish
us with important information. They are the facts of the sex
life, as much as the song of the nightingale, or the mocking
laughter of the cuckoo pursued by its mate. So Sappho and
Elizabeth Browning, to take only two samples, have contributed
some of the feminine reaction. The erotic motive in literature
has but paralleled the erotic motive in life, with all of its vaga-
ries, delusions, confusions, ecstasies and suffering.
We have had concerning sex not knowledge, but a series of
attitudes, the attitude of virtue, the attitude of pruriency, the
attitude of good taste, the attitude of the theoretic libertine, the
attitude of the satyr's vulgarity. All these poses, of course, have
supplied not an iota to an understanding of the foundations of the
problems of sex, biologically considered. Thus, a masculine
master has coined that immortal phrase, the Eternal Feminine.
And in a matriarchate we should undoubtedly hear of the Eternal
Masculine. Each leaves one as unenlightened as the other.
A rough and ready code of life attributes certain grossly charac-
teristic qualities of mind and body to each sex. This is sup-
posed to be enough for common sense. Beyond that the mystery
has been wrapped in cotton wool. That perhaps explains the
enormous popularity of contemporary pornographic and so-called
sex literature.
There are bound up with sex feeling and sex knowledge many
customs, beliefs and habits, many legal statutes and social insti-
tutions, in the complex that is called sentiment, to which science
looms as the sacrilegious ogre who devours romance. Without
spending space upon the ravages of the sentimental idealist, cer-
tainly responsible for as much human disaster as the brutal real-
ist, it is manifest that a revolution in sex standards and
relations is inevitable as soon as the new doctrines filter down
as matters of fact to the levels of the common intelligence. And
surely, nothing else could be wished for in the world desired by
all of us, the world ruled by intelligence, and intelligent good will.
Sex Chemistry
A few general statements may be put down outright as material
to go upon before we proceed to details.
1. Femininity and masculinity have a definite chemical basis
in the reactions of the internal secretions of which they are the
134 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
expression. That is to say, that just as a precipitate of chalk
is formed when one throws some carbonate of soda into lime
water, so the masculine and the feminine are to be looked upon
as precipitates and crystallizations of a long series of linked
chemical reactions in the fluids of the body, in which the inter-
nal secretions play a determining part.
2. Femininity and masculinity are expressions of the inter-
play of all the internal secretions. It used to be said by smart cats
and accepted by the tabby cats, that a woman was a woman
because of her ovaries alone. It is being said by some great
discoverers of the day that man is a man because of his testes
alone. Neither of these dogmas is true. There are individuals
with ovaries who show every deviation from the feminine and
there are individuals with testes who exhibit every variation from
the masculine. The other endocrine glands are of equal impor-
tance.
3. There is no absolute masculine or absolute feminine. The
ideals of the Manly Man and the Womanly Woman were erected
by the blind ignorance of the nineteenth century illusionists, and
a line drawn to cleave them. But indeed biologically there exists
every transition between the masculine and the feminine. The
explanation of these different sex types consists in the dif-
ferent admixtures of the internal secretions possible and
actual. When we speak of the feminine we really mean the pre-
dominantly feminine. And when we speak of the masculine, we
mean the mainly masculine. Between, all sorts of transitions
are possible and occur.
Man in relation to the internal secretions we have considered
in reviewing the interstitial cells. To him, we shall return later.
Let us turn now to that fascinating subject of the ages, Woman.
What produces and maintains the Feminine?
The Cause of Sex
To all appearances, that inscrutable simplest of living things,
the fertilized ovum, beginning of the human, starts bisexual,
double sexed, both masculine and feminine, or perhaps neither
masculine nor feminine. Then a form develops. Then within
that form a patch of cells arise which the microscopist recog-
nizes as the forerunners of the male or the female reproductive
cells. Then some more development. And at birth, sex is
definitely settled, as far as the reproductive organs are concerned.
MECHANICS OF THE MASCULINE AND FEMININE 135
Our knowledge here, as everywhere, is still fragmentary. Sta-
tistical reviews seem to show that in times of stress, war, famine,
pestilence, more boys are born than girls. But that is neither
here nor there. It sheds no further light on the subject. Mono-
sexuality is a distinction of the human species: the sexes are
pretty clearly differentiated. In some animals, such as some
worms, there is a bisexuality of the individual. There are present
the reproductive organs of both sexes, capable of impregnating
other individuals as well as of being impregnated. In some of
these, even self-impregnation may occur. This is the condition
of hermaphroditism.
But the higher up one goes in the scale of evolution, the greater
becomes the distinction between the sexes. Anatomic hermaphro-
ditism becomes a rare anomaly. Life appears to have perfected
this trick of separate sexes, sex specialization, in short, for the
sake of the efficiency which goes with specialization.
When a germ cell divides, its nuclear material breaks up into
segments known as chromosomes. Now it has been found, for
example in the case of the common squash bug, anasa tristis,
that there are 22 chromosomes in the female, and 21 in the male.
In the female two of these are visibly different from the rest,
while in the male there is one odd one, the remaining 20 being
like the corresponding 20 of the female. Before the germ cell
becomes fit to mix with a germ cell of opposite sex, in the process
of fertilization, it must lose one half of these. So the number
of chromosomes for the species is kept the same or constant. This
is the process of maturation. In the process, when the chromo-
some number is halved among the females, 11 go into each
mature egg. But among the males, the odd chromosome, also
known as the X-chromosome, can perforce go only into half of
the sperm cells, leaving the others without it. So the sperm are
formed in equal numbers of 10 and 11 chromosomes respectively.
When fertilization occurs, and the sperm cell fuses with the egg,
the following may take place: (1) a ten chromosome sperm may
unite with the eleven chromosome egg, and produce a twenty-one
chromosome individual or (2) an eleven chromosome sperm may
unite with an eleven chromosome egg producing a twenty-two
chromosome individual. It has been found that the twenty-two
chromosome individual invariably develops into a female, and the
twenty-one into a male. Therefore, femaleness is a positive qual-
ity, dependent upon the action of the X-chromosome, and male-
ness an absence of femaleness, due to lack of the extra, odd
136 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
chromosome. In man, two X-chromosomes have been discovered,
half the sperm containing 12, and the other half containing only
10 chromosomes. The number of chromosomes in human cells
consequently is 22 in the male and 24 in the female.
The X-chromosome is the bearer of sex destiny. There still
remains the work to be done on the actual control of sex by
man, apart from its natural determination. For the time being,
let the feminists glory in the fact that they have two more
chromosomes to each cell than their opponents. Certainly there
can be no talk here of a natural inferiority of women.
The Secondary or Endocrine Sex Traits
Yet the matter is after all not so simple as this would make it
out to be. All that can be safely laid down is that the character
of the reproductive organs is determined by the extra chromo-
somes. And though these reproductive organs have a good deal
to do with the masculine or feminine quality of the organism as a
whole, through their internal secretions, they are not alone. All
the other internal secretions have their say in the final outcome,
determining what may be called the dominant sex quality, but
leaving inherent the latent soil of the other sex. This may
become active and dominant in its turn, under certain conditions
of stimulation, abnormality, or disease, dependent upon a re-
arrangement of status and influence among the ductless glands.
Bisexuality preceded monosexuality in the animal pedigree, and
co-exists with it even at the highest points of the genealogical
tree.
While from the standpoint of the species, the criterion of the
sex classification of its members will depend upon their capacity
to fertilize or to be fertilized, a quality that may, therefore, be
spoken of as the primary sex character, a number of other traits
have been evolved by sexual selection, the secondary sex traits.
They have come to be just as important, to the individual, as far
as his or her consciousness of sex attitudes and reactions to it are
concerned. The terms primary and secondary sex characteris-
tics, though inapt, must be allowed to stand.
These accessory sex-serving traits undoubtedly survived be-
cause of their usefulness in external adornment for attracting
attention in courtship, in the metabolic requirements of sex com-
bat and the sex act, and in the necessities of caring for the
young, until well-grown. The rooster's comb and spurs, the male
MECHANICS OF THE MASCULINE AND FEMININE 137
frog's claspers, the stag's antlers, and so on, are familiarly and
obviously so useful. Besides there are fundamental differences
in inner physiology. The human male consumes more oxygen
than the female per minute, since he has more red corpuscles in
his blood. In some caterpillars the blood is yellow in the males
and green in the females. W. I. Thomas has devoted an essay
of some fifty pages to a review of the organic differences between
man and woman. The ordinary criteria, employed every day by
the man in the street to distinguish man from woman may be
arranged as follows:
Man Woman
Hair on face Hairless face
Skin coarse and lean Skin fine and plump
Muscles powerful Relatively weak
Bones heavy Bones light
Aggressive — bass voice Reserved — treble voice
The Role of the Ovaries
While the primary sex characters, as such, are present and dis-
tinguishable from birth, quite the opposite holds for the secondary
sex traits. During childhood they are in abeyance or at least
pretty sharply suppressed. Girls and boys who are permitted
to dress alike, to play the same games and among whom no
consciousness of sex is encouraged are often difficult to tell apart.
The boys will be boys, and most of the girls tom-boys.
With puberty comes a marked change of attitude toward the
other sex. Puberty is the time of ripening of the specific germ
cells. It is then the ovaries begin to secrete ova ripe for fertili-
zation, and the testes begin to secrete sperm ready to fertilize,
Before this can happen an event announced in the female by the
onset of menstruation, two conditions must be fulfilled in the
endocrine history of the individual. There must be a certain
atrophy and retrogression of the thymus gland, and there must
likewise be a similar atrophy and retirement of the pineal gland.
Both of these involutions of the glands of childhood must occur
before the normal hypertrophy and development of the sex glands
and their secretions can start. Besides, there must be a mini-
mum activity of the thyroid, adrenal and pituitary glands.
Without them, below a certain minimum, the reproductive organs
V
138 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
and their secretions will remain infantile, causing a persistent
infantilism or delay of puberty.
Formerly there was ascribed to the ovaries, in a lump and
without qualification, an absolute despotism over the specifically
feminine functions of menstruation, gestation, parturition, and
lactation. Nowadays, we see its domain as a limited monarchy,
if not indeed as one sovereign state of a republic, a member equal
but not superior to the others of a board of directors. Its true
business comes down to two particular roles: first, the production
of ova, and, second, the secretion of a hormone or hormones.
Over the other functions once supposed its monopoly, all the
ductless glands rule.
What concerns us now is its internal secretion or secretions.
One of them is known as lutein and it has never been chemically
isolated in its pure form. The existence of lutein, like the exist-
ence of electricity, is an inference, something we are sure is there
because of its effects. It originates in a remarkable part of the
ovary, the corpus luteum. Besides, there are the products of the
interstitial cells, the creations of a special layer of cells around
the ovum, the membrana granulosa. They produce a substance
tonic to the uterus.
When the ovaries are removed, there occurs an atrophy of the
womb muscle, due to loss of this tonic substance. This atrophy,
accompanied by an abolition of the normal periodic uterine con-
traction, makes conditions unfavorable to pregnancy. It has been
claimed that the secretion of the corpus luteum is necessary for
the complete progress of a pregnancy. Cases are on record, how-
ever, of ovaries taken out soon after the onset of pregnancy,
without interference with the gestation.
Castration is comparable in every way with the menopause
or the time of cessation of sexual life, a process that might be
called self-castration. It produces certain general constitutional
effects. Adiposity often develops, undoubtedly associated with
underfunction of the thyroid and pituitary glands. yThe woman
breathes less oxygen per minute and burns up less f<$d and tissue.
There is some disturbance of the lime balance with an increased
excitability of the vegetative nervous system. Concomitant is the
release of some brake upon the blood pressure mechanisms, so
that a family tendency to high blood pressure will flare up. Some
women are rendered unstable by the process, others are completely
transformed, and still others adapt themselves, with little or no
discomfort, to the new situation. The response to the revolution
MECHANICS OF THE MASCULINE AND FEMININE 139
in the cell-republic of the castrate by the other endocrines, the
thyroid, the pituitary, and the adrenals, determines which 'it is
to be.
For normally, with feminine puberty, there is an increased
activity of the thyroid, the posterior pituitary and the adrenal
medulla. These changes indeed constitute the formula of normal
feminization. In the male, the ripening of the testes is accom-
panied or perhaps preceded by augmented function of the adrenal
cortex and the anterior pituitary. This difference in bio-
chemistry accounts for the contrast between the sexes in the skin,
hair, fat, cartilage (voice) and bone changes. Ovary and adrenal
medulla and posterior pituitary and thyroid predominance con-
stitute the feminine formula, Testis and adrenal cortex and
anterior pituitary predominance comprise the masculine endocrine
directorate.
The Reactions of the Other Glands
As in so many other aspects, the facts about the various
influences exerted by the endocrine glands upon the reproductive
system are complicated and disjointed. A chink of light has
been let in upon a dark cave, and slowly the chink will widen.
But the gross effects are clear.
Around the ovary and the uterus, the endocrines gyrate as
the planets around the sun. The ovary is the organ for the
preservation and maturation of the germ plasm, that treasure
which the body is built but to cherish and hand on as a sacred
heirloom. The ova, the female egg cells, are the fundamental
concern of the ovary. Secondarily, it secretes its messengers to
keep the rest of the body, and particularly the other endocrines,
in touch with the necessities of the adventures of these ova. It is
thus enabled to bend every force and power at its command to
the service of the reproductive instinct.
In learning their role so well in the course of evolution, the
thyroid, the pituitary and the suprarenal have become indispen-
sable stimulants (in various degrees peculiar to the individual), to
the primary function of the ovary. As a consequence, to hold
the sex stimulating glands in check, there had to appear others,
restraining them and so preventing sex precocity. These are the
thymus and pineal. So closely are they all related that insuffi-
cient action of the thyroid, pituitary or adrenals may cause
atrophy of the ovaries and uterus, with abolition of genital
140 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
function. If the sex glands themselves fail, as occurs usually in
most women sometime in the forties, the thyroid-pituitary-adrenal
association must readjust itself to the new development. The
adaptation evokes the phenomena of the transition to a new life,
the climacteric.
The Significance of Puberty
Tracing the development of sex life there is a certain order of
events in a normal history. Before puberty, the ova have lain
asleep, as it were, in a cocoon state. Now with puberty they
awaken. And with them all those profound mechanisms and in-
ventions that have to do with their nutrition up to ripening.
Then revolve the cycles that are translated as menstruation, the
propulsion, fertilization and implantation of the ova in the uterus,
— the full development of the fetus, — its birth, and feeding after
birth — all of which are ductless gland controlled.
Samuel Butler once noted that:
"All our limbs and sensual organs, in fact, our whole body and
life, are but an accretion round and a fostering of the sperma-
tozoa. They are the real "He." A man's eyes, ears, tongue,
nose, legs and arms are but so many organs and tools that
minister to the protection, education, increased intelligence and
multiplication of the spermatozoa, so that our whole life is in
reality a series of complex efforts in respect of these, conscious
or unconscious according to their comparative commonness. They
are the central fact in our existence, the point towards which
all effort is directed."
Nothing could be said more truly of Woman, and the ova she
carries. All that transpires during pubescence is symptomatic of
the underlying tidal stir in the cells. The uterus becomes gorged
with blood periodically, to provide an enriched soil for the perhaps
to be fertilized ovum to plant itself. The breasts grow, and fat
is deposited in particular places as reserve material for the making
of milk. The qualities which are to appeal to the eye and ear
and even nostrils of the male appear. Instincts dawn, an inde-
pendence of spirit germinates, emulsified with a curious shyness
and coyness and a desperate loneliness and secrecy. And all be-
cause there have been let loose in the blood from the glands of
internal secretion the chemical substances that set going the
clockwork of sequential incidents elaborated and repeated through
countless aeons of time.
MECHANICS OF THE MASCULINE AND FEMININE 141
Feminine Precocity
Ordinarily, in the north temperate climate, puberty begins
about the fourteenth year, but may begin anywhere from the
tenth to the sixteenth. Feeding and environment indirectly, the
state of the internal secretions as a whole directly, determine
this. In girls, those definite signs, menstruation and the growth
of the breasts, before the age of ten, mean premature awakening
of the ovaries and a concomitant co-reaction of the other endo-
crines, creating the ensemble of maturity.
In females, the primary stimulus, the initial spark of femininity,
must originate in the ovary. There are other forms of precocity
in the female, dependent upon stimulations of other glands, but
these forms are masculinisms, a masculinization of the person-
ality, and not a true awakening of the feminine constitution. So
one must distinguish sharply between a precocity by masculiniza-
tion and precocity of premature feminization. The latter always
implies the touch of the fairy's wand upon the sleeping ovaries.
Sexual precocity in boys may be produced by a premature over-
activity not only of the specific reproductive organs: the testes,
but also by an early excess of secretion on the part of the cortex
of the adrenal gland or the pituitary gland, or by a too early
involution of the pineal or thymus. When such abnormalities of
adrenal, pituitary, thymus or pineal occur in girls, it is the mas-
culine streak in the hastening of growth that is made manifest.
All this emphasizes the relative bisexuality of every normal, no
matter how pronounced, when superficially viewed, his or her
form of predominating sex may be. Under the right conditions
recession of the most marked virility or femininity becomes
conceivable, and occurs.
The Secret of the Masculine
Masculinization having entered upon the scene, one may well
ask: what truly (which means chemically) lies behind all these
differences and divergences between male and female? What is
the secret of the variable internal secretion admixtures? You can
tell us that the recipes are different, the ingredients different, the
results different as a Nesselrode pudding is from, say, a rice
pudding. But what is the inner mechanism of the process? Since
the masculine and the feminine are but expressions of certain
142 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
relative capacities and potentialities, some single principle must
run through the making of both.
Recognizing of course the qualifications inherent in so broad a
statement the answer is: the handling of the lime salts. Life or-
iginated, or at least lived and worked for long ages in sea water.
During these eras the salts of the sea have come to play a
dominant role in its being. The lime salts, because of their
peculiar properties of dissolving or precipitating themselves ac-
cording to electrical conditions in their medium, have come to
occupy a central position in all the processes of growth, metabo-
lism and sex differentiation. So it is that masculinity may be
described as a stable, constant state in the organism of lime salts,
and the feminine as an unstable, variable state of lime salts. The
male skeleton contrasts with the female as the stronger, larger,
heavier and straighter because it is an expression of a greater
capacity to utilize, store and keep lime in the system. Women
throughout their reproductive period are liable to rapid and
pendulum-like fluctuations of their lime content.
Menstruation, pregnancy, lactation, all draw upon the stores
of lime, sometimes depleting them to the point of softening of
the bones and wrecking the whole skeleton. The endocrines
control the transport, and course, combinations and permutations
in the history of lime's progress among the cells, and are in turn
themselves affected by it. Man is relatively free of these liabili-
ties, and so remains man by his freedom from the recurrent crises
involving the lime salt reserve which constitute the essence of the
life story of woman.
The Sex Index
It follows from these considerations that when it becomes nec-
essary to size the sex composition of a man or woman, a meas-
urement becomes establishable which may be spoken of as the sex
index. To be able to say of Mr. Llewylln Jones that he is sixty
per cent masculine and forty per cent feminine, or of Mrs. Worth-
ington that she is seventy per cent feminine and thirty per cent
masculine would be of the utmost value under all kinds of cir-
cumstances. Unfortunately, lacking as we do the exact figures
of an advanced blood chemistry (yet in its most infantile in-
fancy) a direct indexing of the sort is impossible. But it is cer-
tainly conceivable, along the lines of measurement suggested
by the Binet tests and others, that a scale of evaluation of the
MECHANICS OF THE MASCULINE AND FEMININE 143
secondary sex traits may be elaborated, which would turn out as
valuable in understanding the frictions of the individual, and
more concretely, that aspect of it to which pathologists of the
mind are tracing so much needless misery and suffering: malad-
justed sexuality, expressed and suppressed. Nothing will con-
tribute more to harmonious adjustment for these sufferers than
recognition of the fact that we are all, more or less, partial
hermaphrodites.
The Functional Hermaphrodite
The complete or total hermaphrodite we define as the indivi-
dual who possesses the reproductive organs of the male and the
female, both testes and ovaries. So rare is such a combination
in man that for a long time its occurrence was doubted, descrip-
tions of it regarded as myth. However, undoubted cases are
on record, examined by the most careful of observers, of ovo-
testis or mixed reproductive organs. Strangely enough, the his-
tory of these cases, shows that at one time the masculine set, and
at another the feminine set, will hold sway over the sex traits and
functions. Blending does not happen.
Rare though the true hermaphrodite may be, the partial her-
maphrodite is relatively frequent. The mixed ensemble of the
directly contrasting type, such as the concomitance of testes with
feminine secondary sex traits, or of ovaries with masculine sex
traits, have been described from time immemorial as freaks.
Occurring even more frequently is the mixed sex ensemble, in
which the type of reproductive organs and of secondary sex
traits run roughly parallel, emulsified with certain traits of the
opposite sex. Physical features of one sex, instincts and mental
attitudes of the other co-exist in the same individual by reason
of an excess in one direction or a deficiency in another of the
internal secretions. The degree of masculine trend in a woman
is a crude measure of adrenal domination, the degree of feminine
deviation in a man is roughly proportional to the amount of
pituitary influences in his make-up.
Whether one or the other sex tendency will dominate depends
upon the quantity of sex hormone divergence from the
ideal normal. But also determinant are the environment stimuli
provoking excessive or deficient secretory reactions from the other
endocrines involved, through the vegetative nervous system. Such
especially are the associates of the mixed sex individual. Or-
144 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
dinarily the combative male and the submissive female are differ-
entiated by contrasts of skin and hair, fat and bone structure.
The combative male is built as a fighting machine, the submissive
female as an organism of attractive grace and beauty for impreg-
nation and parturition. When one sees the fragile woman aggres-
sive, the masculinoid woman submissive, one may infer an educa-
tion of experience that has brought the usually recessive glands
into the foreground, and by their hyperactivity imposed a bisex-
uality of function upon a unisexual anatomic structure. A man
apparently as formidable as a tyrannosaurus, may be ruled by
his wife for the same reason. These combinations of a single
organic sexuality with a functional bisexuality, based upon
internal secretion disturbances, are frequent, and merit the name
of functional hermaphrodites or mixed sex types.
Mixed Sex and the Family
The psychology of the family in its relation to the endocrine
traits of its members is something that still remains to be thor-
oughly worked out as a problem of tremendous importance. Par-
ticularly are the reactions of the mixed sex types to be carefully
considered. For, since the family is fundamentally a sex institu-
tion, devised to satisfy the sex needs, all the way from compan-
ionship to parenthood, it is apparent that the mixed sex types
will be tried the hardest by its inexorable conditions. It is in
relation to the mother (or nurse) first, the father next, and other
associates in proportion to their proximity, that the primary
endocrine-vegetative mechanisms, the germs of the growing soul,
become established. These are superimposed upon the hereditary
instinct apparatus.
Fear, rage and love reactions develop first in association with
the suckling reflex, and the accompaniments, the mother's smile
and voice, the color of her hair, eyes and skin, her breasts and
odors. Each time the babe reacts to a pleasant or unpleasant
stimulus, there is an outpouring of certain internal secretions, a
cessation of others, a tingling of certain vegetative nerves and
organs, a hushing of others. The ensemble of reactions tends
to be repeated around the same stimulus, until the whole becomes
automatic. One may observe the same process in the lower
animals. Offer a piece of meat to a dog and his mouth waters.
Ring a bell before offering the meat. Repeat this a number of
times, and after a while the mere ringing of the bell, without the
MECHANICS OF THE MASCULINE AND FEMININE 145
presence of the meat, will cause his mouth to water. This asso-
ciated vegetative secretion reflex is the most fundamental to
grasp in an understanding of the deepest strata of personality.
Now there are, besides the associated vegetative-endocrine
reactions, certain inborn automatic processes in the vegetative
system and in the internal secretion system, which work
automatically to produce increased intravisceral pressures. The
reduction of these pressures below the point of their intrusion
upon consciousness, their relief, as we say, also form the centers
of constellations around feelings of satisfaction or love. Such, for
example, are the voiding of excretions. Sooner or later, these
automatic reactions, and the associated reflexes formed around
the mother, father and other associates, come into conflict. In-
hibitions or prohibitions of the automatic act at certain times or
moments are imposed by somebody. And so there occurs a pitting
of the automatic mechanism against the associated reflex. Con-
flict with adjustment by suppression must occur. Thus a sense
of self as active wisher (for the automatically pleasant expe-
rience), and punishable suppressor (of the same in favor of the
acquired associated reflex) develops.
So far, so good. Compromise by regulation from above, from
the brain, of the automatic reactions follows, as training. No
absolute repression is forced, no absolute encouragement is in-
dorsed. Harmonious equilibrium, or normality, continues. But
now there come upon the scene the unconscious fears.
In the paleontology of character, these fears are the deepest
strata, the eocene era, so to speak, of the soul. They are the
hardest to get at and the most silent, as well as the most dominant
of the influences which guide conduct. In Sir Walter Raleigh's
words: P
"Passions are best likened to streams and floods.
The shallows murmur, the deeps are dumb."
During the first period of childhood, up to five or six, the pri-
mary fears group themselves around the taboos and secrets of
its life.
Though we have every reason for believing that the sex
glands are acting in some way upon the organism during this
time, nothing definite is known. Yet, as the numerous
studies of the subconscious recently made prove, sex curiosity
like the other curiosities, flowers. More than about the
146 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
automatic visceral reactions, these curiosities evoke the repressive
imperatives of the associates, the mother and father es-
pecially. These repressive influences may be and often are the
effects of ignorance, prudishness, vulgarity, or homosexu-
ality, or the sex perversions that are known as sadism and
masochism. But by the necessities of the case, the sex wishes
become overlayed by reflexes associated with the mother and
father and close associates as love. This might be termed the
oligocene. As the circle of acquaintance widens, other loved
objects usher in the miocene phases of the development. With
these become interspersed various hates and detestations, deliber-
ately cultivated and accepted by the consciousness. So we have
a cross-slice of the personality in the first five or six years of
childhood.
But now, with the onset of the second dentition, a subtle
change begins in the endocrine equations of the body. The
second dentition itself is an expression of a certain internal secre-
tion wave passing through the cells; an increase of action of some
hormones, a decrease of others. And a consciousness of physical
sexuality appears, while the outlines of character, hitherto mere
tracings, become firmer, heavier, quasi-indelible lines. That
there is some activity on the part of the internal secretions of
the sex glands, the ovaries and testes, can be demonstrated by
accurately charting the behaviour of a boy or girl after this
time. It will be found that there is a cyclic variation of health
and conduct, more or less marked of course in each case. A cold
may appear periodically at the end of each month, an increase of
irritability and waywardness may be observed, or, on the con-
trary, a decrease of the regular restless playfulness. The ghost
of sex begins to haunt the sceneQ
Now all kinds of possibilities of conflict emerge. The child is
still a bisexual, growing into a mixed sex type, depending upon
the nature and amount of its internal secretions. The influencing
adult of the family, the most important of the external factors
encouraging or depressing the tendencies of the child, possesses
a fairly fixed ideal of monosexuality which he or she, generally
quite unconsciously, seeks to impose upon it. A doting feminine
mother will make her son as much as possible like her husband: if
she dislikes her husband, as much as possible like her father or
grandfather. A masculinized mother will tend to make a sex ob-
ject out of the son, however, which means his feminization. But,
on the internal secretion side, the boy may be definitely masculine.
MECHANICS OF THE MASCULINE AND FEMININE 147
That is, after adolescence he would be strongly masculine, if the
vegetative-endocrine mechanisms created by the mother's person-
ality had not slipped into the inside track, so to speak. As a con-
sequence, continual subconscious conflict between the two sets of
sex reaction will, sooner or later, disturb, perhaps disrupt and
ruin his life.
So an infant may start life with a fairly balanced endocrine
equipment, with its wake of a normal life (barring accidents
and infections) , and yet he may end as an inferior, insane, crim-
inal, or failure directly because of establishment of conflict be-
tween himself as one sort of sex type, and his obligatory associates
of another sort of mixed sex type. This applies also to the
mother-daughter, the father-son, and the father-daughter rela-
tionship.
Male and female created He them, is a bald misstatement of
the facts. Male and female emerge as final by-products of
endocrine heredity, environmental treatment and adaptation.
Often the male-female, the female-male, persist anatomically, or
are forced to persist functionally. Society, constructed upon the
Biblical dogmas of man as a fallen angel, and absolute sex, is re-
sponsible for much misery and suffering meted out to the func-
tional hermaphrodite, as we shall see later in an analysis of the
endocrine character of Oscar Wilde. The privileges and powers of
sex relationship, marriage and parenthood, should be safeguarded
for the mixed sex type, the man or woman with the variable sex
index. For there are no tragedies in life more pitiful than those
in which an aggressive masculinely built type is forced to assume
a submissive, receptive, passive, feminine role and vice versa, the
tragedy of compelled homosexuality, because of wrong associates.
Masochism and Sadism
The functional hermaphrodite enables us, too, to understand
the phenomena of masochism and sadism, to a certain extent,
on the chemical side. The masculine personality, the combination
of masculine, e.g., adrenal cortex and gonad internal secretion
predominance, is built for aggression. The feminine personality,
the union of feminine, e.g. thyroid and ovarian superiority, is con-
structed for submission. Reverse the possibilities, or confuse them,
as occurs in the functional hermaphrodite, and the attitudes be-
come reversed or perverted. So a masculinoid personality in
woman will make for sadism, a feminoid personality in a man
148 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
for masochism. Variants and refinements of these perversions
will often be found in the functional hermaphrodite who must
satisfy two doubly flowing streams of visceral pressure within
himself. Persistence of the thymus or pineal gland tends to a
prolongation of the infantile and child types, that will be taken
advantage of.
CHAPTER VII
THE RHYTHMS OF SEX
If one permits a drop of ink to fall into a glass of water,
amazing figures and shapes, bizarre and chameleon, are born as
the blue swirls and whirls through the resisting medium. Unseen
forces and currents, tides and pressures, set up a seething and
flowing, pulling and twisting of the drop of ink until it becomes
a strange wraith created out of the molecules, A temporary
individuality lives in the water.
So likewise the forces of sex, essentially the forces of the inter-
nal secretions, mould and sculpt and mould again the woman out
of the flesh and blood. Adolescence — puberty — menstruation:
the maid, — pregnancy — labor — lactation: the matron, thirty
years of ups and downs of these processes around the idea of
love or suppressed love, against an aesthetic background of some
sort — and finally the loss of the stress and strain of sex, the
menopause. All the landmarks of the life of woman, in their
entirety, are erected and dominated by the tides and currents,
the phases of concentration and dilution, of the different internal
secretions in the endocrine mixture which is the blood.
Marvelous are all the manifestations of the reproductive neces-
sity. Considering that reproduction was at first merely a form
of growth, a discontinuous kind of growth, that seized upon sex
as a splendid means to escape death, the chemical methods
evolved arouse a sense of awe. A baby is born with her or his
glands practically as fixed for her or him as the color of the eyes.
Thymus and pineal keep him a child, keep him unsexed. Then
at puberty, a new current is added to the calmly flowing river,
and behold! a turmoil. Ovaries or testes actively functioning
erupt upon the calm spectacle, and the girl is transfigured into the
maid, the boy into the youth. After the ovaries, the corpus
luteum: after the corpus luteum, the placenta: after the pla-
centa, the mammary glands: after that the cycle begins again
until the ovaries are exhausted and the chain is broken. Besides,
all the other glands of internal secretion beat in rhythm, fluc-
149
150 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
tuate in their activities, may divide prematurely the tides or
dam them completely.
Innumerable varieties and combinations of interglandular ac-
tion supply us with the limitless types of adolescent girls. Some
endocrine cooperatives that make one girl stable and settled, will
make others unstable and unsettled. Alicia may be hyperthy-
roid, and so excitable, nervous, restless, and subject to palpitation
of heart and sleeplessness. Bettina may have too much post-
pituitary, and so will menstruate early, tend to be short, blush
easily, be sentimentally suggestive and sexually accessible.
Christina may be adrenal cortex centred and so masculinoid:
courageous, sporty, mannish in her tastes, aggressive toward her
companions. Dorothea may have a balanced thyroid and
pituitary and so lead the class as good-looking, studious, bright,
serene and mature. Florence, who has rather more thyroid than
her pituitary can balance, will be bright but flighty, gay but
moody, energetic, but not as persevering. And so on and so on.
Environment, habit-formation, training, education serve only
to bring out the internal secretion make-up of the girl, or to
suppress and distort and so spoil her. Adolescence will be peace-
ful, calm, semi-conscious, or disturbing, revolutionary and obses-
sive according to the reaction of the other endocrines to the rise
of the ovaries. Harmony, and so continued happiness of the mind
and body, means that they have been welcomed into the fold.
Disharmony, ailments, unhappiness, difficulties, mean that they
are being treated as intruders, or are acting as marauders. The
after life, sexually the period of maturity, barring accidents,
diseases, and shocks, will bear the same character. The kind of
adolescence provides the clue to the kind of maturity, for both
are effects of the same endocrine factors.
The Sex Gland Chain
Furthermore, the activities of a normal woman involve a
series of sex glands. Since there function, in addition to the
ovaries, the glands of the uterus, the breasts or mammary glands,
and the placental gland (the secreting cells of the tissue which
comes out as the after-birth). Each of these contributes directly
to the reproductive life of the individual. To call the ova the
sex glands is to confer upon them a name which really belongs
to a chain of glands.
All of the members of the sex chain, including those of the
THE RHYTHMS OF SEX 151
thyroid, the adrenal and the pituitary, are necessary to the func-
tions of menstruation, impregnation, settlement of fertilized ovum
in the wall of the uterus, labor and lactation. A disturbance of
one of them will set up disturbances all along the line, and a
resonance of distress or compensation upon the part of all of
them. As an interlocking directorate over the sexual functions
of the female, they are members one of the other. So what
helps or hurts one, helps or hurts all.
The Cycle of Menstruation
Essentially, the ovary is a collection of follicles, nests of cells,
acting as safe deposit vaults for the ova that are to become can-
didates for fertilization. At birth, there are some 30,000 to
200,000 of these, of which a good many atrophy during child-
hood so that there are no more than about 30,000 left at puberty.
Of the 30,000, only an elite 400 actually mature between the
ages of fifteen and forty-five. About every twenty-eight days,
one of the follicles swells, becomes filled with liquid, pushes or is
pushed to the surface of the ovary, there to rupture and expel
into the abdominal cavity the tiny ripe ovum. The rest of the
torn follicle makes itself over into a peculiar yellowish body,
the true corpus luteum, should pregnancy occur. If pregnancy
and the consequent placenta do not occur, it shrinks and turns
into a scar, the false corpus luteum. The true corpus luteum
resembles closely the adrenal cortex in make-up and staining
reactions. It seems as if, once successful impregnation has been
achieved, the feminine organism adrenalizes itself, makes itself
more masculine and less feminine, inhibiting the posterior pitui«
tary and the adrenal medulla, as well as the ovaries. Besides,
the corpus luteum stimulates the thyroid to prepare for the heavy
demands to be made upon it during pregnancy.
Before menstruation, there is a stage of preparation, a stir
and twittering of the endocrines, the premenstrual state. Cur-
rents of communication flow between the different glands, mes-
sages and replies pass to and fro. When these are properly
balanced, so that all goes well, the consciousness of the woman
will be disturbed by no knowledge of them. In some women
abnormal sensations appear, a sense of fullness in the breasts,
or of weight in the back or pelvis, or pain in the head. The
last is probably due to swelling of the pituitary beyond the
capacity of its bony container. In a good many women, nervous
152 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
and mental phenomena herald the expected menstruation because
of a complete upset of the balance between the internal secre-
tions, with resulting disturbance of the nervous system. Irrita-
bility, depression, excitability, melancholia, exaltations, restless-
ness, hysteria, loss of self-control, or even more marked mental
aberrations may appear. Following them, and roughly parallel-
ing them, may come various abnormalities of menstruation it-
self. The character, extent and duration of these furnish us the
best clues to the endocrine stability or instability of the particu-
lar feminine organism.
Menstruation is simply the uterus saying: well, not this time.
As the destined ovum within its nest, the follicle, grows, its fluid
affects the interstitial cells to send their specific stuff into the
blood. There it circulates, hits this gland and that, makes some
more active, others less, transforms the chemistry of the cells,
and engorges the mucous membranes, most of all those of the
nose and of the uterus. It is all to welcome the mature ovum and
its possible impregnation, to prepare a site for its landing
and settlement, blood and food for its nutrition, safety for its
development. But it is not to be. No sperm at hand, or effective
enough to penetrate that wandering ovum. Love's labour's lost.
All must return to the so-called normal, really the intermenstrual
state. The womb must surrender some of that blood, the glands
return to their routine, and a sex diastole of the whole organism
succeeds. Until again, another follicle swells, another ovum ma-
tures, and the premenstrual state of sex high tide cycles back.
Seven to ten days before menstruation we know that sex high
tide is beginning for that is when the blood pressure goes up.
As this rise of blood pressure is probably controlled by the poste-
rior pituitary, we have a clue to the reason for the rhythmic
variations in the rate of production of its secretion by the ovary.
For, since menstruation is so closely connected with the phases
of the moon and the tides, the rhythmicity of the posterior
pituitary may be traced to the days when the pineal was an
eye at the top of the head, and in direct relation with the
pituitary.
Menstruation has been said to be a miniature labor. It is not
that as much as it is a miniature abortion. It is an effort of
nature still-born. But nature is quite used to its disappoint-
ments and returns placidly to the daily grind. The four phases
of a woman's twenty-eight day cycle succeed each other as the
premenstrual, the menstrual, the postmenstrual and the inter-
THE RHYTHMS OF SEX 153
menstrual, with the precision of pistons moving in a motor, when
no interfering factor as disease, profound emotion or climate
disturbances are present, affecting the endocrines.
The sequence of events appears to be about as follows: The
amount of post-pituitary secretion reaches a certain concentra-
tion. This in turn stimulates the thyroid and adrenal medulla.
They in turn activate the ovarian cells, which congest the uterine
glands and lining membrane. The follicle bursts, the ovum is
discharged and wanders, the uterus waits and wonders. Nothing
happens, the curtain is lowered, the scenery is removed, the
actors revert to civilian clothes. That is the story of menstrua-
tion, the central phenomenon of woman's pre-pregnancy life.
One sees it clearly as a play of an internal secretion syndicate.
The Premenstrual Molimina
The premenstrual molimina is the traditional title accorded
symptoms, sensations, feelings, observations of women in the
premenstrual phase. In the light of endocrine analysis, they
become exceedingly important indicators of the underlying consti-
tution of the individual concerned. Indeed, the premenstrual
period furnishes a direct clue to the dominating internal secretion
in a woman. Moreover, these premenstrual phenomena are the
shadows cast by coming events. For they mimic and prophesy
the events of the last crisis of feminine sex life, the cessation of
ovulation which goes by the name of menopause, gonadopause,
or change of sex life. The premenstrual phenomena provide a
positive film, so to speak, of the latent negative picture of the
endocrine system of the girl or woman.
Thus, there is the sub-pituitary or pituitary insufficient type,
in whom the excessive swelling of the gland causes headache,
and a dull, heavy, tired feeling, a definite depression. Drowsi-
ness, sleepishness, indifference to surroundings, general sluggish-
ness of thought, feeling and reaction, a phlegmatic frilosity, all
go with it. It is due to an overweighing of the pituitary, con-
troller of good brain tone, and alive wakefulness, by the demands
of the organism.
On the other hand, the hyperthyroid type of woman re-
acts with an exaggeration of her tendency. When the posterior
pituitary begins to secrete more in her its stimulation of the
thyroid is enough to tip it over the normal line. Such a woman
in the premenstrual phase becomes irritable and restless,
154 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
does not know what to do with herself, cannot concentrate on
conversation, occupation or any single activity, may become
d to the point of mania. Hot, tremulous, sleepless, or
sleeping badly, she has a much harder time of it than her pituitary
sistt
These samples of premenstrual internal secretion reaction are
the extremes of a vast number and variety of types. There are
women in an unstable quasi-premenstrual state for the greater
part of their lives. Sometimes an infectious disease or a psychic
blow will put a woman into this class. The significance of these
cyclic changes has been tremendously increased by the recent
formal admission of women to participation in public activities
on a plane of equality with men.r
Evidence exists that in man, too, there is some cyclic
rhythmicity of his endocrines, which sets np a fluctuation in his
physical and mental efficiency. The curves of these variations
have still to be plotted, and will doubtless contribute no little
to our knowledge of the control of human nature. One unex-
purgated fact stands out: the reproductive mechanism of woman
has rendered her whole internal secretion system, and so her
nervous system, all her organs, her mind, definitely and sharply
more tidal in their currents, more zigzag in their phases, more
angular in their ups and downs of function, and so less predictable,
reliable and dependable.
The Masculinoid Woman
The masculinoid woman, as a functional hermaphrodite, I
first as a congenital entity, with an inborn distribution of en-
ne predominances that make for m BCUlinity. There are
also numerous acquired forms. The in: of childhood,
measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, and U mump
damage the hormone syst an inversion of
lows. H< ive and depr
ronni- d more significant. The effect* of environment
odtiemg changes in an I iogist
mstam
responsive re: glands of int
made npi . by chi *. So a cold
clima' a more voluminous bail og for
an animal, will evoke i
Secondarily other effects app< of the ad
THE RHYTHMS OF SEX 155
tion. The adrenal cortex makes for pugnacity, temper, animal
courage, irritability and anger reactions. So a hairy animal will,
in general (unless other endocrines come in to defeat the primary
effect) , be more pugnacious, courageous, irritable and combative.
The same applies to woman. An environment which tends to
encourage the masculine traits in her, to arouse repeatedly her
pugnacity and combative decisions in the more rapid give and
take of the masculine world, will rouse the adrenal cortex to
greater activity, and so make her face hirsute, her attitudes
aggressive, and perhaps render her sterile. Concomitantly there
may be a disturbance of menstruation.
The presence or absence of sterility, natural or enforced, always
present, or say appearing after the birth of one child, must all
be donated a prominent place in studying the endocrine make-up
of a woman. When there is not enough ovarian secretion, the
ovum may not be able to burst through the ovary, a necessity
before it may begin its travels to the uterus. Next, the propul-
sive action of the genital ducts may be insufficient because of
defective corpus luteum. Or the uterus may not have received
enough posterior pituitary or thyroid to make it fit soil for the
ovum to plant itself in. Or there may be too much of these,
which cause the uterus to massage itself daily by gentle contrac-
tions and so keep it well-toned. Excessive massage will throw
the ovum out. All these are factors in the sterility problem, with
its psychic resonances affecting the maternal instinct.
The Maternal Instinct
There have been created high odes to an unknown god, sensuous
lyrics of love, apostrophes and addresses to every human passion.
But no poet, to my knowledge, has risen to the heights of the
maternal instinct. Some contemporary clap-trap about senti-
mentalism will perhaps decry and ridicule the demand for an
apotheosis of it. There are some who deny its existence, and
assert that maternity is forced upon every woman. • Reduced to
its elements, such nonsense turns out the absurd pose of the
theorist desperate to epater le bourgeois or to cover up hidden
defects in his or her make-up.
Without the maternal instinct, without the hope of immortality
through somatic or spiritual posterity, we should all, who were
sane enough, have to condemn ourselves to the futilities of hedon-
ism. So that the criminal who was condemned to roll a huge
156 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
boulder up a hill, only to see it roll down again, would have to
thank his lucky stars for his lighter punishment The future,
tomorrow, the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, or if you will, the
public of Supermen, means to all of us what the child means
to the madonna. The cynical epicurean careerists and careerist-
inas, and the depraved degenerates of a comfort-lusting civiliza-
tion may have suffered an absolute atrophy and castration of that
instinct. But they are pathologic specimens, and we are not for
moment concerned with them.
The Freudians have set up a great hullaballoo about creative
m sublimations of the sex instinct, or as they would
have it, the libido. That is their obsession, the confusion of the
sex instinct, the instinct for sex life and satisfaction in the relation
of the male to the female, with the maternal instinct. The
1 instinct bears the same relation to the maternal, as the
breasts of the male do to those of the female, i.e., a functional
hermaphrodite trait. The maternal instinct is the instinct to
be, provide and care for offspring.
The mother expresses the deep craving of protoplasm for im-
mortality. What drives her is the instinct of Life to preserve
If unto eternity in infinite space and time. That separates
it sharply from the temporary needs of the sex instinct. The
artist, the man of science or letters, the statesman, craftsman
of every sort is instigated by the maternal instinct. He
creates for his own pleasure, to be sure. But it is in its essence
of the bird making its nest.
It is necessary, therefore, to distinguish between the sex in-
I instinct. For different glands of internal set
tion have been found responsible for them. A distinct difference
in the quality and amount of the two instiii*
in tfafl lame penon. A strong maternal instinct may he l
in and again to dominate a woman With but little or no sex
-ion. Numerous phj id women h
d succej- ried liv<
m< n. with normal or I
■ ': i i life, m : e no \
"ill tea th Kndiffi i These
nd
det* While tl ..
:d mcdull.-i, is the cl
if pituit; be DTI d
chief hormone of the maternal instinct. The interactions of tht
THE RHYTHMS OF SEX 157
two glands, the ovary and the posterior pituitary, modified by
accessory influences, determine the relative intensity of the two
instincts. In a sense, the two glands may be said to be anta-
gonistic and yet one stimulates and complements the other.
The Transfigurations of Child-Bearing
Though what happens at puberty, what happens all through
life through the agencies of the endocrines is amazing enough,
what occurs during the period of child-bearing is pernaps the
most amazing of all. As emphasized, pregnancy is the time,
among the internal secretions, of a great uprooting and stirring,
of fundamental and cataclysmic changes in the most intimate
chemistry of the cells. It is as if a dictator, inspired by his
country's danger, its enemies at the gates of its capitol, were to
draft and mobilize everyone, man woman and child from every-
day activities to the necessities of defense. Or rather it is as if
there appeared within the heart of our civilization a common
purpose and intelligence, now so palpably lacking, which magne-
tized and drew to itself all the streams of individual self-aggran-
dizing effort. Imagine that possibility and how it would change
the face of the earth and the entire basic constitution of human
life and society. So do the profound tides of the hormones,
centering around the new creature being made in the womb,
transfigure the face and constitution of the child-bearing woman.
During pregnancy, in consequence, the integrity of every struc-
ture of the body is tested. A stern, relentless accountant goes
over the cells, counts up their reserves, establishes a balance,
credits and debits according to the demands of the growing
parasite within them. Follow changes in the skin, the bones,
the nervous system and the mind. That is, all the glands, subtle
recorders, transmitters, producers of the vibrations of change
are influenced. But the most influential are the most affected,
as the most dominant personalities in a community are most
disturbed by a revolution.
In Sinclair Lewis' "Main Street," the best novel ever made
about America as a nation of villagers, the heroine, Carol Kenni-
cott, has this to say to someone sentimentalizing about maternity.
"I do not look lovely, Mrs. Bogar. My complexion is rotten,
and my hair is coming out, and I look like a potato bag, and I
think my arches are falling, .... and the whole business is a
confounded nuisance of a biological process."
The exploration of the internal secretions has brought us an
158 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
explanation and an understanding of why child-bearing is a
nuisance. We know now that if C anicott's complexion
became rotten and her hair fell out, it was because her thyroid
was not ad< o the demands of pregnancy, and that if her
arches were falling, and her figure acquiring a potato bag dumpi-
her pituitary was insufficient. In all proba-
bility she was a thymus-centercd type, which accounts for much
of the material that goes to make up the novel.
Different endocrine types react characteristically toward the
situations of pregnancy. The adrenal type may not be able to
respond with the necessary enlargement of its cortex which is
normal for the needs of gestation. So pigmentations, darkenings
and decolorations of the skin, especially of the face, the tradi-
tional chloasma develops. The hyperthyroid type may become
rply exaggerated, almost to the point of mania and psychosis.
The subthyroid will suffer an emphasis of her defect, and pass on,
because of pregnancy, to the truly diseased state of myxedema,
the state of dull, slow, stupid, semi-animal semi-idiocy. The
pituitary type becomes more masculinized. The face becomes
more triangular and coarser, the chin and cheek-bones mor© pro-
nounced, and there is a growth of all the bones, so that she is seen
to grow visibly in height and breadth, and in the size of the hands
and feet. Concomitantly, there is a changed, a more matured
and steadier outlook upon life, all due to stimulation of the I
terior pituitary, controller of growth, physical and mental.
In general, the major endocrines, the pituitary, the adn
and the thyroid should hypertrophy and hyperf unction during
■.rnancy. Should they not, should adverse mechanical circum-
stances or chemical malfunction prevent, dir<
A woman with the closed-in type of pituitary, shut up in a sm
Ua turcica, will suffer the
will become fat, will frequently abort an-
rise to t !
(like typhoid or measles) which injured her thyroid i
may be poisoned by i 1 by
the growing fetus, a xoellenci
to render innocuous these poisons. Of adrenal insuffii lil-
of the ad v sufficiently in j y, little
i- kDOWn. Po ibly the corpus lutcuin, the endocrine formed of
in
this respect. F« remabl
l>le between I the
corpus luteum, some
THE RHYTHMS OF SEX 159
The Placental Gland
The placenta, an organ and gland of internal secretion newly
formed in the uterus, when the fertilized ovum successfully im-
beds itself within it, must be considered in any analysis of the
transfigurations of child-bearing. Born with the pregnancy, its
life is terminated with the pregnancy, for it is expelled in labor
as the after-birth. Its importance and function as a gland of
internal secretion has become known only recently. Many still
doubt and question the accordance of that rank to it. But feed-
ing experiments with it, in various endocrine disturbances in
human beings, have proved its right to the title.
The placenta is created by the fusion of the topmost enlarged
cells of the uterine surface and the most advanced cells con-
stituting the vanguard of the growing and multiplying ovum.
These front line invaders interact with the cells in contact with
them to make a new organ which serves as lung, stomach and
kidney for the embryo, since it is the medium of exchange of
oxygen, foodstuffs and waste products between the blood of the
mother and the blood of the embryo. Ultimately it acts, too, as
a gland of internal secretion, influencing the internal secretions
of the mother, and also those of the embryo.
Settlement of the fertilized ovum in the womb introduces into
the system new secretions, new substances which are partly male
in origin, since the ovum contains within it the substance of the
male sperm which has penetrated it. This masculine element
causes a rearrangement of the balance of power between the en-
docrines towards the side of masculinity. They push down
the pan of the scale to inhibit the post-pituitary. So menstrua-
tion, the menstrual wave which follows the increasing tide of
post-pituitary secretion, is postponed. For ten lunar months, not
another ovum breaks through the covering of the ovary, and
the uterus is left undisturbed. The placental secretion plays a
most important role as brake upon the post-pituitary, the most
active of the feminizing uterus-disturbing endocrines. Until at
last something happens that puts the placenta out of commis-
sion in this function of restraint, and the long bottled up post-
pituitary secretion explodes the crisis apparent as the process
of labor.
A condition of self-poisoning often occurs in pregnancy, with
symptoms orchestrating from mild notes like nausea and vom-
iting to the high keys of convulsions and insanities. They rep-
resent what happens when an unbalanced endocrine system is
160 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
ked by the placenta. Depending upon where in the internal
•ion chain the weak point, the Achilles1 bed spot, will be
found, the nature of the reaction will vary. And even after
labor, after the explosive crisis, so much of the endocrine
consumed, that an actual mania or a chronic
B may come in its wake,
the placental secretion must not be looked upon as some-
thing wholly evil in its potentialities. Without enough of it
to hold the uterus stimulating endocrines, particularly the post-
pituitary, in check, still-birth results. If there is enough, and
not too much of it, the woman will not feel ill at all, or perhaps
only transiently, but will be possessed of a curious feeling of
drowsy content and passive, relaxed happiness. Let there be
relatively too much of it, too little of the other glands, and the
grosser transfigurations and ailments of the child-bearing period
follow.
The Mammary Glands
Once pregnancy is terminated by labor, the placenta is expelled
from the body as the after-birth. The placenta remo\
arrangement of the balance of power among the endocrines be-
comes necessary. But a new-comer appears upon the
up the function left vacant by the absent placenta. This
new-comer is the secretion of the activated breasts, the inam-
glands. They make for a persistence of the state of
equilibrium among the endocrim 1 during pregnan
The I ry glandfl arc typical glandfl of external
They I ie milk and pour it out of the breasts through little
the mouth of the suckling. Yet evid
to conclude thai bl i glands of inter! bion, that
r the
loss of that of the placenta but not qu
What Beams to happen in fact, is this; pus hit* u
rmani cells of the mammary gland
daring puberty, but latent until t; We
lutcum will I <>phy
of the hrcasts. '1 roduced regularly during
the mens* , >f the
breasts. with the
tivity
THE RHYTHMS OF SEX 161
of the breasts parallels indeed more or less the activity of the
corpus luteum.
With the prolonged activity of the corpus luteum during preg-
nancy, prolonged stimulation of the breasts occurs. The secre-
tion of the post-pituitary would now cause the change from the
internal cell secretion to milk. But it is inhibited from so doing
by the placenta. When the placenta is removed, after labor, the
post-pituitary can act, and a free flow of milk is established.
However, to counterbalance this, and to prevent the post-
pituitary from overacting, the breasts secrete a hormone with an
action like that of placenta, but not so strong, which tends to
inhibit the ovary. So is put off the imposition of a pregnancy
upon a period of lactation, obviously bad for mother, infant, and
embryo. We have here an exquisite sample of the checks and
compensations which make for a self-balancing of the whole en-
docrine system.
Critical Ages
The Dangerous Age is a phrase coined by a Scandinavian
writer as a more dramatic euphemism for the time of life when
sex function ceases, the climacteric. As a matter of fact, the
age of adolescence is just as much of a dangerous age as
the age of deliquescence. The only difference between them
is that the dangers of the one have been hushed up, the dangers
of the other well boomed and advertised. Both are dangerous to
the individual, because both are periods of instability and read-
justment of the cells, particularly the brain cells, to a deranged
endocrine system and blood chemistry.
Moral attitudes differ at the two ages, not so much as an
effect of experience, as expressions of different visceral pressures
produced by newly dominant internal secretions. So in Eugene
O'Neil's play, "Diff'rent," we see the woman Emma Crosby as
she is in her youth, when her ovaries have budded and bloomed
for only a few years, and her other endocrine influences
are still dormant. She breaks off her engagement to Captain
Caleb Williams on the eve of her wedding because she is informed
of the episodes of a sex affair he was involved in on his last voy-
age, under circumstances not discreditable to him. The next act
shows her thirty years later when, as an elderly spinster, she is
passing through the climacteric, and is in the state of sexual
162 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
esthesia some women are afflicted with before the meno-
It is as if the ovaries and the accessory sex internal
secretions erupt into a sort of final geyser before they are ex-
So the captain, ever faithful, finds her, and dis<
to his horror that she is a thousand times more like other women
been like other men. Because of his ignorance
of the underlying chemical basis for the transfiguration, tragedy
follows. Critics may cackle about a sex starved woman, who
pressed her natural desires, and hail the play as a contri-
bution to the Freudian clinics. As a matter of fact, it is a
study of libido variation, with endocrine variation, at two stages
of the inner chemical life of a woman.
The chain of events at the menopause, the acme and then ebb
of the sex tide, may be summed up something like this:
The ovaries cease producing their eggs and so shrivel as a
storage battery atrophies when it dries up. An important mem-
ber of the endocrine board of directors thus drops out, and so a
ngement of gland activities, a new regime, becomes neces-
sary. If a balance of power is established quickly and equitably,
very little happens. Quickly the woman passes on to the next
plane of her existence. But if some endocrine proves recalcitrant,
and takes advantage of the situation to make itself dominant,
trouble and maladjustment, and their psychic echoes, come. An-
terior pituitary control will mean a relative masculinization, with
hair on the face and aggressive attitudes. Post-pituitary most
i refuses to settle down, and expressing its ambition as 1
, obesity and hysteria, may cause extreme m
and unhappiness to its possessor. Sooner or later, if the har-
monious equilibrium of the normal life is to be revived, all the
thyroid, pituitary .Is.
h the waning of the ovarian function, the thyroid type will
particular flare. If there is thyroid excess the
woman will be excitable and irritable, the thyroid dv\]
be depressed and dull, the thyroid
tween excess i will ha- ind down
alternation of
will have a big)) blood pres masrulinoid trail
inferior will have a low blood pn
• and f ID to
• is individually itninfttfag
.• ion o! the woman. w ben the
Pfomfa hai atrophied, and the breasts have shrunk, the typical
THE RHYTHMS OF SEX 163
tan complexion, and the angular masculinoid figure, face and
psyche follow, and the transfiguration has been completed.
Man has his critical age of sex cell deterioration as well as
woman. The age period swings between forty-five and fifty-five.
Here enters upon the scene that organ of external and internal
secretion, the prostate, the most important of the accessory sex
glands in the male. Experiments with its extract upon growing
tadpoles have demonstrated it to have the same differentiating
effects as thyroid, but without the poisoning effects. Further-
more, the microscope reveals cyclic changes in its cells compar-
able to the menstrual phenomena of the uterus. Indeed it is
accepted as the homologue or male representative of the uterus.
Small and undeveloped during childhood, its growth at puberty
parallels that of the other reproductive organs. Its secretion has
been shown to be necessary to the vitality of the sperm cells.
The regression of the prostate, its retirement from the field of sex
competition, is the central episode of the male climacteric. Ac-
companying its shrinking are prominent an irritable weakness,
despondency, and melancholia, which may emerge at any time
if there is disease or disturbance of it. The influence of the
prostate upon man's mental condition, and its contribution to
the sex index, still remains to be investigated in detail.
Sex Crises
At the periods of interstitial cell hyperactivity, when a wave
of radicalism in the blood sweeps through the tissues, the other
endocrines are tested, and their latent stability or instability is
made manifest. Even before puberty, cyclic variations of health
and conduct may be observed in boys and girls which undoubtedly
depend upon currents among the internal secretions. Children,
who, in the best of circumstances, habitually are attacked by a
wanderlust and run away from home, or suffer from fits of
naughtiness, are samples of such endocrine lability. Children
specialists have found that at about the end of the second year
their charges begin to individuate. In a certain percentage, sex
traits appear pretty early. But the fact of the matter is that it
is rather the minority of girls who spontaneously exhibit the tra-
ditional stigmata of the natural girl. The doll-cherishing, house-
keeping imitator of mother is another story.
At puberty arise the most exquisite cases of life crisis de-
pendent upon hormonic crisis. The boy becomes restless, irritable
164 III I : GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
and quick-tempered when his thyroid and adrenals respond to
the call of the interstitial cells. If they do not, he will become
dull, heavy, lazy and listless. The girl correspondingly is trans-
formed into a vivacious, gay, nervous and apprehensive butterfly,
or a sedate, dreamy, bashful, or even morose moth. It is in'
esting to note that poise, mental equilibrium, is not established
until physical growth ceases, marked by a cessation of growth
of the long bones known as ossification of the epiphyses. Poise
seems to be controlled by the ante-pituitary. The growth of the
long bones is also dominated by the ante-pituitary. It would
seem as if, its secretion dedicated to the one function, could not
be available for the other. So it happens that those in whom
growth ceases early (probably because of an earlier and more
>rous invasion of the internal secretion system by the inter-
nal cell product), develop mental maturity more rapidly and
possess more of it than those in whom growth continues. 1
acumen and salacity of certain dwarfs is proverbial. The puberty
phenomena teach that sex crises of every sort are dependent
fundamentally upon fluctuations, periodic or aperiodic, of the sex
index, as we have defined it.
The Determining Factors of Sex Life
The material summarized in the preceding paragraphs fui
some slight inkling of the vast dominion of Sex, in all r
tions, somatic and spiritual, over which the glands of internal
secretions rule. The founder of modern pathology, Yirehow,
said that woman is woman because of her ovaries. H
that woman is a woman, the sort of woman she specifically
:iuse of tor internal secretions. But no divine dec;
laid down • line of cleavage between man and woman. Ti
are fundamental constitutional difierci. D man |
woman. But it is just as true that man is man because of
internal secretions.
have seen that the < of Man and W N the
end-points of a curve Including variations of
construction of a sex in I
Ithough
well fr rtl !
day, year to ye. the influences thai
brought to bear upon H
/lirce planes of orine, thi M©«
THE RHYTHMS OF SEX 165
The endocrine is concerned with the fundamental chemistry of
sex, the internal secretions, which determine the chemical reac-
tions that provide the free energy for the sex process. Upon the
vegetative plane occur those transformations, tensions, and re-
laxations, in the viscera, which are controlled in part by the
endocrines and in part by the experiences of the individual as
registered in his subconscious. Upon the psychic, conscious
planes appear the echoes and reflections of the occurrences upon
the other two planes, as well as reactions arising in the brain
from the necessity of the organism reacting as a whole to isolated
episodes. Accompanying is a self-awareness of the organism as a
unit. The three planes are not like separate plates of glass one
raised above the other, the usual idea picture of planes. They
are nebulae, swirling into each other, influencing and being influ-
enced continually. The reactions among these three complexes
of sex create the milieu for the variations and aberrations of
tendency, character and conduct which stamp his unique quality
upon the individual. Sex morale is likewise so influenced. The
fundamentals of sex ethics will, in due time, be revised in accord-
ance with these conceptions.
CHAPTER VIII
HOW THE GLANDS INFLUENCE THE MIND
It is impossible to review here in detail all the facts accumu-
lated concerning the influence of the internal secretions upon all
the processes of mind, intellectual and emotional. A volume
would not suffice for their adequate consideration. Reflexes, in-
ts, habits, tendencies and emotions are involved in
machinery. The development and normal functioning of the
intellect, the pure reason as Kant called it, are controlled by
them. Brain, without them in solution, without enough of them
in that wonderful solution, the blood, sleeps or remains dormant
like the butterfly in the cocoon. The cretin, who has not enough
thyroid or no thyroid, is an imbecile because of his deficiency.
Supply him with thyroid from outside sources, feed him animal
thyroid, be it of the sheep, the pig, or the goat, and behold a
miracle! he is restored to the level of at least the relatively nor-
intelli<:cnce.
Acuteness of perception, memory, logical thought, imagination,
ption, emotional expression or inhibition and the entire con-
tent of consciousness are influenced by the ii. ions.
most nit r bivities of the molecul
!ls and nen dominated The
speed of their chemistry and th sndthust
Of tie Iodine I shown to in
ity of the brain that
trons will fly through it. The thyroid may tin n
as ma' the amount of Iodine brought to | d the
<< Us at a particular moo*
Adrenalin Kncrea* ductivity of the brain. N
.
flow more <ini<klv through iod
In dangerOUl situations we think more rapidly and keenly, for
in | in* •/•'< the blood Hon. I th< brain with extra th\ roid and
adrenal mi r< -lions.
m
HOW THE GLANDS INFLUENCE THE MIND 167
The Body-Mind Complex
Mind, still regarded by most of mankind as something dis-
tinct and apart from the body, is thus exhibited as but part and
parcel of it. A deaf, dumb, and blind animal, deprived of tongue,
and olfactory mucous membrane, without sensations from the
outside world can grow no mind, in the sense of intelligence.
The sense organs of the body mediate the primary mind stuff.
Without internal secretions and a vegetative system there could
be no soul, in the sense of complex emotion. Nor those combi-
nations of thought and emotion which synthesize attitudes, sen-
timents and character. The internal secretions and the vegeta-
tive system mediate the primary soul stuff. Mind is thus
emulsified with body as a matter of cold literal fact. The soul
was once a subtlety of metaphysics. Now when mind appears
soaked in matter saturated with chemicals like the hormones,
therefore woven out of material threads, the independent entity
created out of intangible spirit flies like a ghost at dawn.
View the outlook. Mind, the slippery phantom, now becomes
controllable for the purposes of everyday life, because we can
put our fingers upon, touch, handle and change these material
factors, the internal secretions and the vegetative system.
Through them we may affect the very quality of the nerve tissue.
The future of the race, the future of human nature, depends upon
the knowledge to be born of the researches into the vast possibili-
ties of this idea. Man, the Adventurer, the prey of Chance and
Luck, will then become, indeed now becomes, the Captain of
Fate and Destiny.
It is, of itself, a revolution in the intellect, to conceive of in-
stincts and emotions, suggestibility and contra-suggestibility,
initiative and imitation, volitions and inhibitions as chemical
matters. In all their relations, mutually reacting effects and
defects, excesses and deficiencies, the internal secretions set up
psychic echoes and reflections. When morbid and their equilib-
rium dislocated, we may even have phobias and neuroses.
A man's nature is essentially his endocrine nature. Primarily,
when he is born, he represents a particular inherited combination
of different glands of internal secretion. They, constituting the
inventory of his vital stock in trade, start him in life. After-
wards, food, the routine of his existence, the accidents of experi-
ence, education, disease and misfortune, in short, environment,
modify him because they modify his ductless glands and his
168 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
vegetative apparatus, as well as his brain, depressing some parts,
and stimulating others, and M i^ing the system. In par-
ticular will he be transformed as the gland is affected which is the
B of the system to which the others adapt and accommodate
s. The inertia of the system is \ •« abso-
lute, and always tends to return. If he has children, he hands on
his constellation of endocrines, in spite of mishaps, not at all or
only slightly transformed. Sometimes, however, the experiential
formation has been sufficiently deep, and shaken the very
constitution of his germ-plasm. So family dispositions and
, national and racial temperaments, are propagated, main-
tained and varied.
The Sex Instincts
Hormone reactions, as we have seen, initiate the complicated
forces, processes and expressions of sex. The dictum of the
founder of modern pathology, Virchow, that Woman was in effect
an appendix to the ovaries, has long been taken to apply to her
psychic traits as well as somatic. Her mind, like her skin, her
hair and her pelvis, is a product of the ovarian endocrines. But
these determinations are by no means her monopoly. M
likewise a creation of the chemical wheels within wheels and
springs within springs that are his glands of internal secretion.
That he is not so obviously an appendix to his testes is due to
two reasons. First, the male sex hormones have not the ii
bility nor cyclic rhythmicity of the female. Secondly, and per-
haps consequently, his sex instincts have become overlap
with other more labile instincts, with habits and oust
necessities that appear to oust the sex instinct into an alto-
decentralized position. Moreover, it is the function of the female
■ in the sex pro -cious, thoroughly
aware of the fact, sees to it t! instinct stands starkly
1 and dominating in her life.
moods of love, like the more stereotyped manifesto!
Hi Sex, are di pendi -nt upon a proper supply to the blood oi the
reproductive organs, the gonadal en-
act. If the teste- ed from I is found that
isp-reflex, symptom •
i days, the testi injected into the
' ■
Qg this sex reflex is present in (he testes only during the
HOW THE GLANDS INFLUENCE THE MIND 169
breeding season. In birds, the seasonal nesting and migrating
instincts may be eliminated by interfering with their ovaries.
At the same time there is a change in their plumage toward the
male type. Similarly, the males, when their sex endocrines are
cut off, will change their psychic nature as well as physically.
Besides owning his flag-waving comb, his spurs and brighter
feathers, the rooster struts to attract the female, and fights
aggressively with his sex competitors. When he is made a capon,
he loses his spurs and comb and distinctive plumage, and in
addition becomes retiring and submissive, in short, a pseudo-hen
in his instincts as well as in appearance. If the genital glands
are extirpated from a male before puberty, the wattles remain
small, pale and bloodless, no active, amorous or combative in-
stinct emerges. The creature maintains a demure silence, and
may even be sought by a virile male. So we may see homo-
sexuality of a kind in the lowest animals. On the other hand,
hens deprived of ovaries tend to metamorphose in the male direc-
tion, even to acquire the male spurs, and to display the male
attitudes.
All through the animal world, in the springtime, when the
pituitary awakens or increases its secretion, and so stimulates the
sex glands to augmented activity, emotions of sex and their ex-
pression are provoked by the inner stirring. When the nightin-
gale warbles passionately and the mocking bird gurgles provok-
ingly, when the robin fills its scarlet breast and the starling floats
in ecstasy through the perfumed air, when the pigeon coyly woos
its mate, and the butterfly flirts with the dazzling multicolors of
its wings, when all the marvelous devices of sex attraction in
nature, selection and courting, mating and reproducing are pon-
dered, who but must wonder at the infinite possibilities of
reaction of the sex hormones? All is for love, and all is because
of the love in the blood that is manufactured unconsciously by a
few hidden cells.
Expressionism and Exhibitionism
We need a detailed examination of the various forms of ex-
pression art has differentiated into, in its relation to exhibition-
ism and as effects of the circulating libido-producing substance
of the gonads. Sex exhibition differs in man and woman because
of the differently combined internal secretions that are their
substrates. The male's attitude, aggressive pursuit, is instigated
170 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
Lv the compound adrenal and gonad endocrines. The female's
various emulsions of coyness and display are motivated b\
terior pituitary and gonad hormones in alliance.
It is a dogma to state that the internal secretions of sex do not
begin to function until after puberty. Some children mai
exhibitionism with a certain independence of environment. Be-
fore adolescence a good many girls act like tom-boys, and are
imishable externally from boys only by their clothes. But
othen display signs of sex differentiation that are to be t:
to an awakening interstitial gonad action. Some boys have
no interest whatever in sex. Others will show an intense cur
spontaneously, a curiosity which perhaps may be explain d
.1 precocity, dependent upon the minimum of sex hormone
production by the gonads. Close observation of the correlation
of somatic and psychic development in extreme examples of
children corroborates this view. Jonathan Hutchinson has de-
scribed full-busted children of London already boasting of their
affairs. Indeed, as education and environment affect the body
(in so far as they influence it as a whole) by exciting or
inhibiting the glands of internal secretion, sex-arousing si
from without must be considered to evoke their effects as stimu-
lants of the latent puberty glands.
At puberty, when the sex glands bloom, and the complex of
the sex instincts is activated, exhibitionism manifests itself in a
host of guises and disguises. Femininity in a woman
womanly woman, or the eternal feminine, may indeed 1
by the degree of somatic and psychic exhibitionism she pn
A woman who has a delicate skin, lovely complexion,
formed breasts and menstrual' found to bai
d feminine outlook on life, aspirations and
Mimuli, which, in spite of the protests of our feminists, do con-
':<• feminine mind. 1
- arc the well-epringfl of hex life and personality. On (he
id, the woman w poorly or not at all ii
d, fiat-bi ily built, angular in her out-
lines, will also be often
and pioneering, m short, masculinoid. She II what she is because
QflSOSSOS small, shrivelled, poorly functioning I
• •se two I P sorts of tl ffding
as the Other endocrines participate in the const;
But no better examples could be given, off-hand, of i mm
HOW THE GLANDS INFLUENCE THE MIND 171
ing stamp of the internal secretions upon mind, character and
conduct.
Instinct and Behaviour
The sex instinct, analyzed as an endocrine mechanism, pro-
vides the clue to the understanding of all instinct and behaviour.
If the post-pituitary regulates the maternal instinct, then its
correlates: sympathy, social impulses, and religious feeling, must
be also influenced, and so is furnished another example of a
chemical control of instinctive behaviour. McDougall, once of
Oxford, now of Harvard, introduced into psychology the idea
of the simple instinct as a unit of behaviour, regarding the most
complex conduct as a compounding of instincts. The instinct
itself he analyzed into three elements: a specific stimulus-sensa-
tion, an emotion following, all ending in a particular course of
muscular reaction. Translated into endocrine terms, what hap-
pens may be pictured as a series of chemical events.
When the activity of a ductless gland rises above a certain
minimum, its hormones in the blood sensitize, as a photographic
plate is sensitized, a group of brain cells, to respond to a message
from the outside world, with a definite line of conduct. There
is a registration by the brain cells of the presence of the specific
stimulus. Then there is communication by them with the en-
docrine organs. As a result, some of them s*re moved to further
secretion, and others are paralyzed or weakened. In consequence
of changes of concentration in the blood of the various internal
secretions, tensions, movements and tumescences, as well as re-
laxations, inhibitions and detumescences, occur throughout the
vegetative system — the blood vessels, the viscera, the nerves and
the muscles. Each wires to the brain news of the change in it.
In addition, the brain cells themselves are excited or depressed
by the new hormones bathing them. In their final fusion, the
commingling vegetative sensations constitute the emotion evolved
in the functioning of the instinct.
To lower the new tensions throughout the vegetative system
to the normal range, the instinctive action is carried out. This
superficially is regarded as the essence of the instinct. As a
matter of fact, it is only the endpoint of a process, the resultant
of a drive to restore equilibrium within the organism. It may
all happen in less time than it takes to tell about it.
172 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
The play of an instinct may therefore be analyzed into four
processes. They succeed one another as sensation — endocrine
stimulation — tension within the vegetative system — conduct to
relieve tension. The dash is the symbol of a cause and effect
relationship.
This equation for an instinct, based upon an analysis of the
working of the sex instinct, is the model for the analysis of all
instincts, and therefore of all the compounded instincts th
human behaviour may be resolved into. Conduct, that fascinator
of the common gossip and the great novelist alike, normal and
abnormal, social and asocial, in all their complexities, even unto
the third and fourth generation, the Freudian complexes, is gov-
erned therefore by the same laws that determine the movements
of the stars and the eruptions of volcanoes. The most interest-
ing factor in the instinct equation is the endocrine, because that
is the one that is most purely chemical.
Endocrine Charging of Wishes
It is the distinction of modern psychology that it has estab-
lished the wish (craving, need, desire, libido) as the moving force
in any psychic process. The position of the wish in psychology
as the force within and behind the instinct may be compared
to that of energy in physics, when it was elevated to a a
position in the explanation of physical processes in the nine-
h century. The concept of the charged wish has illumi:
all the hidden recesses and rendered audible all the subdued mur-
murings of the mind. The truly novel in the content of tin
is the recognition of the fact that the wish is charged. Now it
could never h d in a vacuum. That meant) that a wish
could never be born in the brain alone. For the brain h
power to charge itself with energy— it can only store and t:
potential energy thai must be transformed into
kinetic, it must have a source. That source is bl
system. Wit] ive syftem, the
viscera in the abdomen and chest, blood and its v<
nes, muscles and nerves, the brain would remain bu
! storage plant of memories, associations of
experiences. It WOOld need no chanirc and initiate no I
But when the wi n upon the scene, it is as if a
storage battery has been refreshed with new current,
hill ions of electrons there is a stir and am-
HOW THE GLANDS INFLUENCE THE MIND 173
mind. But the dynamo is the more ancient possession of the
animal, the vegetative apparatus. In short, what must always be
remembered is that a wish is never cerebral, but always sub-
cerebral, visceral, in its origins.
The sub-cerebral makes the cerebral. Activities in the nervous
system below the brain and especially the vegetative system,
force upon it its function of the active verb. It has to be, to do,
and to suffer, and then to manipulate the environment to satiate
the insatiable viscera, insatiable because the local chemistry is
continually raising the tension of one or the other of them.
A physics of human behaviour becomes possible with the aid of
these concepts of endocrine regulation of intra-visceral pressure,
and intervisceral equilibrium, an intramuscular pressure and an
intermuscular equilibrium, with the brain as the shifting fulcrum
of the system.
The sensation of hunger, as we have seen, serves as good an
exemplar as any of this mechanism of the wish. Hunger is
preceded and accompanied by contractions of the stomach of in-
creasing intensity. Those contractions must be brought about
by a substance acting upon the nerve endings in the wall of
the stomach. As it closes down upon itself, waves pass up and
down. With each wave, the pressure within it rises. The exact
amount of the pressure may be accurately measured by means
of a small balloon swallowed and then inflated. When the pres-
sure rises above a certain figure, the sensation of hunger breaks
into the consciousness of the individual. We infer that certain
sensory impulses sent up to the brain attain a strength that
finally forces itself into the conscious field of feeling. The sen-
sation of hunger varies from individual to individual because
of variation in the reaction throughout the vegetative system.
Most often it is a sense of movement or even an itch in the upper
abdomen. Let some cause produce a weakening or cessation of
the movements of the stomach — as fear and anger — and the sen-
sation of hunger disappears coincidently with the drop in the
pressure within it. As the mathematicians would say, the wish
is a function of the pressure, and so of the concentration of
substance behind the pressure.
We have in hunger the wish reduced to the lowest terms, the
most primitive form of it. Yet we may resolve all wishes, even
the most idealistic, into the same terms. As the vegetative sys-
tem becomes habituated by repeated experience to react in the
same way to the same stimulus, permutations and combinations of
174 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
wishes become possible until at length the inscrutable complexi-
ties of the behaviour of civilized man are evolved. We have to
thank Von Bechterew, the greatest of Russian physiologists, for
e fundamental principles, so important for the un ling
of the control of human life and conduct.
The associated reflex, aboriginal ancestor of the involved train
of associations that constitute the highest thought, conduct and
character, is the unit of the system. Recall the classic example
cited. If a piece of meat is shown to a dog, his mouth waters.
If now you proceed to ring a bell before offering the meat, his
mouth will water only when he sees or smells the meat. If, how-
ever, the ringing of the bell precedes the meat a sufficient number
of reactions, a time comes when merely the sound of the bell will
m salivation, without the presence of the meat. So it is with
the associated reactions of the internal secretions. A stimulus
originally indifferent to the endocrines may, by association, the
laws of which are many, come to act like a spark to the endocrine-
instinct mechanism. Hence we can account for the subtle play
of instinct throughout all thinking.
Even objects resembling the specific excitant of an instinct
only remotely, or in some one quality, may start its mechani>m
and a host of associations bound up with it. Thus the maternal
instinct may be excited by the sight of a baby. But because a
baby is small and delicate, anything small and fine, a tiny book,
a toy, a miniature, may arouse it. The object is then said to be
••• -aling. The doctrine of association of instinctive and so of
endocrine reactions enables us to understand the feeling — tone
t at any moment pervades consciousness as well as its i
Choices, the psychology of selection of food, color, fr;
mates, amusements also become explicable rationally. i
licts among the different components of the veg sys-
tem are continuous and inevitable. If the pi ithin a
viscus has 1» ghtened, and pereiste, thai is, ifl not disturbed
her associated factor or instinct, oondui
to wli.it it was before the instigator of
tension 1. But if another in fcher
associated factor c< '<> play, another fa
-sure within the vegetative system is created, with another
stream of energy Bowing to tlfe ending an out
iat of instincts, i
vegetative system competing for the possession of the brain, is a
HOW THE GLANDS INFLUENCE THE MIND 175
common everyday process in conduct. Which will win means
which will will. And so we have an energetic basis for volition.
Which will win appears to depend primarily upon the kind of
endocrines that predominate in the make-up of the individual,
secondarily with his education. For it is the endocrines that are
really in conflict when there is a struggle between two instincts.
And if one endocrine system conquers, it must be either because
it is inherently stronger, its secretion potential, that is, the amount
of secretion it can put forth as a maximum, is greater (so explain-
ing the term dominant) — or because a past experience has con-
ditioned it to respond, although the opposing endocrine system
does not. Fear and anger, respectively bound up with the activi-
ties of the adrenal medulla and cortex, we shall see, provide as
good exemplars as any of this process.
The response of the ductless glands to situations varies with
their congenital capacity, and acquired susceptibility. Capacity
is a question of internal chemistry, modifiable by injury, disease,
accident, shock, exhaustion. Susceptibility depends upon the
play of the forces focusing upon them that may be summed up
as associations. In the ability of one endocrine system to inhibit
another we have the germ of the unconscious. Hence the modus
operandi of the repressions and suppressions, compensations and
dissociations, which may unite to integrate or refuse to inte-
grate, and so disintegrate and deteriorate a personality.
As the personality develops, the vegetative system becomes
susceptible to the manifold associates of family, school, church
and society, art, science and religion, and last but not least
sex. All the different nuances of personality are expressions of
a particular relationship, transitory or permanent, between the
endocrines and the viscera and muscles. Conversely, behaviour
shows what a person actually is chemically; that is, what en-
docrine and vegetative factors predominate in his make-up.
Fear, Anger, and Courage
Fear and anger are the oldest and so the most deep-rooted of
the instincts. An ameba, contracting at the touch of some un-
pleasant object, feels fear in its most primitive form. And anger,
the destructive passion, must have appeared early upon the scene
of life. Certainly these two instincts were definitely developed
and fixed in the cells before sex differentiation and the sex
176 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
instincts were born at all. It is interesting to note this for our
rabid Freudians.
Fear and anger involve the adrenal gland. How comes it
that two states of mind so contrasted should involve the same
area? The answer lies in the bipartite construction of the
adrenal. All the evidence points to its medulla as the secretor
of the substance which makes for the phenomena of fear, and
to its cortex as dominant in the reactions of anger.
When adrenalin is injected under the skin in sufficient quan-
tity, it will produce paleness, trembling, erection of the hair,
twitching of the limbs, quick or gasping breathing, twitching of
the lips — all the classic manifestations of fear. These are the
immediate effects of fear because they are the immediate effects
of excess adrenalin in the blood upon the vegetative viscera and
the muscles. The perception by associative memory of these
effects of adrenalin, the sensations arising from the organs
affected, constitute the emotion of fear. Flight follows by muscle
prepared for flight, for the disturbance of the inter-muscular
equilibrium tenses the flexor muscles, the muscles of flight, and
relaxes the extensor muscles, the muscles of attack.
If, it would seem, the cortex secretion now pours into the blood,
enough to more than overcome the effects of the medulla secre-
tion, the inter-muscular equilibrium is disturbed in the opposite
direction, for fight rather than flight, and anger results. Or if
the cortical secretion pours in an overwhelming amount of its
secretion from the first into the blood there will be no fear, but
anger immediately. Habitually charging and fearless animals
the bison, bull, ti<:cr, or lion have a relatively lar.
in their adrenals. Habitually fleeing and fearful animals, like
rabbit, have a small cortex and a \ lulla in
einforcing action of the thyroid is impoa
nal medulla reinforced by the th\
the adrenal c thyroid i or fury.
Some p. ily frightened, otl ulily
id still other d nature.
! o medulla
And tl oli is a p
good measure of the ratio. These formulation
rly to f ral. Bui even in
fi individual in whom
ar — complexes, dati]
n n»( dulls overtopped cortex, especially childhood.
HOW THE GLANDS INFLUENCE THE MIND 177
So in the coolest people, certain persons, objects, episodes, may-
send a wave along an old line of nerve cells and paths which
lead to the adrenal medulla, and so flood him with fear, terror
or even panic before his usual cortex response occurs. Impres-
sions during the early years of childhood, probing of the uncon-
scious by various methods, have been shown to be the most potent
in this respect. Sometimes the episode goes further back than
childhood, and one must assume an inherited conditioning of the
vegetative and endocrine systems. An animal leaping upon an
ancestor in a forest during the night might account for the
panic fear some people experience when alone in the dark, that
nothing of their childhood history may account for.
In women, the adrenal medulla naturally tends to overtop
the cortex, because the latter makes for masculinity. Besides,
the recurring cycle in the ovary, making the corpus luteum,
evolves an additional stimulant to the medulla, through its irri-
tating influence upon the thyroid. Then the influence of the post-
pituitary is anti-adrenal cortex. So that, on the whole, a num-
ber of endocrines work to render woman naturally fearful, as we
say.
Courage is so closely related to fear and anger that all are
always associated in any discussion. Courage is commonly
thought of as the emotion that is the opposite of fear. It would
follow that courage meant simply inhibition of the adrenal me-
dulla. As a matter of fact, the meehanism of courage is more
complex. One must distinguish animal courage and deliberate
courage. Animal courage is literally the courage of the beast.
As noted, animals with the largest amounts of adrenal cortex are
the pugnacious, aggressive, charging kings of the fields and
forests. The emotion experienced by them is probably anger with
a sort of blood-lust, and no consideration of the consequences.
The object attacked acted like the red rag waved at a bull — it
had stimulated a flow of the secretion of the adrenal cortex, and
the instinct of anger became sparked, as it were, by the new
condition of the blood. In courage, deliberate courage, there is
more than instinct. There is an act of volition, a display of
will. Admitting that without the adrenal cortex such courage
would be impossible, the chief credit for courage must be ascribed
to the ante-pituitary. It is the proper conjunction of its secre-
tion and that of the adrenal cortex that makes for true courage.
So it is we find that acts of courage have been recorded most
often of individuals of the ante-pituitary type. Photographs are
178 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
obtainable of thirty-four winners of the Congressional Medal of
Honor for extraordinary bravery in the War with Germany. Of
twenty-three exhibited the somatic criteria or hormonic
signs of the ante-pituitary type. A prerequisite for adequate
ante-pituitary function is a normal secretion of the interstitial
cells of the reproductive glands. Cowardice is said to be a fea-
ture of eunuchs.
The Pituitary and Instinct
We have seen that, more than any other gland or tissue of the
body, the post-pituitary governs the maternal-sexual instincts
and their sublimations, the social and creative instincts. A great
deal of evidence is in our possession concerning the disturbances
of emotion accompanying disturbances of this gland, and con-
trollable by its control. It might be said to energize deeply the
tender emotions, and instead of saying soft-hearted we should
say much-pituitarized. For all the basic sentiments (as opposed
to the intellectualized self-protective sentimentalism), tender-
heartedness, sympathy and suggestibility are interlocked with
its functions. Its secretion must act upon the great basal ganglia,
at the base of the brain, which contain the nerve cells and fibres
that are the centers of emotional control and co-ordination.
The ante-pituitary has 1>< ui depicted as the gland of intcl-
lity (to use that term for lack of better). By intellectu-
ality we mean the capacity of the mind to control its environ-
ment by concepts and abstract ideas. The frontal lobes of the
brain 'nil offices for higher thought. Their cells are
the most complex, have the most numerous branches and asso-
II fibres. They store the fruits of abstract thinking, mathe-
matics, for example. The anterior pituitary is in tl
OO and contact with them. Its secretion is tonic to them.
Now I forerunner of intellectual
let of curiosity, with its emotion of wonder, and if
proesion jg the various constructive and acquisitr
Studies of intellectual men, and of those with
curiosity and a construct ive-acqu: od pi* to be
ante- 1
of ante-pituitary extract to some defectives increases intellectual
;ty and self-control. The future of intell: xpect
ns of the
HOW THE GLANDS INFLUENCE THE MIND 179
Two most important instincts, therefore, which in the com-
plexity" of their sublimations have created most of the institu-
tions of society, the maternal and the intellectual, are connected
directly with a proper function of the pituitary endocrines. So
it happens that disturbances of these instincts, reaching far into
the normal and intellectual spheres of the mind, are definitely
connected with disturbances of the pituitary. As we shall note
in reviewing the essentials of the pituitary-centered or pituito-
centric personality, the personality governed by the fluctuations
of activity within the pituitary, people with injured, diseased or
mechanically limited pituitaries (because of the smallness of the
bony case enclosing them) exhibit defects and perversions of
conduct and intelligence directly attributable to affections of the
very instincts and functions the pituitary governs. Children with
small, mechanically cramped pituitaries lie and steal, are bed-
wetters, have poor control over themselves, and a low learning
capacity.
The Thyroid and Instinct
The chemical mechanism of the instincts described: sex libido,
passion and jealousy in relation to the ovaries and testes,_fear
and anger in relation to the adrenals, sympathy and curiosity in
relation to the pituitaries, suggests that a similar explanation
will hold for the dynamics of the other instincts. In the closest
relation to the thyroid appear the instincts first isolated, so to
speak, by McDougall as the instincts of self-display and self-
effacement, accompanied by emotions of pride and shame respec-
tively. In certain states of excessive thyroid activity there is an
extra stimulation of the instinctive display of the person which
may go on to boasting, mania and exhibitionism. On the other
hand, in states of thyroid insufficiency, depression is produced,
which may go on to melancholia, a desire to be alone, to hide,
to sit apart and even a tendency to accuse the self of various
uncommitted crimes and sins. In the form of cyclic insanity
known as the manic-depressive psychosis, mania alternates with
depression, as if the personality were dominated wholly in turn
by one or the other of these two instincts of the ego. There is
a good deal of evidence that behind them is a corresponding
fluctuation in the amount the thyroid secretes into the blood.
Among the thyroid-centered attitudes toward the self gyrate
more than in any other type. Egomania and megalomania occur
most often in thyroid unstable individuals.
180 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
Energy and Sensitivity
In his classic Inquiries into Human Faculty, Francis Galton
laid down some fundamental considerations concerning energy
and sensitivity as mental traits. Energy he defined as the
capacity for labor, and declared it to be the measure of the full-
ness of life or vitality. Statistical study by him of men of genius
and their ancestors showed them to be endowed with a large
amount of energy. It has been said to be the absolute prerequi-
site of genius. Now if there is a single fact that has been well
established by investigations of the internal secretions, it is
that the energy quantum of an individual is a function of and
determined by his thyroid. The more thyroid he has, the more
energetic will he be — the less thyroid the less energetic, and the
lazier. The thyroid-centered individual, of the excess thyroid
type, actually burns up more food and produces more heat than
the ordinary organism. He burns himself up faster in general.
When the thyroid sends more secretion into the blood, more
thyroxin, it accelerates all the functions and activities of the
organs. Tea and coffee produce loquacity because they stimu-
late the thyroid. People with thyroid dominant constitutions
talk fluently, rapidly, and continuously. Their energy ma]
them doers, actors rather than spectators. They get up early in
the morning, are on the go all day without surcease or fatigue,
go to bed late, and often suffer from insomnia.
Thyroid deficients, however, are definitely the opposit
are quite conscious of the limited reserve of energy at their com-
DCL Also that they need plenty of refreshing sleep. Early to
bed and late to rise remains the leading maxim of health for
them In addition they find it necessary to sleep during the
. Forty winks or more in the afternoon makes a good deal of
difference to them. Taciturn, maiticulat< Blow, til
etives applied to them by their friends as well as by t:
enemies. All because of an insufficient or inefficient supply of
roid's iodine to their cells. The mobility i
organism is a measure of the amount of active iodine in it. The
ins for "energetic and lazy" are "well-
lO'llIl..
8ensitivity, the abihl
rption is anothi id quali
Just as Qm thyroid p
He feels things more, I be
HOW THE GLANDS INFLUENCE THE MIND 181
arrives more quickly at the stage when the stimulus damages his
nerve apparatus. The electric conductivity of his skin is greater,
sometimes a hundred times greater, than the average. Conversely
the thyroid deficient type has a low discriminative faculty. Gal-
ton has recorded that idiots hardly distinguish between heat and
cold and that their sense of pain is so obtuse that some of the
more idiotic seem hardly to know what it is. Cretins may moan
but never shed tears.
Energy and sensitivity in an individual should direct attention
to the thyroid element predominating in his composition. Lack
of energy and insensitivity to the degree of thyroid insufficiency
in their make-up.
Memory, Judgment, and Poise
In between sensitivity and energy, the sensation and the reac-
tion, comes a passage of the stimulus through the gauntlet of
the stored past experience of the individual known as memory.
Many hypotheses have been advanced by philosophers, psy-
chologists and physiologists to explain the phenomenona of
memory. ^To conceive of memory materially at all one must
admit some sort of memory trace as the basis for the persistence
of memory. This memory deposit facilitates the occurrence of
the chemical reaction constituting the memory along the same
path the next time. Forgetting then consists in a disappearance
of these memory- traces or deposits. Forgetting is greatest in
the first hour after remembering, more than half of the memory
trace being lost in that time.x- Comparison of the curve of for-
getting, and the curve of diffusion of a colloid like gelatine from
its solution, into a surrounding medium, shows them to be ex-
ceedingly similar. Forgetting may be explained by some such
loss of the memory trace or deposit into the blood continually
flowing by it.
^The internal secretions influence the amount and duration of
the memory deposits. The thyroid appears to be essential to the
laying down of the 'memory trace. Cretins have poor memories
<3tt_J&£--*eten4ien~-£i4e and so cannot learn. The memory of
thyroid insufficients is wretched^- In the extreme grades, the
memory for recent occurrences becomes completely lost. Iodine
and thyroid increase the electric conductivity of the brain, so
that the memory trace must be deposited more easily in those
who have an excess of thyroidy Removal of the thyroid pro-
duces a degeneration of nerve cells and their processes, and
182 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
associative memory becomes difficult or impossible because con-
duction from cell to cell is interfered with. If sufficient thyroid
is fed in excess, brain conduction may be so facilitated that
epilepsy may result upon slight irritation.
On the other hand, the pituitary seems to be related to preser-
vation of the memory deposit/ In conditions of disease of the
pituitary, loss of memory for past experiences is more marked.
As regards recent experiences, they are better held, although in
a sort of subconscious manner, recoverable when the condition
improves or is cured. But the greatest difference between the
thyroid and pituitary effects upon memory exists as regards
material: the thyroid memory applies particularly to perception
and percepts, the pituitary to conception (reading, studying,
thinking) and concepts.
Judgment is another mental process that often intervenes be-
tween sensation and the energy-reaction. It involves memory
and association of experiences. Behind it is an attitude as much
as there is in an emotion or the arousing of an instinct. Beliefs
and reasonings are complex judgments. They form the units of
the intellectual process.
There is an element of speed in judgment on reasoning as in
perception and memory. And as in the latter, the thyroid deter-
mines the velocity. Quick thinking, as we call it, means good
thyroid action, and slow fhinking_ deficient thyroid action. The
other element in judgment, accuracy, is influenced by the ante-
pituitary. During adolescence there is physical growth which
consumes most of the secretion of the ante-pituitary. After
adolescence, after the early twenties, when physical growth baa
ceased, the ante-pituitary secretion sensitizes the cells of the
brain to mental growth. The reaction potential of the
pituitary, that is its inherent, latent ability to supply a D
mum of its endocrine for the nerve cells of the frontal lobes, is
the best-known chemical determinant of intellect*] is. It
for th 't co-ordination of ezper
information, tastes and problems into one 1 Ufl whole
And curiously, not only does it cause a fusion of intell.
material: ft of such material.
lmuM expect to fin; dinarily well-dcwln;
rs and in
and we do. Adequate 'it is present throughout
of normals wi tly ripei pnenl u
progress through 1 D ability to profit by experience, and
HOW THE GLANDS INFLUENCE THE MIND 183
to make more and more accurate judgments as one grows older
implies at least a maximum efficiency of it. This maturation is
not at all universal. Even after middle age, after forty and fifty
years of reasoning, some individuals retain the juvenile mind of
their youth. Like the Bourbons, they have learned nothing and
forgotten nothing. Their ante-pituitary insufficiency often
coupled with a post-pituitary excess, and other instabilities and
disequilibriums in the endocrine system, render them immature
morons, compared with what might be expected of them for their
years. They are the people who are old enough to know better.
For the same reasons, inhibition and emotional control are poor
in them.
Besides the ante-pituitary, in the evolution of judgment, and
the judgment faculty, due stress must be laid upon the influence
of the internal secretion of the testes or ovaries, the product of
the interstitial cells. Although the probability is that the effects
are indirect, through a stimulation of the ante-pituitary, the fact
remains that, in a child, memory may be marvelous and judgment
poor (such memory is possibly purely thyroid in its determina-
tion) . With the advent of the gonads upon the scene, judgments
become the centre of the play's plot undoubtedly. The intelli-
gence of eunuchs and eunuchoids is in general low. The skull
and brain of castrates, animal and human, is smaller than the
average. Gall, the physiologist who popularized ideas concern-
ing the meaning of the protuberances and depressions of the
head in relation to faculty and character, early in the nineteenth
century, was the first to prove this. Among historic castrates,
eunuchs, not a single example of great intellect, of the creative
type, is known. On the contrary, the native gifts of the mind
were destroyed. Thus Abelard, who was punished with castra-
tion by his uncle for his love affair with Heloise, never composed
a verse of poetry thereafter.
Imagination as an Endocrine Gift
That brings us to the consideration of imagination as influenced
by the endocrines. The physical conditions of exercise of the
imaginative faculty have not been sufficiently investigated.
Alcohol has long been known to act as an evocant of strange
images. The hallucinations of delirium tremens are the results
obtained in extreme intoxication. A strangely imaged flow of
the imaginative state, may also be evoked by
184 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
morphine and cannabis indica. There is no doubt that the brain
cells may be made to combine in the fresh, novel, and unfamiliar
associations that are recognized as unr
:icis Galton, pioneer student of the conditionings of hi
faculty, left an interesting study of the visualising capacity, so
far as it could be attacked by the statistical method. Two of his
conclusions are worth repeating for our purposes. One is
the power to imagine is poor in philosophers and men of s< •;
The other that it is higher in the female sex than in the mate.
We have seen that the philosophic, scientific, intellectual mind,
the capacity to abstract, and think in terms of abstractions, is
definitely dependent upon proper secretion by the ante-pituitary.
In woman, the post-pituitary is generally predominant over the
ante-pituitary. Though we are in need of a series of studies of
the endocrine traits and composition of men endowed with high
imaginative qualities, and so are at a loss, we have indications
of an endocrine control of the state of consciousness we speak of
as the imaginative.
Most of the evidence accumulated in the examination
treatment of morbid conditions characterized by a restless, inco-
ordinate activity of the brain cells points to excess of the post-
pituitary secretion as the cause, or as one of the most important
causes. The thyroid and the adrenal medulla also exert
influence. But the strongest appears to be the post-pituitary.
Phobias, fears which obsess the mind, anxiety neuroses,
picions, hallucinations, delusions, nervousness, all expressions of
what we may sum up technically as the imaginative state of
mind, occur and occur frequently, associated with other symp-
toms of posterior pituitary overactivity. Persons in v
make-up it ru! liable to imagine disturbances of their
mentality, or exhibit a well-developed imaginative lb
Norm activity of tl such as i
in some women during lal period and pr . ami
in some n of their i
• lb] '• : einl ptibility
of t},. R lidlicr tl -pituitary
I lead io a stimulation of the tend
it quieting the |
try by various m iculty,
and
PaycholoRiKt ictive imagination
HOW THE GLANDS INFLUENCE THE MIND 185
fancies of the fearful neurotic for example. The post-pituitary
confers the lability of the underlying state of brain in all of these
imaginative tincturings of consciousness. The constructive
imagination, one of the few truly precious gifts of a personality,
is probably the expression of a certain balanced activity of the
ante-pituitary and the post-pituitary.
Moods and the Organic Outlook
The lability the post-pituitary confers upon the combinations
of perceptions and conceptions, grouped as the imagined, extends
to the ruling mood that may be spoken of as the organic outlook.
Post-pituitary in excess, without compensation or balancing by
one or some of the other endocrines, is associated with an insta-
bility of mood and the organic outlook. Concomitant is a
defective self-control. Typically, one sees the effects in the
mental abnormalities of women during the premenstrual period.
A number of them have their pituitary balance upset then, with
an overtopping of the ante-pituitary by the post-pituitary.
Irritability, a sub-hysteria, or an actual hysteria may emerge in
the usually most placid characters. A quiet wife and mother
may go for her husband, curse and mortify him, even strike and
beat him. She may slap her children at that time and no other.
It is well known that most of their crimes are committed by
women during the menstrual period. So are the suicides. De-
terioration of mentality and character so often observed during
the menopause, with its apathies or excitements, melancholia or
mania, the fits of weeping or gaiety, the loss of grip upon reality,
the complete change in mood and temperament that reflect the
transformation of the organic outlook, demonstrate clearly the
overwhelming influence of the endocrines upon the attitudes of
the self toward the self.
It is possible to speak of thyroid moods, adrenal moods, ante-
pituitary or post-pituitary moods, gonadal moods. Each of these
is the echo in the mind of cells stimulated or depressed, by con-
centration or dilution in the blood of particular internal secre-
tions. Restlessness and excitement can be produced experi-
mentally by feeding thyroid. Vague anxiety, depressive fancies
and fears, imaginative overactivity can be removed by inhibiting
the post-pituitary. Hypersecretion of the ovary will cause a
sexual susceptibility and a mood of genital obsession, capable
of the most remarkable sublimations and perversions.
CHAPTER IX
THE BACKGROUNDS OF PERSONALITY
The question of moods and sublimations once raised introduces
the problem of the relation of neuroses, nervous disorders with-
out an organic disease basis, and mental abnormalities, to the
endocrine system. Obviously, in view of all the influences ex
by the ductless glands upon every organ and function of the
body and mind, and their intermediary, the vegetative nervous
ation must exist. Observations accumulated,
of which have been referred to in the preceding chapters, prove
the complete, though complex, reality of such a deduction.
The history of attitudes toward nerve and mental disordt
a remarkable illustration of the vicissitudes of ignorance playing
with words. The Greeks, swayed and dazzled as they were by
the magic of words which they discovered, yet never pern
themselves to be fooled by them. As an explanation for the
phenomena of hysteria in women, that benign mental disorder
xcellence, they had the theory of a wandering about of
the womb in the organism as a cause. That provided an image
of something material happening as an explanation. With the
phfl of anatomy after (he Renaissance, that naive view had
to be l 1. In its place the humoral theory held sway, with
its good humors and its bad humors, and their bilious, lymphatic,
-us and s admixtures. Hut tfa
of all flesh. Dm :irst half of the nineteenth cental
paraphrased by practitioner! of medi-
the effii
these I indeed today have filtered e\
into the common consciousness.
Mae of the in rht, food and i
condu ob frith neurotic-
I1-!--. « : ■ !• :l\ the sexual. A rich field was created tor
weeds periodi
We have seen hon the American, B<
inspired bj uted ■ loss of toi
ISO
THE BACKGROUNDS OF PERSONALITY 187
flabbiness, weakness and softness of the nerves, to coin the word
neurasthenia. Nerve exhaustion he believed was the cause of
the nerve weakness. Weir Mitchell, another American, intro-
duced the rest cure combined with overfeeding as a treatment
for it.
An analytical French neurologist, Charcot, was not to be satis-
fied by words of Latin-Greek derivation. Insisting upon the
significance of the individual mental workings of each case, he
and his pupil Janet began to unravel a tangle which has led to
the present revolution in psychology. For Freud, Jung and
Adler took up the story where Janet left off.
Janet elaborated the ideas of a subconscious and an uncon-
scious, a dissociation of the components of the mind, and a split-
ting of the personality. Lumping the phenomena of amnesia,
somnambulism, hypnotism, anesthesia, obsession and hysteria
into the grand group of mental dissociations and disintegrations,
he achieved a unification never considered possible before him.
Suggestion as a mode of cure was also emphasized and elaborated
by him to an undreamed-of degree.
Freud, in 1895, studying a case of hysteria with Breuer, had
attempted cure by the method of free association, attempting to
get the hysteric to pour out her mental life. Not succeeding, and
his interest aroused by her continual references to her dreams,
he discovered that by means of those dreams he could tap the
subconscious and unconscious in regions hitherto inaccessible.
For in the dreams, ideas, persons, and experiences appeared that
never came upon the stage of the conscious. From that finding
he developed the concept of repression, i. e., the relegation of a
painful experience into the unconscious, and kept imprisoned
there by the censor. Also how there it became the complex,
which, like a stage manager, never appeared before the footlights
of the conscious, but determined its content just the same by
inhibition or stimulation of any character or scene to be enacted
upon it.
A complete critique of Freudianism cannot be attempted here.
But in relation to the endocrine system as controllers of nerve
function in health and disease, a valid criticism can be made.
Firstly, the Freudian jargon, its technicalities and explanations,
are metaphors. Some may regard them as justifiable descriptions
of mental processes. But it certainly can be urged against them
that they provide us with no idea concerning what is happening
in the cells of the body and brain as explanation for the event,
188 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
normal or abnormal, supposedly explained. Words like sublima-
tion or t: figures of speech and nothing else.
Secondly, they ignore totally the powers of the vegetative appa-
., muscles and secreting glands together, as
originators and determiners of the wish and its adventures.
How utterly different, from the point of view of the physi-
ologist, the two explanations are as pictures, can be seen from a
single example. The idea of repression, to the Freudian, means
the pushing down into the subconscious of some experience.
Pushing down is a process controlled by the laws of physics: it
involves the concepts of matter and force. Hence, the expression,
as a description of a psychic episode, is a metaphor pure and
simple. From the standpoint of the process of repression as pic-
tured by the student of the vegetative apparatus, the term
signifies a real bottling up of energy. For the repression means
actual compression of muscle, the muscle contained in the viscera.
And the repression means a real interference with the release of
energy, which remains bound up, tugging for room for expression
as much as a spring tightly coiled in a box. In the production
of that tension an endocrine has often been decisive. The en-
docrine nature of the individual may decide whether a subcon-
scious, i. e., visceral or vegetative tension, is to come into being,
live or die, in the face of a given situation. If thereby, a perma-
nent disturbance of the equilibrium between the componci
brought about, a neurosis, expression of an unsatisfied vegetative
tension, follows.
It has been hailed as a brand new discovery by those follow-
ing the latest in psychology that the subconscious and the un-
conscious constitute a more essential component of the personality
than the conscious. As a matter of fact, common pn
recognized the fact, if not the mechanism and its ugnifii
ages. It is not what people say or do — it is how they say it:
is how the true reactions of personality are rccogniz*
vcly even by animals. Tone and gesture (when not acted
or posed) are accepted as symbols and wympi
nmost sancta sanctorum t hat words and wi r give
rise and block. Tone and gesture as r.
tions of the IniMT-Me, the True-Me or I n* I will, arc
so potent because ressions of the
:rl of a lip, the flicker of an « I he (witch
of a f! Biped in the increased
. nnined by increased outflow oi
THE BACKGROUNDS OF PERSONALITY 189
docrine secretion. Wittingly or unwittingly we interpret the little
signs as messages from the deepest self, which they truly are.
Nervous Breakdowns and Shell Shock
In civil life, the complex of symptoms Beard jumbled together
as neurasthenia, when associated with a loss of self-control, so
that the sufferer is incapacitated for the duties of everyday life,
has become the popular "nervous breakdown.' A sanitarium ap-
pears to be one of the necessary components of the condition.
It is the last act, the climax of "nerves."
During the War of 1914-1918, thousands of cases of functional
disorders of the nervous came to be grouped under "Shell Shock."
The psychic phenomena in the wake of concussion of the brain
due to explosives suggested the term, and its application to
affections of self-control, or dissociations of the personality, with
paralysis, blindness, speechlessness, loss of hearing and so on.
The War neurosis (including those arising in home service) is
still a topical subject because thousands of mentally disabled
soldiers are alive.
In view of what has been said concerning the endocrine
mechanism of the instincts and the vegetative apparatus, it could
be predicted that a number of these nerve casualties of peace
and war would be caused by an upset of the equilibrium between
the glands of internal secretion. A study of war neuroses by the
great Italian student of the endocrines, Pende, confirms this
assumption. As emphasized, the internal secretions are like tun-
ing keys, and tighten or loosen the strings of the organism-
instrument, the nerves. War for the soldier, or the civilian com-
batant as well, sets the strings vibrating, and with them the glands
controlled by them. Excessive stimulation or depression of an
endocrine will disturb the whole chain of hormones, and the vege-
tative system, and their echoes in the psyche. The nervous
disorders of war that have been lumped as shell shock or war
shock may be looked upon as uncompensated jarrings of the
endocrine vegetative mechanism, as dislocations of parts and
processes that are reflected outwardly as ailment or disease.
An Endocrine Neurosis
An exquisite example of an endocrine neurosis, that is a dis-
order of nerves and brain dependent upon an upset of the
190 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
equilibrium between the internal secretions due to a trying e\«
was furnished recently by the reactions of three naval
officers lost in the snow wilds ol i through a balloon * .
ture. The cases aroused a good deal of interest at the time, and
.Is were reported by the newspapers as if they were the
episodes of a serial mystery story.
The three officer I out late one fine evening from Rock-
away Air Station in a balloon for a practice trip. Atmospheric
conditions suddenly changed, they became lust in the clouds, and
finally landed somewhere in the Canadian wilderness. The com-
mander of the balloon crew, Lieut. A., 23 years old, was the
youngest of the three; the oldest, Lieut. B., being 45, and the
third man in the thirties, Lieut. C.
According to the testimony given at the Court of Inquiry held
afterwards, two hours after they abandoned the balloon and
started struggling through the snow, B. became tired and com-
plained of his fatigue. B.'s fatigue increased, and two days later
became so great that the party had to stop for an hour and build
a fire in order to permit him to rest. However, an hour proved
too little: and in another half hour he was falling and fainting.
Letters written by C. to his wife and gotten hold of by re-
porters declared that B. at this juncture passed into a semi-sane
state, in which he accused himself of a number of sins, and volun-
teered to commit suicide, so that the others would not be
burdened by his weakness. Also, that they might use his body
to fortify themselves. A. discussed with C. the advisability of
taking B.'s knife away from him. Living on their carrier pigeons,
niued on, moved by a desperate hope of iinjjing some-
one. B. had several fainting spells after drinking water traced
by moose tracks.
Luck favored them, and they encountered an Indian who
. thflO to a place called Moose Factory. Here they wrote
!i reached (heir wives and the daily press
bcfoK i civilisation. A great hue and
cry was raised by about their plight Newspaper
!i other for (he honor of hcin
t them and get th Kr Stoa
1 at a collection of houses named ] . A. and
iln ad and found them not to talk.
to B., who eras io a shack srith the < ideate
full of the story of the letfc PI B. tfed and struck C.
THE BACKGROUNDS OF PERSONALITY 191
Differences were patched up, and the three returned together
to New York. There the medical examination of the three showed
that the four days in the wilderness had left its deepest effects
upon the physique and mind of B. In a few days he developed
an attack of tonsillitis, with fever, and a mental disturbance de-
scribed by the medical officer as exhaustion psychosis. He
believed this condition to be the result of severe exhaustion, pro-
longed anxiety, worry, and extreme exposure. Extreme restless-
ness and irritability, confusion of thought and an undefined per-
plexity, all the prominent symptoms of exhaustion psychosis,
making him hyperactive and inclined to acts of violence, were
in evidence.
The physique, character and reactions of Lieut. B. are what
interest us in the case. The pictures of him published, and the
structure of his skull, face and teeth, his hair and other physical
traits point to his being an adrenal-centered type, of the unstable
variety, so far as his internal secretion make-up is concerned. As
we shall see in the next chapter on the different kinds of. en-
docrine personalities, the unstable adrenocentric (convenient
name for the class) is characterized by rapid exhaustibility be-
cause under conditions of stress and strain, the reserve of the
gland is consumed. The adrenal glands, we noted in a preceding
chapter, are concerned with the maintenance of muscle and nerve
tone in emergencies. They are the glands which, during crises
especially, control the production and supply of energy to the
various organs and tissues called upon to function to the utmost
in emergencies. When the adrenals fail, as they do readily in
these labile adrenocentrics, it is as if the adrenals were cut out
of the body. And it has been repeatedly shown that extirpation
of the adrenals is immediately followed by degeneration and
breakdown of the brain cells.
These facts explain the reactions of Lieut. B. The acute call
upon his adrenals made by his dangerous situation probably soon
exhausted them of their content of reserve secretions. Over-
whelming fatigue with loss of muscle tone followed. The changes
in the brain caused him to talk as he did in the wilderness.
Returned to safety, the news that his reputation was under fire
because of C.'s letter brought out another adrenal characteristic:
the excessive instinct of pugnacity, easily stimulated, with its
emotion of anger and the tendency to violence. What is spoken
of as a quick temper is an adrenocentric trait. Returned to New
York, an infection, tonsillitis, attacked him. Infections in
192 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
adrenocentrics DM up the content of the adrenals as rapidly M
te tonsillitis, which in an-
type of individual would have been combatted continuously
by the adrenals and so passed by mere sore throat, pre-
high temperature, and the brain disturbance
ibed by the medical officer as exhaustion-psychosis, with
again a tendency to violence. In short, the history of his ad-
ire is the history of his adrenals under stress and strain. It
illustrates the mechanism of a typical endocrine neurosis.
The Unconscious and the Viscera
In the chapter on the glands of internal secretion as an inter-
locking directorate, certain generalities were stated as the laws
of the government of the organism's life by them in association
with the vegetative apparatus. It was put forward as a funda-
mental revision of the theory, hitherto accepted, of the limita-
tion of mind to the brain cells. We think and feel not alone with
the brain, but with our muscles, our viscera, our vegetative nerves,
and last but not least our endocrine organs. In short, we think
and feel with each and every part of ourselves.
Among these pristine factors determining the content of con-
sciousness, the endocrines are most important, because they alone
to start with, of all the other factors, are different in each and
every individual. They are what render him unique at birth,
even though he looks the counterpart of millions of other babies
born at the same time. They constitute his inner destiny. A
he grows, the external factors, social experiences, climate, acci-
. and disease modify and condition tl ions and eom-
v of the endocrine system. As these modificat
MM are of the greatest import for the final el
of the personality, comp* t hoy do tin its of the
i«ciou8 which connrv the unique stamp of normal, abnormal,
' or subnormal, it is worth while now to n
most • mining laws. M phe-
nomenon, both conscious and m with th
mechania
comes possible for us, by their aid, to analyze the conscious,
;L< onscious and the unconscious with the terms long cu
I analyses of physics.
i is an energy m h it is constantly
losing energy as a consists of parts constantly accumulate
THE BACKGROUNDS OF PERSONALITY 193
ing energy (as a result of inherent chemical reactions accelerated
by the absorption of food). This process of local accumulation
of energy associated with general loss of energy may be observed
even in the ameba, in the form of stored reserve food material.
Evolution created a system of organs, the viscera, as specialists
in energy conservation, utilization or transformation.
For intercommunication and interaction between the viscera
two systems were elaborated: a younger system of direct con-
tacts, the nerves, and nerve cells, through which influences could
be conducted for the stimulation, acceleration, retardation or
inhibition of an energy process in them; and the older, the
endocrine gland association, for the production of chemical sub-
stances to act as messengers to be sent from one viscus to
another, and also to the nerves, through the blood or lymph which
bathe all the cells. They could affect only one or certain organs,
because by selection only the chosen organ or organs knew the
code, as it were. The chemical system is much the older system,
and preceded the nerve system by seons of time. The whole
system, viscera, visceral nerves and the endocrines gradually
united into a complete autonomous organism within the organ-
ism, and as such functions as the vegetative apparatus.
Evolution of the Endocrines
2. In the course of evolution, variations occurred in all three
components of the apparatus, the viscera, the nerves, and the
endocrines. Now variations in the viscera and the nerves are
essentially grossly physical and quantitative. That is, there may
be a bigger stomach or a smaller stomach, larger nerve fibres or
smaller. And as Life always has worked with a large margin of
safety, and always played for safety first as regards quantity,
these variations have not become of much significance for the
history and destiny of the animal.
But variations among the endocrines made a tremendous differ-
ence. To have very much thyroid and very little pituitary, much
adrenal and not enough parathyroid meant a great deal to the
Organism as a whole, as well as to the vegetative apparatus. For
states of tension and relaxation, activity and inactivity in the
nerves and viscera would be determined by these variations in
the ratio between the variants. The vegetative apparatus in its
virginity, say in the new-born infant, may be said to have its
development primarily determined by the reaction potentials of
194 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
the endocrine part of it, that is the latent power of each gland
to secrete at a minimum or a maximum, and the balance between
them.
Education of the Vegetative System
3. Training or education involves, beside other effects, a
training of the endocrines, and hence of the entire vegetative
apparatus, to respond in a particular way to a particular stimu-
lus. Experience is like the introduction of new push-buttons,
levers, and wheels into the mechanism. All learning which calls
out or arrests the functioning of an instinct, must, from what we
have learned of the chemical dynamics of instincts as reactions
between hormones, nerves and viscera, affect the vegetative sys-
tem. When there is a conflict between two or more instincts,
between pressures of energy flowing in different directions, there
may be compromise and normality, or a grinding of the gears and
abnormality.
Where does the brain come in, in all this? As the servant of
the vegetative apparatus. To call it the master tissue is mani-
festly absurd, when it can only be the diplomatic constitutional
monarch of the system. It can, in fact, act only as the great
central station for associative memory, as only one of the factors
implicated in education.
The most powerful educative agents of the vegetative appa-
ratus of a human being are the other humans around him. And
they comprise the most powerful of the ts of
education, for better, for worse. The training and education of
ndocrine-ve<:et alive system is the b:t 1 social rules
rn. Convention, Law, Conscience). An unresolved
discord, a continued conflict among the parts of the \
system, in spite of such education, is the foundation of the un-
happiness of the acute or chronic misfits and maladjusted, the
rotic and the psychotic.
The Physical Basis of the Unconscious
4. ■ iv imp* • w that i ant of
oOSCioUS and tin- in i u\ n-ult-nl Inhaviour is
■ ■s and nerve cells m ive appa-
ratus, the nerves leading to the viscera and the end*
ted by stimuli of
THE BACKGROUNDS OF PERSONALITY 195
those which arouse the brain cells. In the metaphorical language
of the old psychology, the threshold value, that is the strength
or loudness of stimulus sufficient to make itself felt or heard, is
less for the vegetative apparatus than for the brain. So we begin
to glimpse why an emotion seems to be experienced before the
visceral changes that really preceded it, but pressed their way
into consciousness later. This gives us a clue to the unconscious
as the more sensitive and deeper part of the mind.
More than that, it supplies us with a physical basis for the
unconscious which will explain much of the observed laws of its
workings. It provides a reason for the apparent swiftness, spon-
taneity, and unreasonableness of what is called intuition. And
it may show us a source for a good deal of the material of dreams
and dream states.
We have said that we think and we remember, not alone with
the brain, but with the muscles, the viscera and the endocrines.
So do we forget not alone with the brain, but with the muscles,
the viscera, the endocrines and their nerves. The utmost impor-
tance of muscle attitudes in remembering has been established
in the experimental laboratory.
It is one of the great services Freud rendered to psychology
(and one, by the way, largely responsible for the acceptance of
his doctrines by the disinterested intelligence) that he showed that
a species of forgetting is nothing casual, but active and* purpose-
ful, a manifestation of the life of the unconscious. However,
though his description of the process was correct, he left it to
occur in a vacuum. As a matter of fact this forgetting consists
in the inhibition of associative memory by a process in the vege-
tative apparatus, so as to maintain the equilibrium within itself
which is reflected in consciousness as comfort.
The unconscious, in short, consists of the buried associations
among the parts of the vegetative apparatus and the brain cells.
We seem to be much nearer to grasping the nature of the uncon-
scious, when we look upon it as a historical continuum, a com-
pound or emulsion of different and various states of intravisceral
pressure and tone, in the vegetative apparatus, dependent upon
the balance between the endocrines, as well as upon past experi-
ences of the viscera in the way of stimulation or depression. We
forget that which is held down, literally, in the vegetative appa-
ratus. This explanation of forgetting tells, too, why the forgotten
(stored in the sub-brain, the endocrine-vegetative system) con-
tinually projects itself into and interferes with the regular flow
196 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
of consciousness, e. g., in slips of the tongue, mistakes of spelling,
and so on: because the energy bottled in the vegetative system
tends to erupt into the consciousness into which it would
ordinarily flow.
In the evolution of the mind, there have been elaborated de-
vices to protect it against the vegetative apparatus. Conscious-
ness, or awareness, must be accepted as a fundamental, primal
1 ike protoplasm. Consciousness and protoplasm may be the
complementary sides of the same coin. Whatever the truth, the
fact stands out that the oldest, deepest, most potent conscious-
ness is that of the traditionally despised lowest organs, the vege-
tative organs, the heart and lungs, stomach and intestines, the
kidneys and the liver, and so on, their nerves, e. g., the solar
plexus, and the glands of internal secretion. They invented and
elaborated muscle, bone and brain to carry out their will. Evo-
lution has been in the direction of a greater perfection of the
methods of carrying out their will. Their consciousness, working
upon the growing and multiplying brain cells, has created what
we call self-conscious mind.
Mind, reacting upon its creator, has, in a sense, come to domi-
nate them, because it has become the meeting ground of all the
energy-influences seething and bubbling in the organism, and so
developed into the organ of handling them as a whole, their
Integrating-Executive. But just the same and all the time, the
underlying consciousness of the viscera and their accessories
stand as the powers behind the throne, but as what we have now
learned to speak of, in relation to the Mind, as the Unconscious.
Psychopathology of Everyday Life
To sum up these relations of the viscera, the endocrine-^.
nd the mind, it may be stated as a far-reaching
generality for the understanding of human life: that ehai
and conduct aj ng in
the veget pparatus, primarily andoera
birth, and secondarily the org
has learned to a whole, as eon dt of
nefa a reaction as a whole tends to belai liatarban
energy, SO as to n aiilibriuin, or sense of
harmony and n disapj
t lynth of the psy-
chanalyste, the behaviourists, and the students of the in
THE BACKGROUNDS OF PERSONALITY 197
secretions (Freud, Jung, Adler, Sherrington, Watson, Von
Bechterew, Kempf, Crile, Cannon, Cushing, Fraenkel are the
great names of the movement) . Most of the details, and all of
the quantitative applications of the law still remain to be worked
out. But a statement like the following of Cushing, the eminent
surgeon-student of the endocrines, that "it is quite probable that
the psychopathology of everyday life hinges largely upon the
effect of ductless gland discharges upon the nervous system,"
shows which way the wind is blowing.
In the face of these conceptions the position of the psychanalyst
as a practical therapeutist becomes clearer, and the causes of
his failure when he fails. In the first place, he deals with psychic
results as processes, and ignores the physiology of their pro-
duction. Since a true cure of the neurosis, what he is after, is
impossible without a removal of the cause, a disturbance in the
vegetative apparatus, he cannot succeed where an automatic
adjustment among the viscera does not follow his probings and
ferretings of the unconscious. In the second place, he disregards
the existence of a soil for the planting of the malign complexes
in the individual in whom they grow and flourish. That soil is
composed in part of the endocrine relations within the vegetative
apparatus. And as we can often attack that soil more effectively
and radically from the endocrine end than from the experience
end (e. g., repressed episodes) we may transform the soil and
make it barren rock for morbid complexes, at any rate. The
concept of the endocrine-vegetative apparatus as the determinant
of normal and abnormal behaviour, emotional reactions and dis-
turbances of power should in time cause even the most fanatic
of the psychanalysts to recognize the functional basis of the
mental acrostics they are so fond of dissecting.
Natural Ability
Another achievement of the psychanalysts is the recognition of
the influence of organic and functional inferiorities of the indi-
vidual upon the history of his personality. Gross organ inferiori-
ties are those which are definite handicaps in the struggle for
success in society, such as heart disease. Such handicaps, how-
ever, are limited to relatively few of a population. The raison
d'etre of the greater number of minor mental inefficiencies the
psychanalyst puts down to handicaps in the unconscious. Again
he mistakes figurative imagery for explanations. The concep-
198 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
tion of endocrine diversity in the make-up supplies us with the
rationale of the vast majority of organic and functional defects
and inferiorities, in short, subnormalities of any group, large or
small.
Moreover, how would the psychanalyst explain the occurrence
and influence of organic and functional superiorities and
ndous influence upon the individual and society? We live in
a generation which has acquired a flair for the pathologic. Un-
doubtedly it is a soul-sick generation, and its interest in
of the mind is only natural. Just the same, whatever adv:
improvements, progress, have been made (and certainly a number
of the changes in his environment, external and internal, must
be admitted to be changes for the better) have been made, not by
natural disability, but by natural ability. What is the phys-
iology of natural ability?
The finest study of natural ability that has as yet been com-
posed is Francis Galton's on Hereditary Genius. It also remains
the best study of the natural conditions of success. He showed
that of the type of man he classed as "illustrious" there occurred
about one in a million, and of the type "eminent" about two
hundred and fifty in a million. Of the qualities which determine
natural ability of this kind, he selected inherent capacity, zeal,
and perseverance as the three prerequisites. And he bI
"If a man is gifted with vast intellectual ability, eagerness to.
work, and power of working, I cannot comprehend how such a
man should be su{ !." "Such men (those who have gained
great reputations) biographies show to be haunted and driven by
an incessant, instinctive craving for intellectual work." "They
. . . work ... to satisfy a natural craving for brain v.
"It is very unlikely that any conjunction of oircum hould
supply a stimulus to brain work commensurate with what
• in their own const it ut ions."
this inherent craving for br rkT What is this
«eal? And v. r of endurance and
mina? How are they to be interpret d in terms of
ns?
of the ante-pituit:ir
llectuality, studies of intellectually
'I functionn pituitaries, and i
i number of eases a small limited pitu
it in star <>f inher as a
dJ the ante-pituitary. The factor of . ithusiasm
THE BACKGROUNDS OF PERSONALITY 199
points to the thyroid. Markedly enthusiastic types are thyroid
dominant types. Vigor as a third factor, the ability to stand
stress and strain of continued effort is dependent upon good
adrenal and interstitial cell function. So we may say that crav-
ing and capacity for brain work plus ardor plus perseverance in
its pursuit, the triplicate of natural ability, are the reflections
in conduct and character of balanced and sufficient ante-
pituitary, thyroid, and adrenal-interstitial contributions in the
chemical formula of the personality. In the chapter on historic
personages analyzed from the endocrine viewpoint, we shall see
that some of the most eminent and illustrious people of history
have been pituitary-centered.
Mental Deficiency
Natural ability grows in an endocrine soil of a particular kind,
perhaps affected by the internal secretions much as natural soil
is by fertilizers like phosphates or nitrates. Increased produc-
tion follows increased fertilization. Natural disability must vary
similarly with a perversion or improper mixture, deficiency or
absence of the hormones that combine in natural ability.
It is assumed as a matter of course that the brain itself is
there, which, to carry out our analogy, means that the crude soil
or earth is there. Sufficient quantity and adequate quality of
nerve tissue must be regarded as prerequisite. If the brain has
been damaged in any way during development or birth, if it has
been smashed up in any way, or if it has failed to evolve the
minimum number of healthy nerve cells, the endocrine influence
becomes negligible. It is like attempting to insert a key into a
door which has no lock.
It is among the specimens of normality of the brain cells that
we may look for our examples of endocrine mental deficiency.
Included are all sorts of examples of feeble-mindedness varying
from the moron to the imbecile and idiot, arrested brain life.
The cretin is the classic type of mental deficiency due to en-
docrine insufficiency, curable or improvable by the proper
handling.
Insanity, degeneration of the normal brain life, may be caused
by an upset of the endocrine balance. Among the commonest
manifestations of insanity are excitements and depressions,
apathies and manias, hallucinations, delusions and obsessions, all
of which are reproducible under known conditions of internal
200 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
secretion excess or failure. Alternating states of mania and de-
iflO are caused in some instances by extreme hyperth\
ism. The critical periods of life, when a profound revolution is
overturning the endocrine equilibrium, puberty, pregnancy, and
the menopause, are the periods of most frequent occurrence of
insanity, when mental instability reveals endocrine instability
(Dementia precox, pregnancy psychosis, menopause neurosis).
Actual insanity need not be the only manifestation. By far the
■r number of mental disturbances due to aberrations of the
internal secretions never see an asylum or a doctor. They live
more or less close to the borderline of insanity as persons who
have spells, eccentricities and peculiarities, hysteria, tics or just
"nervousness."
About two-thirds of mental deficiency is definitely inherited,
about one-third acquired. It is the opinion of a number of psy-
chologists that it is inherited as what the Mendelians call a
recessive, that is as a trait which will be overshadowed, if there
is admixture of normal mentality, but will crop up by breeding
with another mental defective. What we know of the endocrine
factors in heredity leads us to suppose that it is the mating of
one marked endocrine insufficiency with another that is often
responsible for the inherited tendency to feeble-mindedness and
insanity. The effect of the hormone system upon the vegetative
apparatus may create the more obscure insanities and quasi-
insanities. The direct action of the internal secretions upon the
brain cells, producing a sort of hair trigger situation within
them, may cause the explosive discharges from them which
pear as overpowering impulses or uncontrollable conduct. The
waves of feeling which precede them are unquestionably en-
docrine determined. The wave of fear a cat i xj upon
seeing a dog is accompanied and indeed preceded by an in*
of the amount of adrenalin in the blood. The picture of fright,
as observed in a so-called normal person, staring eyes, trembling
hands, dry lips and mouth, < adfl to the portrait of the
appearance in hyperthyroidism. [np« Dieted with in
ble impulses, the inhibiting hormones may not be present
in sufficient quantity.
Phehle mlndedness, ranging from stupidity to imbecility,
also be a dirt loerine supply I
sells. \ ooogfa of the thyi
s blood, brain !><
clogged and thickened, so that a gross to the passage of
THE BACKGROUNDS OF PERSONALITY 201
the nerve impulses is created. We have here an illustration of
internal secretion lack actually producing gross changes in the
brain. But without a doubt, most endocrine influences upon the
brain, at work every minute and second of its life, are the subtle
ones of molecular chemistry and atomic energetics. We know
that such mental qualities as irritability and stupidity, fatiga-
bility, and the power to recover quickly or slowly from fatigue,
sexual potency and impotence, apathy and enthusiasm are en-
docrine qualities. We know also that the thyroid dominant tends
to be irritable and excitable, the pituitary deficient to be placid
and gentle, the adrenal dominant to be assertive and pugnacious,
the thymus-centered to be childish and easy-go-lucky and the
gonad deficient to be secretive and shy. This brings us to the
relation of the internal secretions to the type of personality as a
whole.
CHAPTER X
THE TYPES OF PERSONALITY
The Endocrine Personality
If a single gland can dominate the life history of an individual
it becomes possible to speak of endocrine types, the result of the
endocrine analysis of the individual. Studying endocrine traits of
physique, life reactions, disease tendencies, hereditary history
and blood chemistry, one may gain an insight into the composi-
tion or constitution of an individual. The endocrine type of an
individual is a summary of these, his behaviour in the past, and
is also a prediction of his reactions in the future, much as a
chemical formula outlines what we believe to be the skeleton
of a compound substance as deducible from its properties under
varying conditions. Only, admittedly, as yet the endocrine
label is but roughly qualitative and most crudely quantitative,
whereas the chemical formula is the essence of the exact.
However, the fact remains that though we are only upon the
first rungs of the ladder, we are upon the ladder. The horizon
undoubtedly broadens. We possess a new way of looking upon
humanity, a fresh transforming light upon those strange phe-
ourselves. Of the ugly achievements of that dreadful
century, the nineteenth, the most illuminating was the discovery
If as the ape-parvenu. Yes, we are all animals now, it said
If, and set its teeth in the cut-throat game of survival.
But there was no understanding in that evil motto of a dis-
illusic irt. The ape-pan tely lonely and
. has still to understand himself.
Let us \» ! we can. There is perhaps a certain presump-
tion in the phrase, the endoerh mbitious, and per-
haps wiD not fulfill its pro: it it is useful because it points
1. As Wilhefan Ostwald never tii
dr, HaO is a complete shorthand record f<>r the bundle of
I that
t task of mind, synthesis. It is the highest bj of the
BS of the internal set that certain combinations of
n
THE TYPES OF PERSONALITY 203
them, permutations and blendings of them, are responsible for
those unique wonders of the universe, personalities.
The riddle of personality ! Are we at last upon the track of its
uncovering? That elusive mystery, which philosophers have
wrapped in the thousand veils of Greek and Latin words, and
psychologists, even unto the third and fourth generation of
Freudians, have floundered about in, moles before a dazzling sun,
is it to be unwound for our inspection? Think of the human
soul. What an invisible, intangible chameleon is its true reality !
Watch it, and you see something that seems to uncurl and expand
like a feather with exultation and delight and joy, to contract
and stiffen into a billiard ball with fear and pride, shrewd caution
and vigilant malevolence, to rear back and spark fire like light-
ning with anger and temper, and to crawl and slither with abjec-
tion and smirking slyness, when it needs to. This multiplex
Thing-Behind-Life, are we really about to dissect it into its
elements?
Personality embraces much more than merely the psychic
attributes. It is not the least important of the lessons of en-
docrine analysis that there is no soul, and no body, either.
Rather a soul-body, or body-soul, or the patterns of the living
flame. The closer tracking of the internal secretions leads us
into the secrets of the living flame, why it lives, and how it lives,
the strange diversities of its colorings and music and the odd
variations in its energy, vitality and longevity. Why it flickers,
why it flares and glares, spurts, flutters, burns hard or soft,
orange-blue or yellow.
The medieval scholiasts, who fought as fiercely about names as
nations about territories, divided men into the sanguine, the
bilious, the lymphatic and the nervous. It was a pretty crude
classification of different constitutions. The endocrine criteria,
more exact and concrete, divide them into the adrenal centered,
the thyroid centered, the thymus centered, the pituitary centered,
the gonad centered, and their combinations.
The Adrenal Personalities
hn adrenal personality is one dominated by the ups and
downs of his adrenal gland. In the large, the curve of his life
is the curve of secretion by this gland, both of its Cortex and
medulla. Such an adrenal personality is entirely normal, within
the definition of the normal as something not threatening the
204 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
duration of life, nor comfortable adaptation to it. So are the
ndulai types. No sharp line can be drawn between the
normal and the abnormal in any case, the borderland is wide,
the transitions many.
The skin is one of the chief clues to the adrenal personality.
The relation between the adrenal and the slcin dates way back
in the evolutionary scale, for adrenalin has been isolated directly
from pigment deposits in the epidermis of frogs. Skin pigment
bears a direct relation to the reaction of the organism to light,
especially the ultraviolet rays, to the radiation of heat, and
hence to the fundamental productions and consumptions of energy
by the cells. So the gland of energy for emergencies writes its
signature always all over the skin.
In an adrenal personality, the epidermis is always slightly,
somewhat, or deeply pigmented. The pigmentation is due to a
dark brown deposit lightly or thickly scattered over the skin.
With the general diffuse pigmentation or darkening there are
often the black spots, the pigmented birth marks, or the lighter
ones of freckles. The latter signify some permanent or transi-
tory adrenal inadequacy in the past, ante-natal or post-:
of the individual, and presage the same in his future. These
spots have been frequently observed to appear after an attack of
diphtheria or influenza. There seems to be more tuberculosis
among those who have them than those who do not. We there-
fore say that diphtheria, influenza and tuberculosis stand out as
adrenal-attacking diseases, which have a greater power to kill,
cripple or hurt those with defective adrenal constitutions than
others.
The hair of the adrenal type is characteristic: ubiquitous,
thick, coarSe and dry. It is prominent over the cl
and back, and has a tendency to kink. Of' lor i^ n<
ted: an Italian's will be yellow, a Norwegian's jet black. It
has been stated that most red-haired persons •
Such persons also have well-marked canine teeth which I
adr< it They also have a low hair lin
When t! ;i property oo-operating pituitary
\vroid, he posses v and pi
combination, he develops into
winr diving |
u fabricated treU-oocnpei]
al type. fag is closely associated with, if n<
THE TYPES OF PERSONALITY 205
pendent upon, adrenal fag, particularly of the cortex. Brain tissue
and adrenal cortex tissue are near relatives, and a normal human
brain never develops without a normal adrenal cortex. The
adrenal type with an hypertrophied adrenal cortex is always
efficient.
Among women, the adrenal type is :.. always masculinoid. If
physically feminine — due to adequate feminine reactions on the
part of the other endocrines — she will at least show the qualities
of a psychic virilism. A generation ago, such a woman had to
repress her inherent trends and instincts in the face of public
opinion and law, and so suffered from a feeling of inferiority.
Nowadays, these women are striding forward and will attain a
good many of the masculine heights, commanding responsible
executive positions and high salaries. An adrenal type will prob-
ably be the first woman president of the United States.
However, that presupposes a normal range of action of the
other endocrines. Let there be some quirk or weakness elsewhere
in the chain of hormones, and instead of the successful woman,
behold the spinsters, the maiden aunts, the prudes and cranks who
never satisfactorily adapt themselves in society. To them must
be given a good deal of credit for the suffrage revolution. These
unadapted adrenals, as we may call them, once sowed the seeds,
expending their masculinism in the struggles of the pioneers'
martyrdoms, preparing the harvest their sisters, the more ade-
quate adrenal types, will now reap. The unadapted adrenals of
today will have to look for new worlds to conquer.
So much for the compensated adrenal types. They are the
good workers, the efficients, the kinetic successes of the driven
world. They make, at a certain level, good slave drivers be-
cause they feel within themselves a driving force. But suppose
the adrenal type becomes uncompensated, or perhaps is inade-
quate to the demands of life to start with. Then the story be-
comes different. The perfect efficient superman of business or
profession begins to lag. Though he is himself in the morning,
he begins to lag in the afternoon. That is when he tires. In
the evening he is all in. More sleep, recreational trips, vacations
slip into the rank of necessities, whereas previously they had
been laughed at as luxuries. More minute or large moles emerge
in the skin, especially if the individual is of a fair type. If a
strenuous effort is not made to give the adrenals an opportunity
to recuperate, or if adjustment on the part of the other glands
20G THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
does not occur, this stage of intermittent and remittent adrenal
iuacy gives way in turn to the state of permanent adrenal
insufficiency.
The adrenal insufficient is important because he is to be
where. Built along the same lines as the adrenal
and apt to be taken for him, he differs and contrasts vividly below
the surface. One may sum him up by saying that he is one
variety of neurasthenic, perhaps the most frequent
Cold hands and feet plague him, cold feet psychically as w
cally, for a chronic and obsessive indecision is one of his
most prominent complaints. A fatigability, that goes with a luw
blood pressure, lowered body temperature and a disturbed ability
to utilize sugar for fuel purposes, is another of his chief com-
plaints. The skin often presents an instability of the bloo< !
sels, so that they now react to stroking with a blanched in
of a reddened effect. Irritability, a liability to go off the handle
at the slightest provocation, and a consequent complete exhaus-
tion that, after an outburst, sends him to bed, is conspicuous.
Dismissed sometimes contemptuously as weaklings, tin
cused of laziness, craziness, and haziness. In their psychic
attempts to compensate, they land into all kinds of hot v
from which friends, relatives or luck extricate them sometimes.
The other times they go to the wall.
The congenital adrenal deficient is a special problem. If the
history of such an individual is followed from bfrtn7 one gets
a pretty typical story. The genealogy is nervous. Nervous is
a word of many meanings. But when parents confess them
nervous, it generally means a mental and emotional instability
of some sort. Sometimes the i moufia< A\ strung.
In the feeding narrative of the child, on
nts or ( ; rouble, difficulty
tures. flcr the first year or (wo, the nutritional chr
ctory. Lack of app ck of en ck of
ad the motif
childhood.
in. It ' children
. Chronically below 'it and hi
ihool lif<
OpOfl iv in which the l
etupidit; oding. If the
THE TYPES OF PERSONALITY 207
teachers alone are duty-obsessed, or perhaps sadistic, the child
endures the agonies of repeated admonitions, demotions, and
punishments. However, a certain thick-skinned indifference may
develop to protect the sufferer.
If the parents are in addition ambitious, or proud, or competi-
tive, then woe betide the victim. With their nervous dispositions,
it is £he school and the tutor who are to be blamed, if not the
child. From school to school, from system to system, from
novelty to fad, from doctor to doctor, from fakir to charlatan,
from pillar to post, they wander in search of an education.
Educational cults by the dozen have sprouted and grown fat
around these unfortunates.
The chief defect of the congenital adrenal inadequate is an
insufficiently developed adrenal cortex. That means an insuf-
ficiently developed brain and nervous system. For we have
seeifhow r closely all these~arelrelated in development. Now edu-
cation can never be the education of a vacuum. And we have
to deal here with a relative_yacuum. Whenjbhere are no poten-
tialities, there can be no education. Where the potentialities are
limited^ education must be limited: The congenital adrenal inade-
quate is defined in physical and mental energy. Hence educators
cannot drive him. Up to a certain point he can be led, but no
farther. He should not be expected to go to a college, and waste
the opportunity of some one financially unlucky, but whose en-
docrine system is more generously endowed.
Not that the outlook is absolutely hopeless. Puberty, with its
tremendous changes in the glands of internal secretion, when one
can almost hear the clicks and the whirring of the wheels in the
internal machinery, may^ transform. The unfathomed possibili-
ties of gland therapy are still to be probed. But the general
rule remains.
The Reactions to Modernism
The adrenal personalities in all their variations must ^safe-
guarded jind carefully looked after in the strained complexities
of modern l^t-^lTunTcivilization. In a sense, the adrenal
type is the Atlas of the twentieth century world, and small won-
der that he and his descendants stagger beneath the burden. The
adrenals are_organs_for the mobilization of energy. physical_and
m^entaT7 for emergencies. They are the_ghnd_s wliich meet shocks
alaTlolfutralize the effects of shock. In the solitary animal, the
208 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
everyday producers of shock are pain, fright and wounds. The
ins oversecrete to encounter the enemy, and
■ is a period of rest and recuperation. Man, how
with the growth of his imagination and the fa ED number
and density of his surrounding herd, has become the subji
imulation. In the past, this was balanced b
almost universal dominance of some religious belief, as an effec-
tive opiate. Concepts like Fate, Predestination, an all-guiding
and all-wise Providence, relieved and shielded the adrenals, and
acted as valuable adjuvants for the preservation of normality.
The nineteenth century witnessed the birth and expansion of
a great number of new stimulant reagents, the disc
physics and chemistry, which, with the climax of the World War
of 1914-1918, have made for a more or less complete deliquescence
of accepted religion. For the great majority there was no faith
to take its place. War, pre-war, and post-war shocks have con-
tinued with their incessant pounding upon the reserves of energy.
Under these conditions the adrenaljpersonalities are bound to
suffer. The other endocrine types suffer, too, but quite differ-
ently.
Today, anti-adrenal, anti-religious ideas are epidemic. Of
these, first prize belongs to a cult of egotism fathered by the
Napoleonic Idea, consciously assertive and self-conscious in Mai
Stirner's "The Ego and His Own," which engender* rm of
imitators and plagiarists. Human beings are all incorrigible
egoists more or less, furtive or frank. But social and reli
codes curbed the most narcissistic of kings and conquerors. Be-
fore Napoleon, all of them vowed allegiance and expressed sob-
ion to some sort of deity, cot : of the Lord
in their hearts. But the ideas of Napoleon flouted all that. The
ipulous predatory who put effectual scheming for the
self plainly above every other consideration and rode rougfa
aU his fellows appealed powerfully to the latent animality
of the adrenal types. T
capital and labor of themselves as classes fiercely opposed for-
ever in the policy of cut-thn is cut-throat. The labor
and the commercial companies and cor]
S like
for himself and
and the
Facte" of phrasei of the nineteenth oen-
tury that assisted. Finally o rwmiaa revelation <-f
THE TYPES OF PERSONALITY 209
man as the ape-parvenu, which completed the disintegration of
the old restraints.
Man seemed to see himself now for the first time stark and
naked. But Man consists of many varieties, and all reacted
differently to the image in the clouded mirror. There was uni-
versal attempt at suppression. But slowly the anti-adrenal forces
infiltrated every activity and every soul. Like a hidden focus of
infection in the body, it germinated and poisoned. A slow fever
crept into life. A febrile quality tinged the acquisition of wealth,
theconcentration upon sex, and the desperate pursuit of the novel
stimulus.
Then, like the hand that appeared at Belshazzar's Feast, came
the War, only it was a hand that stayed with a long flashing light-
ning sword in its grip, sweeping pitilessly among the erstwhile
dancing multitudes to mutilate and destroy. A good many peo-
ple, with that sturdy animality George Santayana speaks some-
where of as a trait of mankind, set out to enjoy the War. It
was a new sort of good time upon an incredibly large scale. It
was an undreamed-of opportunity. The mechanisms of suppres-
sion of the mind render it incapable of appreciating horror until
encountered. And so thousands with dangerously unstable
adrenals were plunged into the most trying conditions possible.
Hundreds of them, already shaken, on the borderland of insta-
bility, reacted with the phenomena of breakdown of_control,
lumped with a host of other phenomena, under the general rubric
of "shell shock."
That alone was not all. If hundreds collapsed, thousands ap-
proached the verge of collapse. They survived and were dis-
charged from the armies as normal. They reappear in civil life
as cases of "nerves." Ordinarily that would mean that they would
be classed as'Tailures. But such have been the psychologic reac-
tions to the war that all kinds of compensations in the way of
dangerous mental states have become frequent in these inade-
quate adrenal types. A trend to violence and a resentful emotion-
alism are combined with desperate attempts to spur the jaded
abTrenals with artificial excitements. Consequent melancholia and
depression, the "blues," are inevitable. A survey of drug addicts
would probably show a definite percentage of this type. The
same applies to certajnj)ettyjcrjm^ breakers.
The adrenal element in the personality must baxonsidered in
every disturbance, morbif^personal^ or_sjadaiinvolving brunette
tvjDes, Tluxley's" dark white, Mediterranean-Iberians, red-haired
210 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
persons, and even pigment-spotted fair people. Historians have
traced the civilization to the doings of a brunette people,
Sumerians, the first to build cities m the Kuphrates-Tigris
region more than five thousand j fore Christ was born.
Irenalizcd people one would expect to be the first to
advantage of possibilities 1 of their energy capacity. The
earliest Sumerian stone carvings of warriors exhibit an under-
i compared with the large head, broad face, a low
hair line and prominent nose that would fit into the ensemble of
the adrenal type. Certain other historical aspects of the adrenal
personality have yet to be worked out.
The Pituitary Personalities
The presence of two antagonistic elements in the one gland
complicates any attempt at even the most abstract analysis of
a personality dominated by that gland. The pituitary, composed
of an anterior lobe and posterior lobe, supplies two fairly_un-
compl ponding types, best described as I uline
type, and the feminine pituitary type. The masculine
pituitary type is one determined by the rule of the an
pituitary, representing superlative brain tone and good
aH-around growth and harmoniou ral function, the ideal
m. The feminine pituitary type has an i
of post-pituitary, with susceptibility to the tender i
sentin rid emotionalism, Feminine structural lines.
Ante-pituitary dominance in a male reinforces Che general m
linity while the post-pituitary d<; -pituitary
in a worn r natural trend, ante-pituitary tending
it. In other w< ry are
COnjUQCth pituitary and ovav disjunct!
re opponents, ante-pituitary and testis are
nical circumstance involved in the pituil
• be t) ntire life hi
(he pituitar I in ■
small ill. The size of this bony
Id to the various i
h-pell }
able. All i itra for th< inique
THE TYPES OF PERSONALITY 211
have rendered available almost a direct view of the sella turcica.
In the first place, the bony box may be definitely too small to
start in with. That means a small jmd sqjDptentially inadequate
pituitary, both anterior and posterior, potentially inadequate in
that it will become impossible.Ior iLio grow and produce extra
secretion upon demand.. Handicapped thus, the unfortunate so
born is doomed to inferiority and very little can be done for him.
He will not develop satisfactorily. He possesses small ^genital
organs which will not evolve properly in adolescence, or if they
will not stand still, tend to revert to the opposite sex type. Then
he tends to be dwarfed, fatigable, adipose. Among these types
are included subjects of obsessions and compulsions who are dull
and apathetic, cannot learn or maintain inhibitions, and so, with-
out initiative, evolve into moral and .intellectual degenerates,
liable to epilepsy and the most remarkable sex aberrations. All
because a cranny of the skull, about the size of a thimble, is not
large enough for their dominating gland.
If the bone of the cavity of the pituitary is softer and yielding,
so that some enlargement of the gland is possible, especially of
the anterior, there appear rapid growth with a tendency to high
blood pressure, great mental, activity associated with frequent and
severe headaches (often of the migraine type), a combination of
initiative and irritability and a marked sexuality. X-ray exam-
inationof the sella turcica shows what is called erosion of the
bone as it yields to the pressure of the growing gland.
The ideal sella turcica for the ideal pituitary type is a large
room in which the gland may grow and reach its maximunTsize
and so its maximum function, without needing to exert pressure
or destroy and erode bone in front of it, to the side of it or be-
hind it. The distinctive masculine_ and feminine types,_dassed
asj/he_ normal^ belong to ^is_ group. Sometimes, the bone in
front of the pituitary will yield, while the one in the rear will not,
and sometimes the conditions are reversed. Thus we may have
ante-pituitary sufficiency with post-pituitary insufficiency, or
ante-pituitary insufficiency with post-pituitary sufficiency, com-
plexes which contribute to create the grosser functional hermaph-
rodite types of mixed sex.
In the average feminine pituitary type of personality, post-
pituitary dominates. In a woman and to a lesser degree in a man,
the general_buildjs slight a^irather delicate. The skin is soft,
moist, and hairless, the face is the doll or ; Dresden China sort,
with a roseate or creamy complexion, flushing easily, eyes large
212 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
and prominent. The mouth shows a high arched palate and
crowded teeth rather long. The voice is high-pitched. One rec-
ognizes the traditional womanly woman, petite and chic, who
always marries the hero in ston lly fond of chil-
dren, easily moved, has a good libido, and the traditional
feminine traits. When unstable, the post -pituitary type is rest-
less and hyperactive, craves excitement, and continual chajQgf
interest and scene, a new pleasure every moment. A good many
of the women of today, who fifty years ago would have 1
nice sedate girls because of their excellent post-pituitary con
tution, have been irritated by the atmosphere of post-1914 into
the excess post-pituitary state, the adventurous never-satiated
avid pleasure hunter, in whom the craving for stimulation will
stop at nothing. F. Scott Fitzgerald portrayed an exquisite speci-
men of the kind in his short story 'The Jellybean," with a quasi-
heroine of a good Southern family, built to be a high standard
wife and mother, who drinks, swears, gambles, and finally marries
on a dare. Modern ppst^pituitary woman is excitement mad and
thrill chasing. The worst of it is that the resultant personal
s cannot be dismissed as transient inevitables. The
heredity of the internal secretions determines that the offspring
of tl i are bound to be pituitary unstable, tl
desirable of endocrine instabilities because of the concomitant
ital effects. Even from the purely selfish point of view, the
adpoint of enlightened selfishness, the post-pituitary type must
beware of excesses. For disturbances of menstruation, psychic
fears, anxieties, states of suspicion and obsession, various pains
among the penalties.
A period of post -pituitary excess as an effect of d preg-
ICJT, or the rapid life, may be followed by post-pituit
deficiency as a result of exhaustion of the gland. The girl or
woman then becom* ,<1 suffers from 1 a (the fair,
and forty type) yet retains a certain capacity lor enjoyment
which enables her to continue gay, happy and gentle, kind, in'
eeted. So she contrasts with the thyroid deficient who gets i
IfO dull, stupid, even moi
CUline pjtujj QQaJity, (he man with a dominant
anterior pit with plenty of
lly tall
leu the growth of the Kong 1>< rly by a
social pi ofthete8tes) with a well-
THE TYPES OF PERSONALITY 213
large firm muscles, and proportionately sized hands and feet.
The head is of the marked dolichocephalic type, flattened at the
sides, face is oval more or less, with thick eyebrows, eyes rather
prominent, nose broadish and long, lower jaw prominent and firm.
Prominent bony^ points like the cheek bones, the elbows and the
knees, tKeTnuckle joints of the hands and feet. The teethjire
large, especially the upper middle incisors, and they are usually
spaced. The arms_and_legs ^arejhairy. High grade brains, the
ability^ tojearn, and the ability_jto_control, self-mastery in the
sense of domination _ of jthe LJgwer instincts and the automatic
reactions of the vegetative nervous system, the rule by the indi-
vidual of himself and his environment are at their maximum in
him. The ante-pituitary personality is educable for intelligence,
and even jntellect, provided the proper educational stimulus is
supplied. Men of brains, practical and theoretical, philosophers,
tlimEers, creators of new thoughts and new goods, belong to this
group. The distinction between men of theoretical genius, whose
minds which could embrace a universe, and yet fail to manage
successfully their own personal everyday lives, and the men of
practical genius, who can achieve and execute, the great engineers,
and industrial men lies in the balance between the ante-pituitary
and the adrenal cortex primarily. Men like Abraham Lincoln
and George Bernard Shaw belong to this antej-pituitary group.
The feminine pituitary personality, in whom there is predom-
inance of the post-pituitary over the ante-pituitary, occurs in
men. The type is short, rounded and stout. They have heads
that seem too large for their bodies, the general hair distribution
on the trunk and extremities is poor, although that of the scalp
and face is plentiful, and they acquire an abdominal paunch
early. They exhibit the feminine tendency to periodicity of
function, their moods, activities, efficiency are cyclic, reminding
one of the menstrual variations of the female. This rhythmicity
saturates their personalities, so that poetry and music almost
morbidly appeal to them. A number of the great poets and
musicians are to be classified as of the feminine pituitary species.
Last, but not least, they are the hen-pecked lovers and husbands.
Sex difficulties are frequent in their history.
The determination of endocrine type and tendencies, the pre-
diction of the future personality, during childhood is one of the
developments confidently to be looked for, as our knowledge of
the internal secretions will grow. The possibilities of control
211 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
loom as one of the most magnificent promises of science. Yet
the high expectations for tomorrow should not depress our respect
for the achievements of today. In the case of the pituitary, for
instance, a hint as to the method of approach is furnished by the
tabulation of the traits of pituitary dominance and pituitary in-
feriority in children.
Pituitary sufficient and dominant:
Large, spare, bony frame
Eyes wide apart
Broad face
Teeth, broad, large, unspaced
Square, protruding chin and jaws
Large feet and hands
Early hair growth on body
Thick skin, large sex organs
Aggressive, precocious, calculating, self-contained
Pituitary inferior:
Small, sometimes delicate skeleton
Rather adipose, weak muscles
Upper jaw prognathous
Dry, flabby skin
Small hands and feet
Abnormal desire for sweets
Subnormal temperature, blood pressure and pulse
Poor control of lower vegetative functions
Mentally sluggish, dull, apathetic, backward .
Loses self-control quickly, cries easily, discouraged promptly,
psychic stamina insufficient
The pituitary personality in childhood produced by limitation
of the size of the gland, because its bony box is com;
•its typical hall-marks. Se suppli<
ond and third offenders in the juvenile court linquenl
of childhood, tl
! and moral tfl and <
of elderly \ Pol futility
all around. Not utili QQ or fut ilitarianism is needed, hut
nism. The feeding of pituitary gland bo aou^h
B unfortun:!' do more than ten d
organisations, with the most patrician board o! directors complete.
THE TYPES OF PERSONALITY 215
The Thyroid Personalities
The accessibility of the thyroid gland in the neck, the ease of
surgical approach, the definite effects following its removal, and
then the miraculous marvels of the feeding of thyroid have
rendered it the centre of attack by the largest army of endocrine
investigators. As a result we know more about the thyroid in
childhood, adolescence, adult life and old age than about the
other glands.
In childhood, the subthyroid or thyroid deficient, the cretinoid
type, the type resembling the cretin, is "fairly" common. The
peasant's face, with the broad nose and the tough skin, coarse
straight hair, the undergrowth, physical and mental, a persistent
babyishness and a retardation of self-control development, make
up the picture. He needs an excess of sleep, sleeps heavily, needs
sleep during the day, when awakened in the morning still feels
tired, and rather dull and restless, dresses slowly, has to be coaxed
or forced to dress, gets to school late nearly every morning, does
badly at the school, reaction time, learning time and remember-
ing time being prolonged as compared with the average, and is
lazy at home lessons. He perspires little, even after exertion, yet
fatigues easily, is subject to frequent colds, adenoids, tonsillitis,
and acquires every disease of childhood that happens along.
Adolescence, the coming of menstruation, the first blooming of
youth is delayed in the sub-thyroid. The secondary sex traits
as they develop tend to be incomplete and to mimic those of the
opposite sex. Yet in adolescence too there may be a sudden
change and reversal of the whole process, a jump from the au5-
thyroid to the hyperthyroid state. So a girl who has been dull
anar_Iackadaisical, witlf ho "complexion and every prospect of
evolution into a wall flower, may be transformed into a bright-
eyed woman, generally nervous and restless, high colored, and
possessed of a craving for continual activity and excitement. Skin,
hair and teeth become of the thyroid dominant type. The heart
palpitates under the slightest stimulus, she perspires almost an-
noyingly, heat and emotion are prostrating. If such a transfigura-
tion does not occur, the effect of the reconstructions of puberty
is to create a person with about the following characteristics.
1. Height below the average
2. Tendency to obesity (toward midddle age)
3. Complexion sallow
4. Hair dry — hair line high
216 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
5. Eyebrows scanty, either as a whole or in outer half
6. Eyeballs ck i narrowed slits
7. Teeth irregular, 1 us early
8. Extremities cold and bluish
9. Circulation poor. Subject to chilblains
Intellectually, these people vary enormously, depending upon
which of the other glands will enlarge to compensate far the defi-
ciency of the thyroid. If the growth of the skull has left a roomy
Ua turcica for the pituitary to grow in, the intellect may be
normal or even superior, though energy is below par. If tie
not possible and the adrenals have to predominate, a lower, i
animal and less self-controlled type of mentality is produe
In direct contrast to the sub-thyroid types is he who originally
s hyperthyroid. During childhood he is quite healthy, thin,
but striking robust, active, energetic, generally fair-complexioned
with nose straight and high bridged, eyes rather "poppy,"
xcellent, regular, firm, white with a pearly translucent
enamel. These children ave always on the go, never get tired,
require little sleep. Seldom will one of the classical ehildr
diseases strike them, measles perhaps, but no other. Adolescence
for them, however, is more apt to be stormy and episodic, adjust-
ment to the new world of people and things is much more difficult,
wanderlust is acute. All an expression of cells keyed up, charged
with energy that must flow somewhere or explode.
The ruddy live-wire, recognized everywhere as bubbling with
vitality, the life of any group, the magnetic personality may,
however, be shocked by some seismic event like the death of a
r or mother, or the ruin of some cherished ambition. A
. in the balance of the other glands follows quickly and
at and invalidism, which m
.onary, or descend to the worst forms of th
icy.
During maturity, the type are chara> lean
body, or tenda idly to become thin uj rhave
clean cut 1 and thick hair, r early, thick
eyebrow.-, large, frank, brilliant, keen eyes, regular and well
developed teeth and mouth. Sexually tiny arc well differentiated
and mi c.-|,tii,lt.. Noticeable emotivity, a rapidity oF perception
ad a tender
of expreesion less. in<\-
1 ■ ii hi.!' i a. rev makes them perpetual doers and workers, who
bout all
THE TYPES OF PERSONALITY 217
frequently suffer from insomnia, planning in bed what they are
to do next day.
Certain types of thyroid excess associated with the thymus do-
minant next to be described are peculiarly susceptible to emo-
tional instability. They are subject to brain storms, outbreaks
of furious rage, sometimes associated with a state of semi-con-
sciousness. To emphasize the analogy to epilepsy, their attacks
have been called psycholepsy. Among the Italians especially they
were watched and reported during the War, when the explosive
fits were seen to take the form of irresponsible acts of insubordi-
nation or violence.
The Thymo-Centric Personalities
During the first period of childhood, up to five, six or seven, or
more accurately, up to the point at which the permanent teeth
begin to appear, every child may be said to be a tlrymu^-domi^
ated organism, because the thymus, holding the other endocrines
in check, controls its life. That is why up to the third and fourth
years at any rate, most children seem alike. Closer observation,
however, reveals points of differentiation and signs of the coming
potencies of the other hormones. During the second period,
up to puberty, these marks of the deeper underlying forces of
the personality make themselves more and more felt. The thy-
mus, like a brake that is becoming worn out, continues to function
in a progressively weaker fashion. Until with the arrival of the
gonadal (ovaries' oar testes*) internal secretion, its influence is
wiped ouk
~TKere is a definite degree of thymus activity during everyone's
childhood, unless by its premature involution, precocity displaces
juvenility. Yet even during childhood, there are certain indivi-
duals with excessive thymus action, foreshadowing a continued
thymus predominance throughout life. The "angeljchild" is the
type: regularly proportioned and perfectly made, likea fine piece
of sculpture, with delicately chiselled features, transparent skin
changing color easily, long silky hair, with an exceptional grace
of movement and an alertness of mind. They seem the embodi-
mentof beauty, but somehow unfit for the coarse conflicts oTlife.
In Englisn~nTerature several characters are recognizable as por-
traits of the type, notably Paul Dombey, whose nurse recognized
that he was not for this world. They may look the picture of
health, but they are more liable than anv other children to be
218 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
eliminated by tuberculosis, meningitis or even one of the common
INI of childhood.
It is after puberty, when the thymus should shrink and pass
out of the endocrine concert as a power, that the more complex
reactions of personality emerge when the thym and
refuses to or cannot retire. The persistent thymus always t
throws its shadow over" "the entire personality. To what ex!
that shadow spreads depends upon the strength of the other
glands of internal secretion, their ability to compensate or to si
inhibited. Whether or not the pituitary will be able to enlarge
in its bony cradle seems to be the most important factor deter-
mining these variations. If there is space for it to grow, at any
rate normally, the individual may pass for normal, although
he will have difficulties throughout life he may never under-
;id, particularly in sexual directions. If the pituitary is limi
partially or completely, the thymus predominance is more
prominent and fixed, and the abnormalities become obvious, both
of person and conduct.
The anatomic architecture of the latter thymo-centric person-
ality is fairly typical. The reversion in type of the reproductive
organs, the slender waist, the gracefully formed body, the rounded
limbs, the long chest and the feminine pelvis strike one at the first
glance. The texture of the skin is smooth as a baby's, and BOI
times velvety to the touch. Its color in
or faintly creamy, or there may be an effect of a filmy sheen <>
a florid complexion. Little or no hair on the face contribi.
to the general feminine aspect in the more extreme t\
are often double jointed somewhere, flat footed, knot k-kneed.
In v. eternal manifestations of a thym*
sonality may be limited to thin
nan ched thighs and
scai; . with bi id delayi 'mat ion. Or tl
. with juvenility, if then I of the
pituit tion for one reason or other.
In t; i the probl* ;. i psychi
everyday lif< distinctly
tiscular
.ok ably fragile
ble 61 ■
eponding to an emere y handicapped. In
, they in for DO
THE TYPES OF PERSONALITY 219
ascertainable cause at all, or because of some slight excitement
like that attending some slight operation, a fall, or a mild illness.
During the run-about epoch they are unable to cope with the
necessities of an active child's existence in playing with other
children. Puberty and adolescence are specially perilous to them
for they may endeavour to compensate for an inner feeling of
physical inferiority by going in strenuously for athletics and
sports, and so risking a sudden hemorrhage in the brain, produc-
ible by the tearing of a blood vessel, as if constructed of defec-
tive rubber. Reports published in the newspapers from time to
itime of children or young men instantly killed by a tap on the
I jaw in a boxing contest, or some other trivial injuries are doubt-
I less samples of such reactions in thymo-centric people.
As an illustration of the conduct aberrations of the thymo-
centric personality during adult life, the following extracts from
a newspaper report of a suicide are worth quoting.
"An autopsy made yesterday by Dr. Benjamin Schwartz, first
assistant to Dr. Charles Norris, Chief Medical Examiner, re-
moved any mystery that surrounded the death on Saturday
night by pistol bullets of Dr. Jose A. Arenas and the wounding
of 'Miss Ruth Jackson' and Ignatio Marti.
"Dr. Schwartz said that his post-mortem examination had con-
vinced him beyond doubt that the dead physician-dentist had
killed himself after he had tried to take the life of the young
woman with whom he had lived and of the youth who was his
successful rival.
" 'Besides that/ Dr. Schwartz said, 'my report to the police will
include a statement from the young woman to me that she always
had understood that Dr. Arenas had killed some one in Havana,
Cuba, before he came to New York.
" 'The autopsy left no doubt that Dr. Arenas was a case of
status lymphaticus (thymus-centered personality). I made a
most complete report because of the scientific value of the au-
topsy.
" 'This confirmed my first deductions after seeing the body on
Saturday night in the doctor's furnished room with alcove bed-
room adjoining. You will remember that as soon as I had seen
him I revealed that he was wearing corsets.
" 'These cases of status lymphaticus are intensely interesting.
In them the blood vessels are very small, and the lymphatic
element is greatly in excess. They die suddenly, from ruptures
220 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
of blood vessels. Many of them are degenerate. Most of them
are criminals. All of them are liable to commit crimes of passion.
Among them are found a large pa of drug addicts.
" 'Miss Jackson, in the hospital, confirmed my scientific theory
that the dead man was not normal. She was perfectly frank in
her statement. She said she had left her husband, Elmer Schultz,
an automobile salesman in Toledo, several months ago and had
come to New York. She said she had lived with the doctor for
some time.
" 'About ten days ago she left him to live with Marti, a healthy,
normal lad. Before she went from the doctor's room she destroyed
those colored collars that were found beside the body. She cut
them with scissors. But that was after, so she states, the doctor
had destroyed stockings of hers by cutting them.
" 'She told me in the hospital today, and with every appearance
of truth, that she had met Arenas in the subway at the station
on Seventy-second Street and Broadway on Friday night and
that she had asked him when she could come and get her clothes.
He said, according to her story:
" 'Come to the house tomorrow afternoon — but come with
Marti.'
" 'She said that she and Marti went there according to this
invitation: that first the doctor showed her the cut collars and
told her that she would get her clothes back in perfect condition,
and that the next thing she knew she had been shot. She couldn't
remember much after that.
" 'I believe that both she and Marti have told a perf<
itzht forward story and the autopsy is proof of it.
" 'There were six bullets in the doctor's pistol to
for. One, in an undischarged cartridge, still was in the weapon.
That leaves five. One struck Ml toon" in the right < i
squarely in front, and penetrated the flesh about one inch. If
• all behind the missile it would b
gone right through, pierced a In: d I hemorrhage, and the
that "IA kson" would have (lied,
four bul
"'One more :ti in the left u; <. It passed
nd then
bounced o\ le in front. It was a most
bounding bullet I was partiouli
I xaininintf its 0OC I was BU IS of
> told by Marti and "Miss Jackson." No
know they ai
THE TYPES OF PERSONALITY 221
" 'But anyone might have been puzzled by the queer antics of
the missiles from the pistol of South American manufacture that
the doctor used. If it had had any penetrating power — or rather
if the bullets that it sent out, had any real kick behind them —
the chances are that both "Miss Jackson" and Marti would be
dead now.
" 'Two bullets, it will be remembered, entered the doctor's left
chest, quite close together. Well, one nicked the heart and lodged
between the lung and the heart. It didn't cause any more
damage than a mosquito bite.
" 'The second bullet went through the soft flesh of the chest, but
it struck a rib and bounded back out again. That bullet was
picked up beside the body.
" 'After these vain attempts to send a bullet through his body
to a fatal spot, the doctor apparently shifted the weapon to his
right temple and pulled the trigger for the fifth time. Then the
fifth bullet, driven likewise by a very weak charge of powder,
pierced the skull at a point where it was thin and tore into his
brain. Its lack of power, however, is shown by the fact that I
found it this morning in the brain tissue.
" 'In all my experience I have never seen anything so queer. It
sounds almost like a dream — a man trying to kill with a pistol
that shoots bullets that either stop after striking soft flesh or
bound out of the body into which they are fired. But it is true;
I have had all of the bullets in my hand.
" 'They are all accounted for. They are all of the same sort.
There is no reason to doubt that they are all from the same
weapon, an instrument without manufacturer's name, and of a
design that the police say is unfamiliar to them.
" 'The dead doctor was a distinct type, and his tragic end was
one that should not surprise anyone who has any knowledge of
such cases. The courtroom was thronged with friends of the dead
physician-dentist, who not only is reported to be of a wealthy
family of Bogota, Colombia, but generally is credited with many
charitable works in the uptown Spanish colony here.' "
The distinct type to which the first assistant to the chief
medical examiner of the city referred is the thymo-centric person-
ality (status lymphaticus is another technical name for it), we
have been considering. The persistence of the thymus after
adolescence makes for an arrest of masculinization or feminiza-
tion, the end-point arrived at by the processes of puberty. That
is, a partial castration takes place. Now, as the experiments
of Steinach upon the transplantation of ovaries into males de-
222 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
prived of their testes and of testes into females deprived of their
ovaries have demonstrated, the removal of the interstitial cells
of one sex enormously in arousing the opposite sex traits
that have been latent, homosexuality. In a thyino-centric, ten-
dencies to homosexuality and masochism appear. And so all the
remarkable after-effects of those processes that the Freudians
have so lovingly traced: the father complex in men, the inferiority
complex, and the feminoid complex in general.
The feminoid complex introduces again the character of the
functional hermaphrodite, the mixed male- female. The sex index
will certainly come in time as a measurement of sexuality. But
until then some more available classification of sex tendency is
necessary. Including sex intergrades, one may divide sex types
into six classes: male, mate-female, male-female, female, fcmale-
male, and female-mate. The sex intergrades, the four hyphenated
classes, nearly all have some degree of persistent thymus. If its
influence is partial, the emphasis is before the hyphen, upon the
ostensible. If its influence is unchecked, the emphasis is after
the hyphen upon the apparently latent sex. The sex difficulties
produced in these people by the conflict between their conscious
>» x and their sub-conscious sex, the sex duel in the same mind,
Siamese twins pulling in diametrically opposite directions,
comprehensible only from the viewpoint of the internal i
tions.
Homosexuality, in one form or another, frank or eoncc
haunts the thymo-centric and spoils his life. The persisteir
mus, like a vindictive Elo Iks the footsteps of its victim,
its possessor. He wishes to live, according to
lessly rigid expectations, for viiilit I thy-
mus condition forces him also to live for femininity and mi
That homosexuality is not purely B
and introversion, as the D ould ha-
n proved by ol of its d( at io
is with internal cquired I
mental. ' bai b m
large goitrous swelling of the thyroid in the neck, with a rapid
eyes, the loss ol fli di and fat and the nervousness of
I by] id condition
homosexual. Obn the primates al< lines
have been made. In goitrous hyperth
is coram-
What complicates his sex difficulties, and makes social adjust-
THE TYPES OF PERSONALITY 223
ment almost impossible or completely impossible, is that his
pituitary frequently cannot react to assist him. Often, as empha-
sized, it is bound in by bone on all sides and neither ante-pituitary
nor post-pituitary can adequately secrete for his needs. So social
instinct and the capacity for inhibition, the ability to control
himself conceptually and somatically, are poor. As a child it is
difficult to train him along the lines of the elementary habits and
customs. He is into late childhood a bed-wetter, and steals and
lies quasi-unconsciously.
His mother realizes soon that he cannot be made to acquire a
sense of responsibility either for himself or for others. She
becomes afraid to let him go into the street because of his
inability to take care of himself, to acquire the right attitude
toward street cars, autos, strangers, in short, danger. She dreads
to take him to places because no sooner would they be out of
them, than she would discover that he had taken something that
did not belong to him, quite as a matter of course. He will
fabricate stories with no motive, fabricate them out of whole
cloth for the pure fun of it. In a word, moral irresponsibility
is the keynote of the volitional traits of the thymo-centric per-
sonality from childhood up.
With so much against them, physical inferiorities, mental de-
fects, moral lacks of every sort, it is little wonder that the thymo-
centrics die young. Infections hit them badly. The cases of flu
that went off in twenty-four hours belonged to the type. Ful-
minant meningitis, pneumonia, diphtheria, scarlet fever, the
varieties that are supposed to kill in twenty-four to forty-eight
hours because of the terrible virulence of the attacking microbe,
are probably so malignant only because the organism attacked
is a thymus subject.
In the alcohol and drug habitue wards of hospitals as well as in
medicolegal cases of degenerates, gunmen and other criminals,
the characteristic conformation and diagnostic stigmata of the
thymo-centric are often encountered. Life treats them badly.
Misunderstood and misjudged, they are the hopeless misfits of
society. If the pituitary and the thyroid can enlarge to com-
pensate for their defects, they may become the queer brilliants,
the eccentric geniuses of the arts and sciences. Should they not,
mental deficiency and delinquency are their portion. Epilepsy,
then, is sometimes their mode of escape from the terrors of an
utterly foreign world. Should they survive all other hazards,
suicide may still be their most frequent fate. A study of 122
224 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
cases of suicide by one observer showed that the status lympha-
18 was practically constant and often pronounced.
Certain of them, after a stormy life in the twenties, become
adapted to their surroundings in the thirties because the pituitary
gradually emerges and becomes dominant in their personalities.
They are then recessive thymocentrics. An increase in size, a
broadening, together with a greater mental tranquillity and
stability, accompany the adaptation. Historically, the thymo-
centrics who combined brilliancy and instability played a great
part as some of the famous adventurers and restless experimen-
talists.
The Sex Gland Centered or Gonado-Centric Personalities
(The Eunuchoid Personality)
Among the individuals whose personality is dominated by their
sex glands the physiognomy, physique and life reactions are so
distinctive that no better examples exist of our main thesis: that
the whole life of man is controlled primarily by his internal
secretions. These gonado-centric types are not all necessarily
sex gland deficient, as the term eunuchoid implies. They m
rather gonad unstable with a corresponding instability of the
entire endocrine system.
About the face of the eunuchoid the striking feature is the
incomplete, irregular, or absent hair development. Below thirty
it is chubby and ruddy, and rather childish in its texture; after
thirty, there is an effect of premature senility: the skin is yellow-
ish, leathery, and wrinkled as the faces of old women are
wrinkled: the upper lip is traversed by vertical wrinkles, and
wrinkles come around corners of the mouth. Tin ion is
Qf plaint !
Invariably the voice is higher pitched than the usual masculine
tones. It may be gentle and subdued, like
nt and rasping. Occasionally it is a pleasant high '
Adam's apple, poetic popular name for the thyroid cartilage,
is never prominent, b is nut ossified, as it should be in
the normal mi
1 and slender, or generally undersized. the muscles are soft
and flabby as a The hands and f<
Viewed in profile, the lines of the bodj
I may ret lie of the female's
THE TYPES OF PERSONALITY 225
and there may be a well-marked area of pigmentation around the
nipple. The hair growth under the shoulders and on the lower
abdomen tends to be scanty and to approximate the opposite
sex in quality and distribution, as do the reproductive organs
themselves.
These traits of physiognomy and physique indicate functional
hermaphroditism in the underlying feminoid constitution. The
feminoid constitution appears again in the supposedly masculine.
The feminoid constitution should not be confused with the infanti-
loid constitution. The former, the gonado-centric personality, is
a digression of growth, a deviated evolution of the individual
because of the conflicting forces, some masculine and some femi-
nine, in his make-up. The infantiloid constitution is one of
arrested development, and may center around the arrested func-
tion in childhood or adolescence of any one or a number of
endocrine glands. Yet the two may resemble one another pretty
closely, at times. A cretin imitates the extreme grade of infanti-
loid constitution. The infantiloid is a sort of enlarged and
lengthened child. The feminoid is ostensibly a man, with a
good deal of woman in him. The infantiloid is a quite general
type, but of course when typical is a freak, recognized and
treated as such. How far the eunuchoid may deviate from the
normal is suggested by the following description of one.
"Face rounded, moon-like, chubby, devoid of hair. Eyes
puffed. Lips protruding and fleshy. Cheeks round and thick.
Nose little developed. Skin thick and of clear color. Dispropor-
tion between the size of head and body. Hair of scalp fine. Brows
and lashes scarce, trunk elongated and cylindrical. Limbs thick
and plump, tapering from the root to the extremities. Good fat
layers over the entire body. Reproductive organs those of a
little boy. Infantile mental state: light-heartedness, naivete,
timidity, easily evoked tears and laughter, promptly aroused
but fugitive wrath: excessive tenderness, but unreasonable dis-
likes."
An almost wholly mental infantiloid state or one purely
physical may occur. Certain rather large Tom Thumbs belong
to the group. In everyday life we see doll creatures, overgrown
children, on every hand. Mental measurements of any large
group of population reveal a remarkable percentage of it as
below the mental age of 12. Juvenile traits and juvenile mind,
separate or combined, should always suggest the possibility of the
infantiloid constitution of one type of thymocentric also.
THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
The eunuchoid or feminoid personality is also found often
4s. One must carefully distinguish the two I
emble of characteristics of the one may easily stimu:
the other. Yet fundamentally they are as far apart as the poles.
The infantiloid type never rises above the sub-normal, which is its
habitat, while the feminoid type (or masculinoid, in woman)
often produces an abnormal personality which rises above the
normal. The infantiloids become the slaves and the weaklings
of society, the Mark Tapleys, and the Tom Pinches, while the
eunuchoids have created splendid literature and immortal mn
The life reactions, and especially the sex reactions of the
gonado-centric, are as complex and difficult as those of the
thymo-centric. Straightforward homosexuality and the eunuch-
oid constitution have always been intimate. The homosexuality
of the thymo-centric is more subtle and disguised, often bur
under the stronger masculine component of the personality.
Homosexuality as a cult has appeared correlated with the
production of the functional hermaphrodite by artificially creat-
ing the eunuchoid type of constitution. Among the Aztecs, homo-
lals were produced in quantity for religious purposes by a
deliberate fostering of the eunuchoid constitution. They called
m the Mujerados. Their method consisted in making a
Ithy man ride horseback constantly, until an irritable weak-
I of the reproductive organs ensued, and a paralytic im-
potence followed. The exhausted testes would then atrophy,
I the voice ring falsetto, muscular tone and energy diminish,
inclinations and habits become feminine. The Mujerado lost his
ttioo in society as a man, assumed female clothing manners
id to all intents and purposes w s a
woman. Their large breasts were said to be capable of lactation,
ir only reward wai the high honor paid them as religious
tes.
og the Phoenicians then ted to
Known illi, they were men who
Ives into the i
At, all times they were p itli
lions of the
in idleness as \ and
kill in Their in-
rituaL During the revels oi
jj) by certain traditional BOngfl and DQ uld
THE TYPES OF PERSONALITY 227
be hypnotised into a frenzy, run amuck, throw off every garment,
and, snatching up swords, deliberately placed in convenient spots,
castrate themselves at one blow. In a wilder hysteria, screaming
loudly, the self-made eunuchs would then run through the streets
holding the severed organs high above their heads. At last,
faint through loss of blood, they brought their madness to its
climax by hurling the organs in their hands into the nearest
houses, so forcing the owners to take them in, and provide them
with female wearing apparel, and the other feminine accoutre-
ments of war. Henceforth, this manner of dress was not to be
changed. The physical changes followed. The hair of the face
was lost, the breasts enlarged, the voice became high-pitched,
and the other type-characters of the eunuchoid complex appeared.
These constitutions thus may be either congenital or acquired.
Individuals apparently normal during childhood and adolescence
may be transformed. Injuries to the reproductive glands, some-
times the slightest bruises, may lead to atrophy, and a change
of personality follows in less than six weeks. Mumps may achieve
the same results because of the inflammation of the gonads that
may accompany or follow it.
Whole family and races may show some of the signs of the
eunuchoid constitution for generations. According to Darwin
(Descent of Man) "the development of the beard and the hairi-
ness of the body differ remarkably in the men of distinct races,
and even in different tribes, and families of the same race. On
the European-Asiatic continent, beards prevail, until we pass
beyond India, although with the natives of Ceylon they are often
absent. . . . Eastward of India beards disappear, as with the
Siamese, Kalmuks, Malays, Chinese, and Japanese. Through-
out the great American continent the men may be said to be
beardless: but in almost all tribes a few short hairs are apt to
appear on the face, especially in old age. . . ." Hair being an
adrenal cortex trait, it is to be inferred that hairless families
and races are more eunuchoid, and possess less of the adrenal
cortex secretion than the more hairy.
Whatever the exceptions — and there have been eunuch generals
in history — Marces, Chancellor of Justinian, who beat the Goths
at Nocera, and Ali the Gallant who commanded the Turkish
Army after the invasion of Hungary in 1856 — the eunuchoid
generally runs to type in his mentality and his sexuality. He is
an introvert, his personality is shut in, he isolates himself from
the world.
228 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
The lower eunuchoids exhibit a curiously child-like personality.
Naively confiding, communicating to all comers all their joys
and sorrows, they ask diffidently for confirmation of their state-
ments, and they pass quickly from tears to laughter. About
sexual matters they are extremely timid. A moral innocence
pervades their speech and conduct. Usually they have no true
conception of crimes of jealousy or passion. The occupations
they go in for are those without responsibility away from crowds
or observation, such as ship cooks, stewards, and so on. They
marry to find a home, without the object of establishing sexual
relations. When they are asked whether they think their w;
will be pleased to look at the matter in the same light, and be
contented to live with a man upon such conditions, they are
puzzled or perplexed, as if they had never thought seriously about
the matter before. Their simplicity has even extended to pro;
ing to their wives to seek gratification from some other m
Naturally, such an arrangement often proves unsatisfactory, and
desertion follows.
Concerning the children sometimes the offspring of *
unions, scepticism as to the identity of the father is decidedly
permissible. Still in some cases the best of evidence exists that
fertility occurs. The vitality of the children then is subnormal
and the mortality rate high. The eunuchoid tendency i
mitted. Variations and transitions of every kind are found
among the undersexed eunuchoid personalities, depending upon
the quality and degree of the secretions lacking.
When there is an excess of these sex secretions, a turbulent,
tempestuous, sexually sensitive temperament, that may go on to
satyriasis or nymphomania, is created. It fa shown that
doves can be rendered overfeininine in their behaviour and ci
eristics by injections of ovarian material. 0\ types of
personality therefore may exist as well as and
Combinations and Permutations
pes of persona' 1 — the thyr. . (he
e thyme do-
lly proto
to which Individuals c hall marks wl
iftniflcatkuL Tl the
, whirh include I minority I
Butthemaj<
THE TYPES OF PERSONALITY 229
which are the species and varieties of the greater classes. Combi-
nations and variations of control among the adrenals and thy-
roid, pituitary or thymus, and so on, occur, with effects that are
sometimes additive, reinforcing a particular trait of the person,
and at others conflicting, and neutralizing. Quantitative varia-
tions of the same secretion may occur periodically in the same
individual, which explains the multiplicity and complexity, the
inconsistency and contradictions of conduct in a man or woman
at the different episodes and crises of life, to a certain extent.
There should be a stable balance between the various endo-
crines, the stability expressing itself in what we are pleased to
call the normal. There should also be a balance between the
antagonistic elements in the same gland; for instance, the pitui-
tary. The pituitary, built of two distinct portions, the anterior
and the posterior, is in equilibrium when the two are nicely ad-
justed. But the accidents and vicissitudes of life (pregnancy for
example) will upset the balance. And so there will result changes
of physique, conduct and character. Like possibilities apply to
all the other glands of internal secretion. In our ability to
exercise a control over these disturbances of balance, to be devel-
oped in the future, lies one of the great hopes for a chemical
perfectability of human life and nature.
Nature's Experiments vs. Man's
The kinds of personality described, as prototypes and variants
and the fundamental facts supporting the view that they are the
reaction types of the human beings we meet in everyday life,
represent simply a beginning of the work to be done. Putting
into our hands a new powerful searchlight that penetrates the
interiors of body and soul, a fresh attitude toward the complicated
problems of Man in society grows imminent. The normal and
the abnormal become illuminated with an effect as if our retinas
were suddenly to get sensitive to the ultraviolet rays to which
we are now blind. An apparatus is put in our hands which shows
us not only a static condition at a given moment, but the whole
life process of an individual, normal or abnormal, his past and
his future.
Upon that fetich of the biologists, the struggle for existence, the
struggle for survival, the struggle for possessions and satisfac-
tions, for happiness, victory and virility, in short, for success, as
success is measured by the biologists, a searching spectroscope
230 THE GLA LATINO PERSONALITY
can play, with a yield for our understanding and control of life,
that will stand comparison with the astronomer's analysis of the
Toward the process of adjustment and adaptation, of the
environment to the individual, as well as of the individual to the
environment, attitudes will change from hopeless acquiescence in
the inevitable to a complete self -determination of the self and its
surroundings. The adventures of the personality, strung along
as the episodes of his career, his friendships and sex reactions, his
mishaps and diseases, and the final fate or fortune that ovei
him, be he normal, subnormal, supernormal, or abnormal, begin
to become comprehensible, and hence controllable.
CHAPTER XI
SOME HISTORIC PERSONAGES
The Internal Secretions in History
According to the views, facts and guesses concerning human
personality, as a body-mind complex dominated by the internal
secretions, outlined in the preceding pages, biography, and human
history as the interaction of biographies, become capable of
interpretation from a new standpoint. If human life, in its
essentials, is so much the product of the internal messenger sys-
tem we speak of as the endocrines, then biography should present
us with a number of illustrations of their power and influence.
What is the evidence that, as Huxley anticipated, "the introduc-
tion into the economy of a molecular mechanism which, like a
cunningly contrived torpedo, shall find its way to some par-
ticular group of living elements, and cause an explosion among
them, leaving the rest untouched," and the multiplication of such
cunningly contrived mechanisms, were responsible for those per-
sonalities, magnificent chemical compounds, with whose adven-
tures historians are concerned?
The Case of Napoleon
As a unique will and intelligence, Napoleon Bonaparte the First
must be classed as one of the Betelegeuses of the race. H. G.
Wells has called his career the "raid of an intolerable egotist
across the disordered beginning of a new time." "The figure of an
adventurer and wrecker." "This saturnine egotist." "Are men
dazzled simply by the scale of his flounderings, by the mere vast-
ness of his notoriety?" "This dark little archaic personage,
hard, compact, capable, unscrupulous, imitative and neatly vul-
gar." There are other opinions. The Man of Destiny was wor-
shipped by millions. Napoleona bring fortunes today. Interest
in the man as a man has multiplied with every year. And
certainly no one can deny him the quality of individuality in its
most exaggerated form.
231
232 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
In the second place he belongs among the moderns. Modern
science and methods of observation have had their chance at him,
and have left a conscious record of their results. Napoleon was
the central figure of his time, and was watched by trained medical
eyes during his life, and after his death. Protocols of the exami-
nation of his body are accessible, and Napoleonic specimens, pre-
served by fixing agents, may still be viewed at the Museum of the
Royal College of Surgeons, England. Dr. Leonard Guthrie has
worked up the material at hand in a report which he presented
to the historical section of the International Congress of Medi-
cine, in London in 1913. I propose to relate his findings to some
other facts and the general principles roughly sketched in this
book.
There are a number of word portraits of Napoleon extant. But
for our purposes certain of the notable features of his face and
physique are to be considered. The first characteristic that struck
everyone about him was the matter of his height. He was defi-
nitely sub-average, at death being about five feet six inches in
height. As has been emphasized several times, deficiency or ex-
cess of growth will always direct attention to the pituitary. I lis
sharply outlined features and a powerful lower jaw, combined
with oddly small plump hands, long straight black hair, and dark
complexion, all point to the pituitary, with a secondary adrenal
effect. His pulse was slow, according to Corvisart, his per
physician, rarely above 50 to the minute. His s^ial life, his
libido, was abnormal. Curiously explosive in their appearance
and manifestations were his sexual impulses. They "beset him on
occasions which were sometimes inconvenient, and a peculiarity
about them was that they subsided with equal suddcnm m if not
immediately gratified, or if meanwhile something occurred to dis-
^e his attention. All women were to him 'lilies de
1 rather than social attractions in women app him."
He was never in love, never possessed of |
rness for any woman. This ex periodicity oi
1 life, "with a tendency to compression of it to the m
< al," is another mark of some pitn
aliticfl.
nicna that persisted throughout I thlOW
Motion. Qn tth his
told Autumn.
him aa long as I • OOUM Irritability i
unounccd that he could not sleep for more than a few hours
SOME HISTORIC PERSONAGES 233
at a time. After battles, the trouble became worse so that it
interfered with his riding. Constitutional difficulties in urination
have been connected definitely with the function of the pituitary.
The other pituitary disturbances which tinctured his life were
certain "brain storms," attacks of vomiting followed by "stupor
verging on unconsciousness" brought on by outbursts of temper,
physical overexertion, mental strain, or sexual excitement. It
has been shown that such epileptic tendencies are present in
subjects of pituitary disease, particularly those with pituitary
instability. In Napoleon's case the brain attacks may have been
crises of pituitary insufficiency in a hyper-pituitary type. This
supposition is borne out by the headache which followed them, the
headache of an oversecreting pituitary compensating for a defect
in its formation. During his prime, his intellect was mathe-
matical, logical, and rational, and remarkable for a prodigious
memory. Such an intellect is the product of an extraordinary
ante-pituitary. That he never permitted feeling to interfere
with the dictates of his judgment, a quality which rendered him
the 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 pos-
sible only because he was blind to the suffering and misery his
greed for glory and dominion generated. Post-pituitary insuf-
ficients of this type, patent or concealed, gradually become cor-
pulent as they grow older. The increasing corpulency of Napo-
leon was commented upon by all observers.
A student of his make-up, and acquainted with present develop-
ments 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 degenera-
tion. Besides, his insatiable energy indicated an excellent thy-
roid, 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 be-
tween the two parts which would further the objects of an intel-
lectual machine, plus a remarkable thyroid and adrenal, plus the
234 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
military education Napoleon had, and the character of the Revo-
lution 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 i
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 Auster-
litz, 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
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.
The findings after death confirm the view of him as an um
pituitocentric who succumbed to pituitary insufficiency toward
the latter half of his life. We possess the account of tin
mortem by Dr. Henry, who performed it. "The whole surface
of the body was deeply covered with fat. Over the sternum,
where generally the bone is very superficial, the fat was up
of an inch deep, and an inch and a half or two inches on the
abdomen. There was scarcely any hair on tin- body, and that
of the head was thin, fine and silky. The whole g
small) seemed to exhibit a physical cause for (!
ml the chastity which had 1«
char: iring hit The
iraa noticed U>b< me and delicate as wire tin I
and aflllf. Indeed the whole bod;.
i pubis much resembled t1 in women.
muscles of tl.< now and
in other vrorda, the typical feminization of the
i liiici. nry was found. He
i f a cancer of th( i. Bui I new
mental ■•■» ed d«
SOME HISTORIC PERSONAGES 235
were what impressed his associates at St. Helena. The deterio-
ration of his mentality was also exemplified in his literary diver-
sions, the "Siege of Troy" and the "Essay on Suicide." The
puerility of these productions, as well as of his conduct, a sulking
before his captors, and the decline of his physical energy, once a
bottomless well, all point to the same conclusion.
The rise and fall of Napoleon followed the rise and fall of his
pituitary gland. No better illustration exists of the fundamental
determination of a personality and its career by an endocrine,
aside from other factors of education, environment, accident and
opportunity. Without the sort of endocrine equipment he was
born with, however, none of the other factors would have found
the material to work upon. Born, say, with more of a posterior
pituitary than he had, which would have rendered him more
sensitive to the sufferings of his fellow-creatures, if nothing else,
and the forces of the Revolution probably would have swamped
him from the very first moment of his emergence at Toulon,
when the whiff of grape-shot, symptom of an inexorable, merciless
intellect and will, started him upon the road that led to the
Napoleonic Era. Destiny is always ironic. For the deficiency
of the internal secretions which made him eligible for glory was
responsible as well as for his downfall.
Epilepsy and Migraine in Genius
In the annals of genius, there occur a number of instances of
those who suffered from attacks that have been diagnosed epi-
lepsy or migraine. Because their ailment was associated with
their extraordinary ability, they attracted an attention that
concerned itself not at all with the circumstance that genius has
also been liable to measles, scarlet fever, and so on. Epilepsy
and rngraine certainly occur in people of no supernormal gifts,
and often in degenerates and subnormals. Yet the fact remains
that these affections of the nervous system, so terrible to feel and
to behold, have afflicted the finest brains of the race.
About forty years ago the idea established itself that epilepsy,
exhibiting itself in one form or another as "fits," and migraine,
the severe periodic sick headache, were interconvertible mani-
festations of the same underlying morbid process in the brain.
Nothing in the way of a concrete cause, attackable on the mate-
rial side, was elicited by this generalization. Then the inves-
tigations of the pituitary in the last decade produced evidence of
236 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
epilepsy-like and migraine-like symptoms in sufferers from tu-
mors or other enlargements of it. .. cases of epi-
lepsy and migraine began to be examined for evidences of involve-
ment of the pituitary in their troubles. These accumi:
rapidly. The physiognomy and physique of the pituito-centric
were discovered in them. The phenomena noted in Napoleon's
case were often present: lowering of the pulse, chilliness, and
an increased irritability of the bladder. In women the attack
often coincides with the menstrual period, a typical time of
endocrine unbalance. Finally X-ray examinations of the sella
turcica, the bony lodging of the pituitary, clinched the matter:
it often appeared small, or enlarged, with erosions of the bone,
signifying a desperate attempt of the gland to grow, and meet
the needs of the organism. The complex of appearances called
migraine now becomes understandable. There are a number of
factors, such as fatigue, intense cold, or high sugar food like
chocolate, which will cause an engorgement of the gland with
blood and swelling of it. But they do not concern us now. In-
tense mental occupation, concentration as the popular term has
it, acts as a patent excitor of the attack.
Brain work drives more blood into the brain and the gland.
Besides, mental activity is accompanied by increased function
of the ante-pituitary, if intellectual, or of the post-pituitary if
emotional. Brain work then causes a temporary enlargement of
the gland. If, now, the bone container of the endocrine is too
small to permit of much swelling, the bone will be pressed against
or even worn into. This means he re, easily troing on
to the kind known as sick-headache. The nerves which move
the eyes in various directions lie next to the pituitary. If, in its
expansion, it moves sufficiently outward, it may press upon, irri-
tate them or paraly/.' I evolve various eye disturb
in association with the headache. No i rate this con-
ception of migraine, for a number of men of genius have suffered
from sick-h< symptoms.
As for epilepsy, the prol One has to rule
out first those who OS !>rain.
Of our field: genu. intact
brain. Of n • number may be into upon an endo-
crine basis. At least they will, in their p] my, phj
biefa tiny l; banding o!
b is necessary for them to bs helped. Oi y seen
SOME HISTORIC PERSONAGES 237
is the thymo-centric, with small enclosed sella turcica. The latter
fact explains the occurrence of the epilepsy. Periodic variations
in the secretory tides of the other endocrines, the ovaries, the
thyroid, and so on, may determine the onset of the attack of "fits."
The point is that when epilepsy plays a constant part in the life
history of a man of genius, we are justified in assuming a dis-
turbed balance among his hormones, and so a reasoned picture
perhaps of the foundations for the erratic in his behaviour or his
productions.
The Neurasthenic Genius
The fin de siecle intelligentsia of the nineteenth century were
quite stirred up by a publication of Max Nordau on "Degen-
eration," in which a number of revered artists and intellighents
were help up to public scorn as degenerates and neurasthenics.
So wrought up were they, in fact, that Bernard Shaw was moved
to compose a defense entitled "The Sanity of Art." In spite
of the Great Vegetarian's dialectics, it remains to be explained
why a certain species of creative ability has been combined with
the fatigability, variability and general wretched irritability of
every organ and tissue in the body which taught them that they
were sensitive souls imprisoned in the flesh. Going from doctor
to doctor as from pillar to post, from this medical creed to that
hygienic cult, lucky to escape the worst, often landing upon the
bosom of New Thought for succor. We have noted in previous
chapters the relation of neurasthenia to the glands of internal
secretion in general, and to adrenal insufficiency in particular.
A closer examination of neurasthenic genius will show it to con-
sist essentially of a pituitocentric in whom for one reason or
another, congenital (the persistence of the thymus) or acquired
(shocks, accidents, diseases) there has been failure of the adre-
nals, thyroid or the interstitial cells, about in the order of their
occurrence.
The Case of Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche is about as good a case as there is on
record of a genius blasted by migraine. The originality and
force of his mind, as well as the articulate music of an imagina-
tive poet, places Nietzsche among the philosophic elect of the
race. Showing that he was an unstable pituitary-centered of a
certain type will throw light upon his malady, as well as upon
his life and work.
238 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
In a set of volumes, entitled Biographic Clinics, Dr. George
M. Gould of Philadelphia contended that the ill health of a
number of men and women of genius of the nineteenth century
due to uncorrected eye troubles. In attempting to b
up his thesis he has collected biographic material useful to the
student of personality. He never appears to have asked himself
what was behind the eye trouble. The evidence relating to
Nietzsche's endocrine personality is derived from some of the
he collected, as well as from the two volume life of the
philosopher written by his sister, and the other biographies of
him extant.
To reconstruct the endocrine formula or equation of Nietzsche
inductively, one should analyze first the information available
concerning his parents and relatives. His grandfather was a con-
servative bourgeois of a superior type, who was the author of
ises designed to narcotize the forces of rebellion of his time.
What he was like physically, no epitaph declares. His father was
a clergyman. A description of him reads . . . "tall and slender,
with a noble and poetic personality, and a peculiar talent for
music . . . short-sighted." That ranks him at once as a pituito-
centric. The mother was dark and had a fiery temper and
of a family distinguished for the powerfully built anatomy of its
members. In the heredity of Nietzsche, the father appears there-
to supply a pituitary predominating element, the mother an
;.d-pituitary predominating element.
Nietzsche himself worked strenuously at the intellectual life
r 20, when he probably stopped growing, and the brain tonic
i of the ante-pituitary could inanift >. Early dis-
tinction rewarded him with a professorship in philology |
One of Prussia's wars of conquest entangled liim. and |
him with diphtheria. A friendship With Richard Wagner DQ
Oiling point of his life, and the point of departure for his
taJ values of human life
while.
rable period* v two
him wiv
At 1: I rminated his
suffer! \ him fa b and memory, and
thence f< ui li tl ion, phj
and reproduce ptures of N at different ages.
SOME HISTORIC PERSONAGES 239
An examination of the frontispiece picture, which shows him in
profile (profile views are the best for physiognomy), as well as
of the bust of Nietzsche by Donndorf, exhibit the most striking
traits of the head. To the student of internal secretions, the
most prominent feature of the face, emphasized by both the
camera and the artist, is the remarkable prominence of the supra-
orbital arches, the bony protuberances from which the eyebrows
spring. This is a definite pituitary character. The eyebrows
themselves are luxurious and slope to meet, the bony development
of the face as a whole is sharp and clean-cut, the skull tends to be
long and narrow and the chin is square. All these point to a
pituitary-centered personality. It is to be regretted that we have
no picture or record of Nietzsche caught smiling, which would
have preserved the state of his teeth for us. At any rate, con-
sidered as checks to my interpretation, his physiognomy and
physique, the nature of his genius and the attacks which finally
ruined his life, all fit into the conception of him as one whose life
centered, like Napoleon's, around what was happening in his
sella turcica.
The attacks of sick-headache, diagnosable symptomatic ally as
migraine, were so devastating that in 1883, after the printing of
his masterpiece, "Also Sprach Zarathustra," he wrote "My life
has been a complete failure." Extracts from his letters, collected
by Gould, provide some idea of his suffering. In 1888, just be-
fore his stroke, he said, "I have in my eyes a dynamometer of my
entire condition."
The history of Nietzsche's eye trouble makes it probable that
not simply a defect in his eyes themselves, but a deeper condition
behind them was responsible. Up to the age of 15 he was a model
scholar. Essential eye defects of refraction should make them-
selves felt during childhood. Then, with adolescence, he changed.
Adolescence is one of the red-letter epochs for the pituitary, when
its growth and enlargement precedes and stimulates the ripening
of the sex cells in the reproductive organs. Until adolescence
ended and physical development ceased, his intellectual interests
were nil, and he was particularly backward in mathematics. Colds
and coughs, and recurring pains in the head and eyes bothered
him (colds and coughs are frequent in those whose pituitary
expansion is limited by the bony sella turcica to any extent).
After his puberty, migraine definitely became his demon compan-
ion. Following the diphtheria in the army (which must have
damaged his adrenals), the attacks grew much worse, and com-
240 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
plaints about them more bitter because the pituitary now, in
addition to its own burden, had to compensate for the insufficient
adrenals. So "his frequent illness made him more and more a
subject of treatment and commiseration. ... If only my eyes
would hold out ... it seems to me at the age of 30 as if I had
lived 60 years . . . very frequent sufferings of stomach, head and
eyes . . . acidity oppresses me, and everything except the tender-
est food becomes acid. ... I cannot doubt that I am the victim
of a serious cerebral disease, and that stomach and eyes suffer
only from this central cause . . . half-dead with pain and ex-
haustion." In December 1888, he fell, had to be helped horn
silent for two days, then became loud, active and unbalanced.
The attack was preceded by the drinking of much water.
The specific quality of the Nietzsche genius also directs atten-
tion to a pituitocentric, to a pituitocentric in whom both ante-
pituitary and post-pituitary are extraordinarily well-functioning,
but are in a state of unbalance in which the post-pituitary gets
the upper hand. Now, as we have seen, the post-pituitary makes
for that instability of association between the brain cells which
must be at the bottom of originality and creative thought, as well
as of phobias, obsessions, hysterias and hallucinations. Persons
in whom the post-pituitary predominates have a lively fancy and
are liable to suffer from the tricks of association. Nietzsche, as
we have noted, was poor in mathematics and in the calm cool
proportioned forward march of scientific thought in general. His
most brilliant ideas came to him in flashes and gleams. That is
why so much of his work has come down to us in the form of
aphorisms and paragraphs. He was, essentially, a poet :
the metaphysicians, which again favors the conception of him
as a pituitary-centered with a dominant post-pit nit ary. Y
incisive critical faculty, as well as his love of music, also doou-
I the supernormal ante-pituitary.
To sum up, the physique and physiognomy of N
migraine which i him, his
i dislikes, his tastes, abilities and accomplishment
lowed from hi-' compo e pit nit :t i ed, with
pituitary domination, a superior thyroid, and inferior adl
Darwin as a Neurasthenic Genius
author <>f th
the greatest r< oistofthi nth ceo burally
SOME HISTORIC PERSONAGES 241
had a great deal of attention paid to his life and personality.
Yet not until the publication of his Autobiography and his son's
Reminiscences was it generally known that he suffered from
chronic ill health for most of his adult life. Dr. W. A. Johnston,
in an article in the American Anthropologist, 1901, has marshalled
a number of available facts, to sustain his thesis that Darwin
was a victim of neurasthenia. Now neurasthenia, it is now ac-
cepted, is simply a waste-basket word, corresponding to the class
miscellaneous in a classification of any group of real objects.
And, as has been emphasized in preceding chapters, most neuras-
thenia rises upon a disturbed endocrine foundation, most often,
an insufficiency of the adrenals. That is, a defect in the chain
of co-operation, balance and compensation among the internal
secretions is the basis for the weakness of the nervous system
the term neurasthenia is supposed to explain, actually only
names. Darwin's case was pretty certainly that.
There can be no doubt that Darwin had an abnormal fatiga-
bility, a lack of stamina and endurance in mental as well as
physical application which plagued him from the late twenties
to the sixties. As a child, he was strong and healthy, fond of
outdoors, and though underrated by his teachers, noted to be pos-
sessed of intense curiosity, especially concerning natural objects.
At school he was a fleet runner and cultivated a habit of long
walks. Then he was surely no neurasthenic. Three years which,
he himself afterwards said, were worse than wasted, at Cam-
bridge, were filled with shooting, riding and hunting. His good
health lasted until the time he probably stopped growing at 21 or
22. Thereafter his troubles began.
What was Darwin, so far as his endocrine composition was con-
cerned? In the first place his father was a variety of pituitocen-
tric, of the post-pituitary inferior type, six feet two inches tall,
exceedingly corpulent, and, in the eyes of his son, the sharpest
of observers and the most sympathetic of men. He wished to
make a physician out of his son in order to carry on the medical
tradition of the family: Erasmus Darwin was a physician before
him. His son, however, showed no inclination for so learned
and confining a profession and had to be reproached by his father
in these immortal words: "You care for nothing but shooting
dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and
all your family."
Cambridge came after Edinburgh, as he was rushed from medi-
cine into the clergy. But in vain. A friendship struck up with a
242 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
naturalist, Henslow, settled his career for him. Henslow heard of
a trip of general exploration the ship Beagle was to take and
recommended Darwin as naturalist. The captain at first would
not hear of the proposal because of Darwin's nose, a typical
pituitary proboscis. But his prejudices were overcome, and
Darwin sailed.
It was upon this voyage that Darwin made himself the greatest
naturalist of all time, and at the same time infected himself with
the virus of neurasthenia. At Plymouth, while waiting for the
ship to sail, he complained of palpitation and pain about the
heart, probably due to a transient hyperthyroidism, brought on
by excitement. During the voyage, which lasted five years, he
was afflicted often by sea-sickness. A ship-mate relates that
after spending an hour with the microscope he would say "Old
Fellow, I must take the horizontal for it" and lie down. He
would stretch out on one side of the table, then resume his labors
for a while when he again had to lie down. Already fatigability
had to be fed with rest. A serious illness that Darwin claimed
affected every secretion of his body acted probably as the ex-
hausting drain upon his adrenal potential.
The return to England was the date of onset for a record of
continuous illness, aggravated by his marriage, apparently, for
his misery increased progressively after it. So much so that he
was forced to leave London altogether so as to avoid the strain
of social life, even that of meeting his scientific friends or attend-
ing scientific society meetings fatiguing him to exhaustion. After
such occasions there would be attacks of violent shivering, with
vomiting and giddiness. It was necessary for him to impose upon
If an absolute regime of daily routine. Any in
with it upset him completely, and made it impossible for him to
do any work. Early morning was the only time for phygj<
1 exertion. 1 found him thoroughly used up,
effort. Insomnia made him itfl pray. A
curious e< : nd cold did in. In 1859,
"Origin of Species" I I that
his h< -(digestion
a looming hopeless breakdown of body and mind made his life
a burden and a curse. Tl of research be devoted
to the problems of
more years, during which he worked upon and produced imu
classics of bk e most wretched and unhappj
from neuras1 life was a c
SOME HISTORIC PERSONAGES 243
of small doses of work and large doses of rest. So he was enabled
to publish twenty-three volumes of original writing and fifty-one
scientific papers. Living a sort of quasi-sanitarium life, with the
rules and regulations of one undergoing a rest cure for thirty-six
years, he thus accomplished infinitely more than the millions who
have led the strenuous life. That he thus survived, as a genius,
among the perils of an intellectual nature in an environment for
which his adrenals sentenced him to destruction, must be put
down in large measure to the ministrations and good sense of
wife and children who supplied him with the endocrine energy he
lacked. All these details I have given in the attempt to analyze
the internal secretion constitution of this great man of genius,
to establish that he really suffered from inadequate function of
his adrenal glands, for the symptoms of chronic though benign
adrenal insufficiency coincide in their mass effect with the story
of his life. He was not a good animal, as Herbert Spencer de-
clared was a first sine qua non of the successful life. He was a
poor animal, the poorest of animals, because he possessed poor
adrenals. What saved him was his congenitally superior pitui-
tary (the nidus of genius) and the overacting thyroid, which
combined to compensate to some extent for his fundamental lack.
According to his son he rose early because he could not lie in
bed, and he would have liked to get up earlier than he did.
What other hints have we that in spite of his fatigue disease
he was a pituitocentric? The record of his physique and physiog-
nomy, documentary and that left in portraits and photographs.
He was tall and thin and his frame was naturally strong and
large. Face was ruddy, and his grey eyes looked out from
under deep overhanging brows and bushy eyebrows. The ears
were large and prominent, the hair straight, the nose broad and
well developed. All these are distinctive pituitary traits. The
photograph of him taken by Maull and Fox in 1854 shows his
chin to be the square firm kind that goes with the ante-pituitary
type physique. (This photo is the frontispiece of the collection of
essays entitled "Darwinism and Modern Science," edited by A.
C. Seward and published in 1909). Charles Darwin, we may
say, then, lived the life of one with a hyperfunctioning pituitary,
the anterior portion dominating the posterior, a thyroid excess,
and an adrenal much deficient, the combination settling the
fate of a grand intellect in an invalid. It is interesting to note
that an extant portrait of Erasmus Darwin, Darwin's distin-
guished grandfather, shows a pituitocentric, but with a rounder
THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
head and a fatter face, which point to a predominance of the
post-pituitary over the ante-pituitary. Correspondingly, he was
more speculative and poetic intellectually than his grandson, and
more irascible and imperious in his moods.
After 1872, when Charles Darwin was sixty-three years old, a
marked change for the better occurred in his health. For the
last ten years of his life the condition of his health was a cause
of satisfaction and hope to his family. "He was able to work
more steadily with less fatigue and distress afterwards." T.;
probably to be explained as following the gonadopause in him —
the cessation of activity of the interstitial cells. After this event,
the adrenals in the male nearly always function more efficiently,
and well being is improved even though the blood pressure often
rises coincidently. In the relative vigor of that decade we have
another bit of evidence that the adrenals had much to say over
Darwin's life.
Epileptic Gtenius
He had a fever when he was in Spain
And, when the fit was on him, I did mark
How he did shake: 'tis true, this god did shake
His coward lips did from their color fly;
And that same eye whose bend doth awe the world,
Did lose his lustre: I did hear him groan.
— Julius Caesar.
Epilepsy, the "falling sickness" or "fits," is generally associ-
ated with a deterioration or degeneration of mentality, and an
inferior personality is frequently an ingredient. Pro
sing data accumulate to incriminate more and more a dis-
turbance of the endocrine balance, on the side of multiple de-
vies, as the basic mechanism at the bottom of a good many
of them. Concurrent studies reveal that abnormality
iyroid, the parathyroids, the 1 testes, and even
iymus exist behind tl. ligation of the content
of the OOD ■ of the dil; .nds of epilepsies from this
point of view will doubtless bring to li ting in for-
mation. There ifl much to be don. with th;
method of approach.
, just ' i ie, may occur in men gifted with the
sort of trana oalled genius. Mohammed! Lord
i, Dostoievsky, J ne a few cases, are
famous instances. J leptk
SOME HISTORIC PERSONAGES 245
genius, that is epilepsy with superior ability, occurs most often
in pituitocentrics, the epilepsy being symptomatic of a pituitary
struggling against barriers, tugging against bonds. As mentioned,
in such cases epilepsy appears as the twin brother of migraine in
genius. Should that be established, we should have more evi-
dence for the pituitary dominance of most specimens of intel-
lectual power. As a case in point let us take the most famous
of the epileptic geniuses — Julius Caesar, "When the fit was on I
marked how he did shake; tis true, this god did shake.,,
According to Plutarch, Julius Caesar was of slender build, fair-
complexioned, pale, emaciated, of a delicate constitution (remind-
ing us of Darwin), subject to severe headache and violent attacks
of epilepsy. In view of the work of Cushing, the concurrence of
"severe headache and violent attacks of epilepsy" is sharply
suggestive of a pituitary origin for both. In his seventeenth year
he was already engaged to be married, which proves his precocity.
An overactive, erratic pituitary could here also be held respon-
sible. Soon after he was proscribed by the dictator Sulla, and
the first of a series of epileptic convulsions is recorded. Shock
tries the pituitary, as well as the adrenals.
His sexual libido was of the quality that stimulated his sol-
diers to sing celebrations of his exploits. The first woman he
was engaged to he jilted. Cornelia, his first wife, he divorced on
the ground that "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion." Matri-
mony committed twice thereafter landing him in the divorce
court, he devoted himself to liaisons, one with Cleopatra. This
sexual hyperactivity was probably another pituitary trait.
The compound of intellectual and practical ability he realized
was of the rarest. It meant a most delicate balance between his
ante-pituitary, post-pituitary, adrenals and thyroid. He was an
orator, politician, historian, conqueror, and statesman. That his
thyroid functioned well can be deduced from a career which
involved more than three hundred personal triumphs as recog-
nition from his native city. On horseback, riding without using
his hands, he would often dictate to two or three secretaries
at once. The masculine love of glory and ambition, expression
of a well-working ante-pituitary, was combined with the effem-
inate echoes of an equally well-evolved post-pituitary. No prima
donna was more concerned with the care of her skin, complexion
and hair than he. The analogy extends even to superfluous hair
which he had removed, not by the modern electrolysis, but by
depilation with forceps and main force. The attendants at his
246 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
bath would polish his epidermis, for his satisfaction, until it
mbled alabaster or marble.
Caesar was not the kind of great man that Darwin was, and
only a rather muddled careerist because he had too much adrenal
1 post-pituitary. But he was pituitocentric of a certain t\
We possess no authentic portraits or busts of him to go by. But
the bust in the Museum of Naples, for which he probably
(some, H. G. Wells among them, will not accept this) , presents
the sort of face that is often seen in pituitary epileptics, and the
features and skull of a pituitocentric: long, large, well-modeled
head eyebrows prominent, with tendency to meet, aquiline nose
and strong chin.
In these three, Napoleon, Nietzsche and Caesar, we have male
pituitocentrics, exhibiting diversities of life and tastes because
of differences in the co-working endocrine glands in their make-
up. We shall consider now a female pituitocentric who presents
the strangest contrasts in physique, physiognomy, conduct and
character, dependent upon a variation in the balance between the
two portions of the pituitary.
The Legend of Florence Nightingale
All biographies consist of prevarications and all autobiog-
>f fiction. That summing up of a mass of literature o
which industrious students have ruined their eyes, held good until
after the War, when things changed. Then Mr. Lytton Strachey,
at one fell blow, and with one magnificent masterpiece, hurdled
the old idols and established a new standard of deliberate ac-
curacy in print. In his "Eminent Victorians" he set the pace
for the host of those who have been stimulated by his good
example, like Lady Margot Asquith.
Of the four Victorian respectable worthies E
sected as m mist a post-mortem, his portrait
of Florence Nightingale, the founder of the mod and
art of nursing, is most interesting because it provid l of
[fl of hill:.
onality. In the conventional two-volum of this
supcrwoman, she is pictured as an tutu
n a stained glass window up< mderful visit to a clay-
smeared earth. 11 the ins and outs
of her body and son! with a
fresh vitality that is startling.
SOME HISTORIC PERSONAGES 247
The species of life Florence Nightingale lived, involving as it
did struggle with a masculine world, and conquest of it, implies
the existence in her of certain masculine traits and marks, for
the normal feminine psyche is submissive rather than aggressive
toward its environment, human and otherwise. Belonging to
a family in the highest circles, it was upon the table d'hote of
her destiny that she should become a regulation debutante,
careeristina, and successful wife and mother. Instead, she chose
to question the whole routine of the life of her class, and in her
diary she records her doubts and cravings, and her revolt against
what is assumed by her family and friends to be the normal
course of existence for her. The attitudes and questionings in
these passages, the religious feeling displayed, are distinctly mas-
culine. Most easily could the following, for instance, pass as
having been written by a man: "I desire for a considerable time
only to lead a life of obscurity and toil, for the purpose of allow-
ing whatever I may have received of God to ripen, and turning
it some day to the glory of His Name. Nowadays people are too
much in a hurry both to produce and consume themselves. It is
only in retirement, in silence, in meditation that are formed the
men who are called to exercise an influence upon society." In
a note-book she puts May 7, 1852, as the date upon which she
was conscious of a call from God to be a saviour. Now the vast
majority of women who have remained spinsters at 32, in spite
of considerable personal attractions and high natural ability, are
visited by waves of emotional fervor for a de-personalization of
the self. But in the case of the subject, as Strachey has so well
shown, the call was pursued with a self-willed, pitiless, unscrupu-
lous determination, worthy of Satan himself upon the most fero-
cious evil bent. In its pursuit indeed she became what her latest
biographer has called a "woman possessed by a Demon." All
necessary, not alone because if she had been meek and mild she
would have existed in futility, but because of the high percentage
of the masculine endocrines in her composition. It is most re-
grettable that we have no statement of the findings of a
gynecologic examination of her. That she was almost con-
sciously masculine may be inferred not only from the way she
bullied Lord Pannure and worked to death her dearest friend
with the angelic temper, Sidney Herbert, who was so amiable that
he could be driven by one who wrote: "I have done with being
amiable. It is the mother of all mischief." She could also write,
"I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took an excuse.
248 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
Yes, I do see the difference now between me and other men.
When a disaster happens, I act, and they make excuses."
Lytton Btrachey has painted superbly all this in his essay.
But for us his most significant passage is the following: 'When
old age actually came, something curious happened. Destiny,
having waited patiently, played a queer trick upon Miss Night-
ingale. The benevolence and public spirit of that long lif<
only been equaled by its acerbity. Her virtue had dwelt in
hardness, and she had poured forth her unstinted usefulness
with a bitter smile upon her lips. And now the sacredn*
years brought the proud woman her punishment. She was not
to die as she had lived. The sting was to be taken out of her:
she was to be made soft; she was to be reduced to compliance
and complacency. The change came gradually, but at 1
.kable."
"There appeared a corresponding alteration in her physical
mould. The thin, angular woman, with her haughty eye, and her
acrid mouth, had vanished, and in her place was the rounded,
bulky form of a fat old lady, smiling all day long. Then some-
thing else became visible. The brain which had been steeled at
Scutari was, indeed, literally growing soft. Senility — an ever
more and more amiable senility — descended."
We have here an absolutely typical pituitary history, with
another case of pituitocentric natural ability. What happens
when pituitary hyperfunction or superiority becomes underfunc-
tion or inferiority is precisely as Strachey has described so clev-
erly of the "ministering angel": the acrid, thin and keen
degenerate every time into the amiable, fat and dull. Just as
Napoleon was transformed by the mutations of his pituita:
• with the Lamp. And in both instance! the con-
Qg modifications, from one I of glandular function
lipply IM with the clue to the secret hand oi
Of and becoming, which worked upon the twial
umstance abort them as a sculptor upon clay.
The official biography l»y three
itl, representing
theeii < nd life 1
as she was at 25, and pictun
very etn 1 willowy in ; thick and shortish rich
to comp
Ot grace is so like a si
face is long and oval, of tl kind. Then
SOME HISTORIC PERSONAGES 249
gradually the ante-pituitary gained an ascendency in the concert
of her internal secretions, so coloring her life with its masculine
tints, and altering her face as well as her disposition. The pho-
tograph of her taken when she was 38 shows a quadrangular
outline, and all the acridity that impressed Strachey. The last
picture of her, a water color drawing made in 1907, shows a round
visaged old dame, who might be the peasant grandmother of two
dozen descendants. Little patches of red over the cheek bones
remind one of myxedema and indicate that toward the very end
of her life her thyroid failed her as well as her pituitary. So
that our biographer relates: "Then by Royal Command, the
Order of Merit was brought to South Street, and there was a
little ceremony of presentation. Sir Douglas Dawson, after a
short speech, stepped forward and handed the order of the in-
signia to Miss Nightingale. Propped up by pillows, she dimly
recognized that some compliment was being paid her. 'Too kind
— too kind!' she murmured; and she was not ironical." In the
days of pituitary and thyroid hyperfunction we may be sure she
would have been caustically and penetratingly ironical.
The Explanation of Oscar Wilde
The case of Oscar Wilde, as one of the high tragedies of English
Literature and Life, attracted the attention of the whole world
in its heyday, and even today evokes controversy. As a literary
figure and artist, the poet of the Portrait of Dorian Gray, and
"De Profundis," belongs without a doubt to the immortals. As
a convicted criminal, who served for two years at hard labor in
Reading jail, and afterwards, a prey to chronic alcoholism, died
in obscurity in Paris, he still remains a subject of whispered con-
versation in private, and his crime a taboo to the public, men-
tionable only at the risk of arousing the terrible odium sexicum
of the prurient majority. Oscar Wilde was a homosexual of a
certain type. In view of the previously laid down considerations
concerning the endocrine genesis of homosexuality, how are we
to explain him, and his natural history?
As with the other exemplars of genius examined we need here,
too, to gain some insight into his "internal secretion heredity."
His father, Sir William Wilde, was a surgeon. Photographs of
him show the long and broad face of a pituito-adrenal centered
individual, with a corresponding duplex incarnation in the face,
the upper half strikingly spiritual, the lower curiously animal.
250 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
He was active, practical and eminently successful. His wife re-
calls Florence Nightingale, in face, figure and conduct (people
who are built alike as regards their internal secretions are those
whom we recognize as similar physically and psychically). She,
too, was a pituito-adrenal, and in so far resembled her husband.
But as in a woman ante-pituitary and adrenal superiority make
for masculinity, she must be classed as a masculinoid type ot
woman. She was socially aggressive, and took part in the revo-
lutionary movement of her time in Ireland. Thus we find that
Oscar Wilde was the result of a mating of internal secretions
acting in the same direction. The process might be compared
to parthenogenesis.
It is on record that when enceinte his mother often expressed
the wish that her child be a girl. When a boy was born, she
- immensely disappointed. To compensate for her disappoint-
ment, she brought him up a good deal like a little girl. She had
him dressed in girls' clothes at an age when most boys are violent
destroyers of clothing. She would hang massive jewelry upon
him, for the delight of playing with the resultant stage picture
as a satisfaction for her discontented desires. In the light of
modern psychology, and our formulization of her endocrine
status, we must put down her conduct to a suppressed homo-
sexual craving. Had her son been built along the lines of strong
emphatic masculinity, her influence, though vicious, would pr
ably have found no congenial soil, and would have died out alto-
her after his contacts with the outer world, beginning with
school. No matter how she would have conditioned his vege-
ve system temporarily, his internal secretions, rel 'hen
from compression, would have asserted the;
mined his fate differently. However, it is quite I if
Rich h: < >scar Wilde.
disciple of Walt ndelaire, would b yed
I of the (o be horn. I mean lli.tt thru we would I
have hi Wilde, but another nunou-
. who also might have home I
oot to be. 'I ilar assortment of endoi
I ft pi r-
rich we must clu the thymooentric (thymut-
1 1. Why this should 1 on.
plui pituito
:
rul» ton of i ion
SOME HISTORIC PERSONAGES 251
rather than addition seems to have occurred. The result was a
persistent thymus superiority, with an instability of the other
two main glands involved.
How do we know that Oscar Wilde was a thymocentric? Be-
cause in his fullest development he exhibited all the earmarks
of the thymus pattern. We possess a number of good pictures
and descriptions of him, as he was really a contemporary, and
would probably be alive today if he had been put in a hospital
for proper treatment instead of in prison. An excellent descrip-
tion is that of Henri de Regnier's: "This foreigner (Wilde) was
tall, and of great corpulence. A high complexion seemed to give
still greater width to his clean shaven face. It was the unbearded
(glabre) face that one sees on coins. The hands . . . were rather
fleshy and plump" The points of immediate interest are the
height, the complexion and the beardlessness. One classic variety
of the thymocentric is tall, has a baby's skin, and has little or no
hair on the face. A passage from a narrative written by one of
his warders confirms the last condition decidedly. "Before leav-
ing his cell to see a visitor, he was alway careful to conceal, as
far as possible, his unshaven chin by means of his red handker-
chief." Bristles on the chin, with little or none on the cheeks, is
the inference. It is important to stress the thymocentric sig-
nificance of this glabrosity of the face. Another sign to be put
in italics was the quality of his voice. It has been described as
a beautiful tenor, when he had it under perfect control, and
high pitched and strident when under the influence of passion or
temper. Such a voice would be the product of a larynx remain-
ing partly or completely in the infantile state, as in a woman's.
That, and the large breasts he is said to have had, point again
to the thymus-centered constitution. All in all, there can be no
doubt that Oscar Wilde was a case of status lymphaticus, the
technical name for the thymus-centered personality.
As happens in a number of thymocentrics, his pituitary must
have attempted to compensate for the endocrine deficiencies al-
ways present in them. The exceptional size of his head was a
pituitary trait. Finding, possibly making, plenty of room for
itself to grow, for some unknown reason, in an extraordinary
fashion, it reinforced the love of the beautiful that is part of the
feminine post-pituitary nature, with an intellectual ability and
maturity that was at first all-conquering. In the face of a
society organized for pure masculine and pure feminine types,
disgrace and disaster at last overtook him. with almost the ruth-
252 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
lessness of natural selection wiping out an unadapted sport
denly cropping up in an environment. In prison he suffered from
• splitting headaches, which were probably due to changes
in his pituitary. Described as being directly over the eyes,
haunted him until his death, and may have had a good deal to
do with the absinthe addiction he acquired.
The Treatment of Genius
The problem of Oscar Wilde raises an ethical question that
still remains to be finally answered. Granting that all of society
should one day see him and his kind as a peculiar and specific
constitutional product of an odd intermixture of internal secre-
tions, what should be done with him and them? It is easy to
play with words like "degenerates." But still, we do not condemn
imbeciles, idiots or defectives, or other substandard, subnormal
creatures to the prisons. For the sake of the good opinion
society would maintain of itself, it sends the latter nowadays to
hospitals, sanitaria, or their equivalents, where protection for
itself without punishment for them may be practised. But is
confinement, or even treatment the solution? For we have to
consider what society would lose by cutting such abnormals off
from itself, and them from its stimulations. A number of artists
have been built like Oscar Wilde, musicians in particular. With-
out them, would there not be a great gap, a yawning absence,
in the world's culture?
Modern diagnosis and modern therapy might have done a
great deal for Napoleon, Nietzsche, Julius Caesar, Florence Night-
ingale, Oscar Wilde. Were they alive today, and willing to sub-
mit themselves to scientific scrutiny, the X-ray would tell us
of the state of the pituitary and thymus in them, chemic
animations of the blood the condition of the thyroid and adrenals,
'1 investigation of the body and mind a flood of light upon
then nmladiei as well as their personalities. Therapy n
. ii of his i I so, halting I
ing degeneration of his pitnitai terioo impossible
have
been « instability on the genius to his
goal? NietZF' | have !
Cajsar of bii epilepsy— -but then, would not with
the underlying streams ol !y 00 the part of the other
glands of the internal §* to compensate — their peculiar
SOME HISTORIC PERSONAGES 253
superiority and distinction, and the fruits of their lives as by-
products, have been destroyed. Florence Nightingale, too, might
have been a softer and more human person. But then would she
have revolutionized the practice of nursing? Oscar Wilde pos-
sibly might have been made over into a heterosexual. But then
would not the world be the poorer without "De Profundis," let
us ask? To state the problem in the most general terms: how
much abnormality are we to tolerate (I speak, of course, of
malignant abnormality, and disregard benign abnormality alto-
gether) for the sake of the valuable that is concomitant? How
much are we to stand of that which degrades the germ-plasm
while it raises the mind-plasm of the race? The Flowers of
Evil. Destroy or modify the roots, change the seed, and the
buds will bloom, if at all, not orchids, but dull brown common-
places.
What means may be licensed for the attainment of a worthy
end is perhaps the broadest aspect of the problem. The instru-
ments of Man's ascent to divinity may arouse his instinctive
repulsions, dislikes, and destructive passions. The study of the
internal secretions is putting and will put the most powerful
apparatus for the control of the abnormal into our hands. What
are we going to do with them?
It does not follow that because we are beginning to under-
stand the normal that we are to establish one fixed absolute
standard of the normal. In view of all the possible mixtures,
permutations and combinations of the endocrine glands, that may
construct an individual, it is possible to conceive a million types
of normals. For normality means harmony, the harmonious
equilibrium between the hormones, which tends to continue itself,
because it does no harm to itself. So there are all sorts and con-
ditions of men and women who are classed as normals. We need
create no inquiry into the value of raising the subnormal to the
normal level. It is when we come to consider the possibility of
lowering the supernormal (in certain respects) to the normal,
that we pause and hesitate. Traditional morality assists not, but
hinders us here.
Whatever the race may ultimately decide, it is safe to predict
that it is now somewhat possible, and will become more and
more possible, to regulate or even check the ills of genius, with-
out interfering with its highest evolution and expression. For
example, Bernard Shaw, to take a living man of genius, is pretty
visibly a pituitocentric of the well-balanced variety. He has
254 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
the height, the facial features, the hands, and the sort of men-
tality that run together in his endocrine make-up. He also has
the headaches. It is quite probable that feeding him pituitary
gland extract in the proper dosage would relieve him of his h»
aches. A process might be 1 in his pituitary, however,
that would diminish its extraordinary output which i -ted
to make his brain so brilliant. The possibility, nevertheless, is
excessively remote as the pituitary predominance in him is so
overwhelming, that nothing short of surgery, nature's or the
medical graduate's, could really affect that overmastering emi-
nence. The time will come, though it is not yet by a long, long
road, when we shall be able to intervene, and perhaps meddle,
in nature's most intimate plans. The right of the power to
modify, like the power to kill, will be defined and limited by
common agreement before that goal will be reached.
CHAPTER XII
APPLICATIONS AND POSSIBILITIES
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 secre-
tions 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 scat-
tered throughout the world contributing their mites to the general
store. They increase yearly, almost daily, and their achieve-
ments, in spite of an uncritical enthusiasm in some quarters and
a semi-charlatanism in others, have been and continue magnifi-
cent. 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 ex-
aminations, 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 com-
pare 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
255
256 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
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 mar-
velous, complex, and variable process in the universe, would be
attacked and at length penetrated systematically and persis-
tently, with the ideal of absolute control of its composition as
the goal in view.
The nature of the researches? They would be infinite in their
variety and significance. Their practical by-products, dropped
in the pursuit of knowledge by the scientist, as Atalanta's lover
the golden apples in his race, to assuage the scent of the hard-
headed business man, would be profitable enough for any country
in peace or war, to pay for itself ten times over and at compound
interest. A volume could be filled with suggestions for interest-
ing and promising investigations. But we may glance at some
of the immediately useful aspects that might exercise those con-
cerned with the everyday life of men, women and children.
The Endocrine Epochs of Life
There is no more famous classifications of the epochs of life
that mark off the milestones of the individual's evolution than
Shakespeare's Seven Ages. So different is he at those different
stages of his development, so changed his body and mind that
it has become a part of popular physiology that we are entirely
made over every seven years, and that no cell in the organism
lasts longer than that. The tradition certainly does not apply
to the brain and nervous system, for the number of brain cells
is fixed at birth, and cannot be increased, only decreased, because
they are too highly specialized to reproduce themselves.
What transfigures the individual as the years go by is no simple
wear and tear of the tissues, nor the replacement of old cells by
new. It is the rearrangement of relationships among the ductless
glands, the shifting of influences from the pn dominant to I
subordinate, and vice vena, in the constellation of the internal
secretions, that determines the unfolding of the personality. The
transformations raise doubt sometimes as to the reality of p
sonal identity. "What actually happi I changes from child-
hood to adolescence, fro; nd so on, is
the sloughing of one internal glandular dominance for another.
Growth, as a general for the mutations, the ensemble of
somatic and ps\ ntiation, from year to year, passes
APPLICATIONS AND POSSIBILITIES 257
through five epochs that are standard for the normal. The normal
is the being who harmonizes with his environment, and yet reacts
with it because of recurring needs within him. His endocrine
equation settles what is unique and different in him. But the
gland which flourishes during the epoch as its time of triumph,
when it has its day, determines what makes him like his fellows.
From this point of view it becomes permissible to speak of the
five Endocrine Epochs. Similarities and resemblances of mind
and body between people at a given period of life, childhood,
youth, maturity must be put down to their common government
by the salient endocrine of the epoch. So one may list:
Infancy as the epoch of the thymus
Childhood as the epoch of the pineal
Adolescence as the epoch of the gonads
Maturity as the epoch of whatever gland is left in control as the
result of the life struggle.
Senility as the epoch of general endocrine deficiency.
Infancy as the epoch of the thymus explains why, in any given
geographic locality, the babies look alike and act alike. Special-
ists in the observation and treatment of infants have noted that
not until after the second year is any tendency to differentiation
discernible to any extent among them. It is only after the second
year, or somewhere around that time, that the child begins to
individuate, and distinct individual traits and a personality
manifest their outlines. The thymus is the great inhibitor of all
the glands of internal secretion. By its checking activity upon
the other members of the endocrine system, the thyroid and
pituitary in particular, it gives the baby time to grow in bulk,
which is its chief business during the first two years of its
existence. It quadruples its birth weight. The brain and nervous
system complete their growth in mass by the end of the fourth
year. Recall the experiments of Gudernatsch working with tad-
poles, who showed that feeding with thymus produced giant
tadpoles whose metamorphosis into frogs was inhibited, while
feeding thyroid produced frogs the size of flies. Differentiation
occurred without the preliminary increase in mass usual. As
differentiation and bulk thus appear antagonistic, at least at the
beginning of growth, the function of the thymus, at a maximum
during infancy, seems then to be to restrain the differentiating
endocrines, until sufficient material has been accumulated by
the organism upon which the differentiating process may work.
After the second year, the thymus begins to shrink. That is
258 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
to say, officially its involution begins. Careful dissection will
demonstrate some thymus tissue even in a normal subject up to
the fourteenth year. This refers to the average normal, for the
large thymus may continue large and grow larger after the
second year in the type of individual designated in a preceding
chapter as the thymocentric.
If the thymus retrogresses after the second year, what takes
its place as a brake upon the forward driving impulses of the
other endocrines? We have every reason for assigning that role
to the pineal. It performs its service mainly, in all probability,
by inhibiting the sex stimulating effect of light playing upon the
skin. Since it is especially a sex gland inhibitor, the thyroid and
pituitary become freer to exert their influences than under the
thymus regime. And so we find that it is after the second year
that thyroid and pituitary tendencies manifest their effects.
The Pineal Era, from the second to the tenth to fourteenth
years, remains to be investigated from a number of viewpoints
interesting to the parent, the educator, and the student of pueri-
culture. Precocity is directly related to early involution of the
pineal. For just as the thymus involutes at the second year, the
pineal atrophies before the onset of adolescence.
Adolescence is the period of stress and strain throughout the
somatic and psychic organism because of the volcanic upheavals
in the sex glands. The history of the individual is dominated by
them up to twenty-five or so, when maturity commences in the
sense of a relative sex stability. They continue to exert a power-
ful pressure throughout maturity. But life episodes and <
diseases, accidents, and struggles, experiences of pleasure and
pain, as well as climatic factors, settle finally which endocrine or
endocrines are left in control as a consequence of the series of
reactions the period of maturity may be analyzed into.
The Interpretation of Senility
Senility inevitably follows maturity, (right follows day
by a j of the process of de-
generation which lilt it. all the I'lands of int
, !iy the <i
D rmi-t OOCUr DO one can : ury to the i
M of one sort or mot 1 y from emot
•
ient. Just why i ma and I pre-
APPLICATIONS AND POSSIBILITIES 259
serve them in the elderly as they do in youth is a problem to
be solved when we understand the laws of regeneration, at present
almost totally beyond our control. Some say that it is a matter
of the wear and tear of our blood vessels, those rubber-like tubes
which transport food and drainage with nonchalant equanimity
to all cells as long as they last. In the classic phrase: a man
is as old as his arteries, ergo his ductless glands will be as old
as their arteries. And the age of arteries is simply a matter of
wear and tear, the resultant of the function which is universal
among molecules. Arteriosclerosis, the hardening of arteries,
might be the whole story.
But there are certain experiments and considerations which
rather confute that easy explanation, or at least make clear that
the mystery is not so simple. The work of Steinach, a Viennese
investigator, has contributed most to the elucidation of the non-
arterial factor in senility. No one has asserted more loudly the
importance of the interstitial cells that fill in the spaces between
the tubules of the testes in the male, and the follicles of the ovary
in females. Rats have been his medium of study, for they are
most easily procurable, live fastest, breed, and withstand experi-
mental and operative procedures better than any other animal.
An old rat is like an old man in his dotage. His bald, shriv-
elled skin covers an emaciated body. His eyes are dimmed by
cataracts and his breathing is labored and difficult because his
heart muscle has lost its tone. Huddled in a corner, life to him
has become concentrated into the desire for a little food, and
immobility. If now, something is done to his sex apparatus, a
marvelous transformation may be effected. That something no
one could predict. It consists in slitting the genital duct, which
leads from the germinal cells to the exterior. After the operation,
the germinal cells, which grow into the spermatozoa, atrophy and
disappear, since they can no longer function. As if released from
some restraint, the interstitial cells, however, multiply enor-
mously. With their multiplication, the miracle of rejuvenation
is performed.
After some weeks the sluggish currents of being in the rat,
which had slowed down as a preliminary to stopping altogether,
flow fast and furious. Waves of new chemical substances inun-
date his cells. And they respond like the fields that border the
Nile after the annual flood. All his tissues, skin, muscle, nerve,
even bone, are restored. A vitality is created which makes him
bound and dart like a youth of his species. In due time, though,
260 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
senility returns. It is as if a storage battery, recharged, runs
down and becomes dead again. Slitting the genital duct of the
other testis, causing its interstitial cells to hypertrophy and mul-
tiply, repeats the effects of the first experiment. The organism
responds again to the new waves of vitality that vibrate through
it. That it is recharged is demonstrated again by a revival of
sex appetite and sex activity. The female which had become an
object of indifference is reinstated as a creature to be sought and
pursued. The second period ends in its turn. And now entirely
new interstitial glands, in the form of fresh testes removed from
a young animal, are transplanted into the body of the old rat.
Once more youth returns. But now it burns itself more quickly
than even before. An acute exhaustion of the mind appears
first. Then all the other phenomena of old age steal back upon
the old rat, and senility, firmly established in the saddle, rides
him to the end.
The Possibilities of Rejuvenation
Whatever other deductions may be extracted from these experi-
ments, they prove beyond a doubt the existence of an endocrine
factor in the process of aging, as well as an arterial. They also
demonstrate that the internal secretion of the sex glands, well
advertised as it has been as the Elixir of Youth that Ponce de
Leon, and Brown-Sequard with so many others, pursued in vain,
is not the whole story. For if it was, the duration of the new
youth should be another span of life, whereas in actuality it is
only a fraction of that time. This fact, together with a number
of others, make clear that while the gonads may be the jeune
premier of the drama, the vitality of the plot depends upon the
other endocrines. Since old age is an exhaustion, permanent and
irreparable of all the members of the ductless gland directorate,
the reason becomes clear for the temporary quality of the re-
juvenation effected by the procedures of Steinaeh.
Practically, then, the question at once arises: which of the
glands in particular are involved? There ll fn>t (hat ubiquitous
agent in I the thyroid. Cheinieal analysis of r
the iodine content deere—M with the age of the
individual, and becomes specially low after forty. It is
•neoopause in women thai myxedema, the diaeaae of com-
plete degeneration of the thyroid, and of the pi id mental
is most frequ< at l oid of old p<
APPLICATIONS AND POSSIBILITIES 261
in varying degrees, signs of a similar degeneration. Thyroid
feeding, properly controlled, will clear up certain of the deteriora-
tions of mind and body observable in the aged. The grossness
of the features lessens, a number of the pains go, muscular en-
durance increases, memory and intelligence do not remind one so
forcibly of the old dotard in his second childhood. Of course the
improvement at present achievable is only relative. But in the
prematurely aging, decay invading a half accomplished maturity,
marvels have been achieved at times with feeding of the gland.
The pituitary, too, begins to retrogress after the period of ma-
turity. And an early retrogression means a short maturity. In
women, the onset of an obesity, and coincidently, of a lazy and
dull morale, coincides with this declension of the pituitary powers.
All the glands of internal secretion, in fact, shrink and shrivel
as old age advances. Only, as in other relationships, the pre-
dominating endocrine stamps its signature more visibly upon the
documents of decadence than the others. Pituitary types, as said,
get fat and slow, thyroidal become bulky and stupid or thin
and sour, the adrenal dark, shrunken and forever tired of life.
So type emerges, even in all-around glandular deficiency.
The problem of rejuvenation is the problem of recharging, or
replacing all of the glands of internal secretion, at least the most
important, the thyroid, the pituitary and the adrenals, as well,
as the gonads. Longevity is perhaps largely a matter of pre-
venting, or postponing their wane. Beside, there is the prophy-
laxis of bacterial infections, and their all embracing corrosions
— which, too, have an endocrine aspect.
Persistence of youth or juvenility may be manufactured by
nature in two ways. There may be a persistence of early glandu-
lar predominances. We have seen what happens to the thymo-
centric. That a pineal-centered juvenile or infantile type exists
may be safely predicted. Nature's only other mode of securing
perpetual youth seems to be by prolonging the time allotted to
the sex gland crescendo.
As for the golden age of maturity itself, what humdrum people
and poets have despised as middle age, the margin of reserve of
the ruling hormone is a quantity almost malleable in our hands,
but still to be regarded with respect as a hard cold proposition
by the physiologist. In general, the continuance of any stage of
development means the maintaining of the glandular adminis-
tration peculiar to it. So the chubby debonair irresponsible
whom nothing can touch is happy in the possession of a pineal
262 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
uncorrupted by the years, while the genius who can turn out
his best work at sixty-five must thank his pituitary for standing
by him to the end.
The Science of Puericulture
There is a specialty now growing in the womb of science which
in its own good time will come to fruition as the study of the
child's needs or puericulture. Even today there exists a scientific
basis for the formulation of the principles upon which every
child should be brought up. Though we have had marvelous
results from the campaigns to lower infantile mortality, m<
what has been done has been medical in its interest, and so
largely negative in its accomplishments. The removal of the
causes of evil no doubt gives the good its opportunity. But how
to raise a child, endowed with satisfactory ancestral stuff, as a
Grade A normal or supernormal, still remains to be erected into
an exact science.
A number of attempts have been abortive in this field. Why
they have failed to arouse the ardor of the parent has puzzled
some of the pioneers. Child-culture as the foundation of all
systems of education has continued more or less of a hope rather
than an achievement because of a lack of appreciation of the
different constitutional varieties of children. A certain amount
of attention has been lavished upon children needing special at-
tention, those mainly suffering from insufficient development of
one sort or another. In the last decade or so, an endeavour to
focus upon the exceptional child, exceptional in inteUigen
some special creative endowment, has started an interesting i
All of tliem have suffered from the fa I : I troubles
of the pure psychologist who would handle mind as an entity in
a vacuum.
A realization of the different physic'
needs of various children will arrive only when w
built differently. Just as shoddy and silk, cotton and wool, alone
or in combination, all possess different qualities as wearing ma-
'. so different children have v wear
and tear of education. The endocrine classification of the human
applied to children, will 1
and to tin- country. Nothing is more evident khan the diver
needs of the VU >n types, once
they are realized as such.
APPLICATIONS AND POSSIBILITIES 263
The history of a thymocentric type, for instance, is predictable
from the very first few months of his life. Difficulties in feed-
ing, in habit formation and adaptation, in the reaction to infec-
tions, in social play and so on, one may expect for him. The
course of events for the other endocrine types also follow laws
of their own. It will be above all in the understanding of chil-
dren, their make-up, reactions and powers, that the biologist
will achieve some of his finest triumphs.
The educator will have to take account of the state of the
pituitary in estimating the normal intelligence, or influencing the
abnormal or subnormal intelligence. As well will he have to
consider the thyroid in the child whose conduct is refractory,
even though his proficiency in his studies is excellent. And the
condition of the adrenal will be ascertained in the types that tire
easily, and that seem unable to make the effort necessary or
desirable. Periodic seasonal and critical fluctuations in the equi-
librium among the hormones will have to be taken into account
in the explanation of what have hitherto been put down to lazi-
ness, naughtiness, stupidity, or obstinacy.
A child's capacity for education, essentially its capacity for
the highest and most productive kind of life, is limited by in-
herent factors. These factors are two: the quality of the nerve
tissue, its ability to make a number of associations, and the
quantity of the internal secretions, measured by the maximum
obtainable in a given situation. These inherent factors explain,
too, why children born and bred in virtually the same environ-
ment show the most extreme differences in educability. That
the differences are inherited was made evident by Galton's finding
that the chance of the son of an eminent man exhibiting eminent
ability was 500 times as great as that of the son of a man taken
at random.
Every baby, then, is born with a combination of nerve cells
and ductless glands which determine its capacity for mental
development, that might never be realized, but could never be
exceeded. If, in any family, minor differences in educability
are observed, they can be put down to disturbance of these two
factors occurring after the fertilized germ cell had started to
divide and reproduce itself. But any marked falling off in either
the nervous or endocrine factors has to be considered pathologic,
due to an impairment of them by adverse environment.
Recent studies have amply established that the proportion of
certifiable mental defectives, and of a much larger class, the
264 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
subnormal but not certifiable class, is progressing by leaps and
bounds. It is perhaps the most absurd frailty of our present
system of education that it takes almost no account of innate
differences in educability. To spend money upon the teaching
of these children along lines where they are unteachable is not
only waste pure and simple, but crime, for it deprives the
educables of their just due.
These, of course, are the crude and simple lines upon which
the finer and more complex evolution of the endocrine problems
of the school child will build. The fine art of education itself
is crude and gross and simple compared with what it might be,
even as a beginning. The science of education has yet to begin,
as the offspring of that science of the future, to which knowledge
of the internal secretions will contribute no little, the science cf
puericulture.
Vocational Education
It is difficult, indeed, to avoid becoming merely enthusiastic
upon the possibilities of the applications of the endocrines to
the educational domain. Happiness for the average individual
consists of a double success — success in his vocation (chosen or
forced upon him) and success in his sex life. A certain hue and
cry has been raised in the last few years concerning the vast
and overwhelming importance of sex in the happiness and even
in the successes of a man's everyday life. And no doubt there
is a relation. Sublimation plays its part in the explanation of
vocational idiosyncrasies. The fact, however, that perfect suc-
cess in sex may occur with absolute failure in the career, howe\
splits the problem for good into its realities: a physiologic aspect
as well as a psychologic.
So, as school education will have to take serious account of
endocrine anomalies and possibilities, will the institution which
selects and trains for a career. Vocational misfits have aroused
the ardor of our efficiency experts. And again, the sweeping
psychological attack hi sad against the
ignorance of constitutional predispositions and tendencies of
material. The attempt to erect psychologic typ. nal
selections could m v< r makt much boftdi H oould i
Hound* t m I swamp Of metaphors, product of (he vices of its
methods. Not that anyone would wish to discard at all
psychologic mode of approach. But no
APPLICATIONS AND POSSIBILITIES 265
accurate examination, was possible, in the matter of classifica-
tion for vocation, without the insight into the physiology of the
candidate that the analysis of his endocrine formula will pro-
vide.
One need not dilate upon the value of such an examination.
Civilization has not yet learned how to pick its personnel. And
so artists and scientists, philosophers and politicians, financiers
and religious leaders, arise and survive by the operation of the
laws of probabilities and chances, rather than by any intelligent
selection and cultivation of material. The case, indeed, is simply
a subdivision of the vast subject: haphazard muddle in the con-
duct of life. A cry has been raised for the superman, and a cry
has been raised for a method of anthropometry. For the lack of
these two, it has been said, all governments have been doomed
to defeat. The study of the endocrines will by no means supply
a panacea. But as it will furnish a means of approach to the
determination of how men and women are built, and why they
are built differently, no one can gainsay the tremendous advan-
tages to the nation that will proceed to classify its population
accordingly, and know its strength and weakness in terms of the
actual generators of success and failure.
Suggestions have been offered in the preceding pages of con-
crete applications of endocrine knowledge to the understanding
of behaviour, of the genius and commonplace, criminal and Puri-
tan. And in the chapter on historic personages, we tracked some
of the story in detail. This vein when explored will quarry un-
told riches. It has been observed that financiers of mark, like
great musicians, are special pituitary types. Also that the finan-
ciers are voracious meat eaters and the musicians inordinately
fond of sweets. Differences in anterior and posterior predomi-
nances might account for this. That we are playing here with
no phantasy is proven by the fact that we can effect changes of
tastes as well as of intellectual direction by^ appropriate feeding
of various glandular extracts. Just as much, indeed, as we can
influence sex susceptibility, and the reaction to sex stimulation,
by the artificial introduction from without of the proper hor-
mones.
Fatigue and Industry
In industry, business and profession, the biologist will come
more and more to be called as consultant. Labor unions as well
266 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
as the large employers of labor, and their employment managers
have given much thought to the problem of fatigue. Just what
fatigue is, why different individuals tire at different rates, why
some are constructed for monotonous routine while others must
have constant variety and change, the relation to accidents and
to quantity output, are a few of the major lines of inquiry upon
which the endocrines obviously have a large bearing. To the
employment manager, labor turnover and the selection of per-
sonnel are adjacent fields of research.
Fatigue as an endocrine deficiency — a depressed state of one or
more of the glands of internal secretion, abolished when its normal
functioning is restored — is a general principle from which de-
partures of exploration of sub-problems will proceed. An en-
docrine organ will secrete at a certain rate. When it is stimulated
excessively, it will eject extra amounts of its secretion. How long
the period of excessive stimulation may last must depend upon
the secretion potential or margin of reserve of the cells, varying
from organ to organ, and from individual to individual. After
that, exhaustion and failure follows, with the onset of the symp-
toms of fatigue.
A pretty demonstration of this process has been worked out
in the electrical stimulation of muscle. If a muscle, say the
biceps, is irritated by an electric current, it will contract. As
the strength of the current is increased, the degree of contraction
becomes greater. A sort of stepladder effect of increasing con-
tractions may be thus obtained. After a time, the electric she
cannot cause a greater contraction, but only a lesser. And if con-
tinued, the muscle will cease to function because of fatigue.
If now, when the muscle begins to lag in its response, and its
contractions to decrease, one injects into a vein extracts of
thyroid, parathyroid, or adrenal glands, they will immediate
rainviflorato the failing contractions. The injections must be
made before the fatigue is < bo the point of abso!
haustion. It follows that these glands normally pour into I
circulation m I which counter tTect of 1 in-
stances, and in fact make possible muscular rc< •uperation from
/in- throughout U M bl emergencies and crises,
•ionallv red thing a«
urgent. As such it means l violent mining of the endocr
Is. But ' also ft chronic fatigue, which has been (fif-
I d with '
asked for someone to kill him the name of the germ causing the
APPLICATIONS AND POSSIBILITIES 267
symptoms of overwork. That being impossible, he will have to be
satisfied with the answer that it is not a germ, but an internal
secretion, or rather a defect of internal secretion that is the
cause.
Whether or not the adrenals have been damaged by past ex-
periences, and upon their capacity to respond to the necessities of
an occasion, fatigue reactions primarily depend. A quotation
from Sir James MacKenzie, most distinguished of modern English
students of medicine, summarizes the matter neatly. "Abelous,
and Langlois and Albanese have studied the relation of the ad-
renal bodies to fatigue. . . . They infer that the muscular
weakness following removal of the adrenals is due to toxic sub-
stances. In view of our present knowledge of the physiological
action of adrenaline in its various forms, it seems more probable
that the weakness is to be explained by the absence of the
normal tone producing internal secretions of the bodies in ques-
tion." In other words, the adrenals regulate muscle tone. They
produce nature's tonics for weary tissues. The chronic lassitude
of thousands of our generation, suffering from "that tired feeling,"
may be put down to chronic adrenal insufficiency.
It requires no superlative imagination to see that an adrenal
poor subject does not belong upon a job that involves muscle
stress over a long period, or indeed fatiguing conditions of any
sort. Nor that a thyroid poor individual is not the best choice
for a position that demands a keen, alert body and mind. In
the selection of executives, the nature and stamina of the pitui-
tary will undoubtedly be taken very seriously in the near future.
A certain hocus-pocus concerning character reading, a per-
verted revival of the ancient phrenology and physiognomy, has
invaded the employment territory in America as the newest
charlatanism. The study of the internal secretions, including
blood and X-ray examinations, will surely assist the demand for
a truly scientific estimate of constitution and character that can
be relied upon in the classification and distribution of personnel.
The Prospects for Public Health
By their effects upon the endocrines, public health influences
like food, clothing, sleep and overpressure and last but not least,
disease, the so-called diseases of childhood, possess a tremendous
importance in limiting the output of the educable. They act to
subtract from and so to lower the rating, the capacity of the
268 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
germ-plasm. Most material and vital of these influences are
the common diseases of children, for they strike directly at the
glands of internal secretion.
Measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, mumps, and the others have
long been accepted as providential visitations for sins known or
unknown. That children had to have them and were better off
when they had them has become part of the tradition of the
laity, fostered by the lazy ignorance of previous medical genera-
tions. But today we are beginning to ask ourselves why children
must have these endemic infections of their age. The pathologist
goes farther and asks the reason for certain apparent immunitiee.
He asks why the little boy who sleeps with his brother sick with
scarlet fever does not contract the disease, even though not pro-
tected by a previous attack.
Determining why susceptibility to a special disease in a par-
ticular case exists will constitute the greatest line of advance for
the understanding and prevention of disease, and so the perfec-
tion of public health. In the last influenza epidemic countless
physicians were puzzled by the spectacle of men and women in
the pink of condition carried off in twenty- four hours while puny
associates were either passed over, or pooh-poohed their colds.
Pathologists have spent their energies fruitfully upon the infec-
tious causes of disease, the microbes and parasites especially.
But now, having solved most of those problems, the vital ques-
tion of why an organism permits itself to be attacked is pushing
itself to the front. Why a peculiar ailment selects its victim, why
the bacillus finds a fertile soil, is the neglected problem, which
must be solved before the abolition of disease and its carriers
will be remotely conceivable.
Long ago, Hippocrates, revered founder of the art of medic i no,
recognized that there was a specific affinity of disease for indi-
viduals with more or less the same characteristic soinatn
psychic traits and trends. Tuberculosis, for Instance,
for its frequency in lon^-skeletoned, thin persons, remarkably
optimistic. And the plethoric, choleric nature of the SU
from gout has become proverbial i of the great
bacteriologic discoveries of the eighties and nineties, the
cordance of esoteric racial and personal malting! w
help in diagnosis to the p
sometimes en ( I ! i oieal intuition, tl
of personal-- was liable to tin- specific disease.
But personality and its reactions, norma] sad abnormal, are
APPLICATIONS AND POSSIBILITIES 269
determined by the endocrines. So we should find that particular
infections run with special internal glandular predominances.
For the picture presented by an infection, temperature, rash,
prostration, are the details of the general reaction of the organ-
ism in the face of a new situation, the presence of a powerful,
destructive invader. Information has accumulated that the in-
vader is powerful and destructive, as well as selective, because
of endocrine deficiency of one sort or another in the body it has
attacked. Work of a number of investigators has indicated that
an individual's susceptibility or its reverse, resistance, is inti-
mately subjected to the derangements or harmonies of the en-
docrine system.
Comparison of the endocrine type and the disease assaulting
has yielded an even more interesting principle. Knowing the
state of the internal secretion reservoirs enables us to predict the
liability to certain of these infections of childhood. Diphtheria
has been found to occur most virulently among adrenal poor in-
dividuals. Moreover, they are left poorer in adrenal afterwards.
It follows that they would be assisted by the feeding of adrenal.
Mumps is a sickness that sometimes permanently injures the
gonads: the testes or ovaries. The thyroid dominant, whose
system is rich in thyroid, will rarely suffer from any of the com-
mon diseases of children— if at all, from measles. On the other
hand, those who have every infection of the period, and who, as
their mothers say, seem to get everything, are those whose sys-
tem is thyroid poor. Thyroid poverty is a splendid enticement
to the universal microbe. The thymocentric stands all diseases
poorly. The pituitary type is more liable to epidemic meningitis
and infantile paralysis, typhoid and scarlet fever.
The public health officer of the future will be armed with a
new weapon in his fight against the spread of an epidemic. He
will be able to classify the endocrine traits of the population
exposed, and to advise a course of glandular feeding for the types
specially liable. The Schick test for diphtheria susceptibility is
an illustration of one method of approach to the problem of the
epidemiologist in settling who needs protection. The endocrines
will assist him in the great body of diseases for which no im-
munity test is at hand. Should another influenza epidemic come
along, for instance, the proper handling, from the endocrine stand-
point, of the thymocentrics and the related adrenocentrics would
help considerably in lowering the mortality.
Endocrine types have other tendencies, which when studied and
270 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
controlled, will decimate the great assassins of middle age: heart
disease and kidney disease, with accompanying degenerations of
the blood vessels and circulation. The adrenocentric tends to get
up a hyperacidity of the stomach and a high blood pressure,
besides certain forms of diseases of the lungs. The thyro-
ccntric is predisposed to heart disease, as well as intestinal dis-
turbances. The pituitocentric is liable to periodic and cyclic
upsets in his health.
Narcotism, the craving for narcotic or stimulant drugs, and its
subvariety, alcoholism, has been found most often among the
thymocentrics. Any type of endocrine inferiority, interfering
with success in life, may lead to the habit of drug addiction as
one way out. But the blood and tissues of the thymocentric ap-
pear to become habituated to the narcotic stimulant more easily
than the other types, and so to demand it with a physical impera-
tive comparable to the food or sex urge. Among artists, philoso-
phers and statesmen, on the other hand, actively productive and
so contrasted with criminals and degenerates drug addiction has
frequently been a mode of endocrine compensation. That is, the
drug produced temporarily the effects of the internal secretion
lacking or insufficient. Thus the effects of cocaine may be com-
pared with the effects of thyroid. But while there is a normal
mechanism for thyroid detoxication, the cocaine or heroin deriva-
tives mark the tissues permanently with their scars and deform
the personality.
The Hygiene of the Internal Secretions
All these protean expressions of endocrine determination may
now begin to be looked upon with the hopeful and optiu
attitude of him who understand I and can control.
The advances made in the last ten yean in the ; I manipu-
lation of the ductless glands from without, the introduction of
glandular extracts by feeding or injection, and the modific
ir structure and function by surgery, the X-ray and radium,
and other procedures, enable us to ntidently the
problems hitherto accepted as tin insoluble and in ndi-
of Fate. Fate may have wo of our being.
1 we con 'o probe the machinery and to examine the
looms more carefully, in to Dfl I why t1
creak, and why thi nds and odd lots in the product as
well as th
APPLICATIONS AND POSSIBILITIES 271
how to handle the machinery ourselves. The abdication of Fate
can therefore be confidently expected in due time.
However, we have yet to begin, and we can begin with preven-
tion. The theory of Adler, that some organ inferiority is respon-
sible for much unhappiness in life has received much advertise-
ment in conjunction with the doctrines of the Freudians. It is a
theory of little scope when applied to the eyes, ears, heart and so
on because only a small minority of the cases are of that kind.
But as we have seen, a deficiency of an internal secretion, an
endocrine inferiority, reverberates throughout all the cells. Not
only the mind, but all of the members of the organism must
strain and co-operate to make up for the break in the balance.
Endocrine inferiority is indeed the most frequent organic in-
feriority. And we may explain a number of mental types upon
that basis. Thus the inferior gonado-centric, who has something
wrong with his reproductive organs, will evolve in one of two
directions. If his adrenal and thyroid are of poor quality, he will
become the secluded introvert, shut off from the interests of nor-
mal life. He will enter the borderland of insanity if pituitary
difficulties supervenes. If, on the contrary, the adrenal, thyroid
and pituitary are present in a certain proportion, he will be-
come the active, aggressive, never-resting, keen, and relentless
fanatic reformer. A woman who is gonad deficient with a
superior adrenal will suffer from virilism and specialize in the
extreme tactics and mythology of the feminist movement. A
number of life reactions are classifiable as the strivings of en-
docrine inferior individuals to overcome their sense of inferiority.
The unconscious vegetative system and the system of conscious-
ness are both modified by the weakness of a link in the glandular
chain.
What, therefore, is to be recommended in the prophylaxis of
the natural deterioration of the wells of life, the ductless glands?
For even if we may be able to replenish them when they dry up,
would it not be better to delay their dessication? The hormones
reply to every call of life and respond in every reaction. The
normal constructive process of their cells remanufactures what
has been lost, and the original capacity to respond is restored.
If, though, the rate of destruction and loss outruns the rate of
repair and construction, they will be permanently damaged. This
is what occurs in shock, serious, severe accidents and injuries,
prolonged infections and diseases, profound continued emotions,
and the wear and tear of overwork. The prevention of these
272 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
ve fatigues of the endocrine system in one or all of its
parts, and especially the prevention and enfeeblement of the dis-
cs of children which injure them at a period when they are
most sensitive to injury, is the task of the endocrine hygienist.
Periodic examinations, to check up the balance sheets of the hor-
mone factories and to measure the amount of their damage by
means of blood analyses, will provide the most valuable method
in the campaign to lengthen the productive and enjoying span of
life.
The Treatment of Crime
Endocrine hygiene will discover no wider or more fruitful area
for exploration and control than that of crime. For more than a
generation there have been attempts at a criminology, and a new
understanding and control of crime. In the United States a
concomitant sentimentalism has concocted measures like the
honor system which, naturally failing of their purpose, have
undermined confidence in the idea of scientific diagnosis and
treatment of crime. As someone has noted, to ask a criminal
to promise not to misbehave, when discharged from prison, is
like asking a typhoid fever patient to promise not to have a
temperature above ninety-nine degrees the next morning. For
a large proportion of criminals — the percentage has yet to be de-
termined, although the most recent police commissioner of
Chicago has estimated it at ninety per cent — punishment for a
period of time and then letting him go free is like imprisoning a
diphtheria carrier for a while and then permitting him to com-
mingle with his fellows and spread the germ of diphtheria.
Of course, the doctrine of responsibility is :ill (angled up with
our attitude towards and treatment of crime. Though clear
thought makes mandatory the recognition of a universal MM
and effect law, practical common sense hag defined free will,
or the withholding of consent to a given course of action
has been the criterion of responsibility.
In i the limitation of responsibility will depend upon
rtion of extraneous factors into the formula of OOQOBDt
The pragmatic test has been and will be the probability that the
a of the somatic or psychic condition would have pre-
ted or will prevent tl nt to the crime. As long as no
ill be demon own protection
will i confine the unfortunate individu-
The f the confinement, its duration, and the uses
APPLICATIONS AND POSSIBILITIES 273
to which it will be put should be dominated by the idea of dis-
covering the unknown criminal predisposition. If crime is an
abnormality scientifically studiable and controllable like measles,
court procedure and prison management will have to be trans-
formed radically. There is scattered throughout the world now
a group of people who are applying medical methods to the diag-
nosis and treatment of crime. They are the pioneers who will
be remembered in history as the compeers of those who trans-
formed the attitudes toward insanity and its therapy. The insane
were once condemned and handled as criminals are in most civil-
ized countries yet. The criminologic laboratory as an adjunct
to the court of justice, like that associated with the court of
Chief Justice Olson in Chicago, remains to be universalized.
What contribution to a more rational treatment of the criminal
will the study of the internal secretions make?
It has been shown that the greater number of convicts are
mentally and morally subnormal. To explain the subnormality,
the criminologist has conducted and will continue to conduct in-
vestigations into the heredity and early environment of the
criminal, his education and occupation, the social and religious
influences to which he was subjected, and the intelligence test
quotient. The conditioning of the vegetative system and the
endocrine status of the prisoner, however, will without a doubt
come to occupy the leading positions in any interpretation of
crime in the future.
Introspective observation of pre-criminal states of mind by so-
called normal persons reveals that in many of them there is an
impairment of reason and will power, in others an exaltation
amounting almost to hysteria. What are these but endocrine
states of the cells, experimentally reproducible by increasing or
decreasing the influence of the thyroid, the adrenals, the pitui-
tary? Crimes of passion may be traced in no small part to dis-
turbances of the thyroid. A psychologic examiner of a Pittsburgh
court, interested in the subject, has found an enlarged thyroid in
over ninety per cent of delinquent girls. Similarly, crimes of vio-
lence may be ascribed to a profound break in the adrenal
equilibrium. Criminal tendencies in women during menstruation
and pregnancy, periods of deep-seated mutation in the internal
glandular system, have long been noted. A kleptomania, uncon-
trollable desire to steal, confined to the duration of pregnancy
alone, has been described. We have seen how the thymocentric,
especially if he possesses a small bony case for his pituitary, is
274 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
predisposed to crime. A recent study of twenty murderers in
the State of West Virginia showed them all to have a persistent
thymus and the thymocentric constitution. A study of the
recidivists, those who return for second and third offences, in
one institution, disclosed that a large majority had a subnormal
temperature and an increased heart and breathing rate. These
are endocrine-controlled functions. Conduct, normal or abnor-
mal, being the resultant of the conflict of conscious and subcon-
scious impulses and inhibitions, the internal secretions as
controllers of the susceptibility of the brain cells to impulses and
inhibitions, must be held accountable for a portion at least of
the chemical reactions behind crime.
It is possible, by X-ray treatment of the thymus, to cause it
to shrink to more normal proportions. It is possible, by feeding
various glandular extracts, to correct deficiencies or excesses of
their function, and so to remedy the underlying basis for a crim-
inal career. Here and there work of this kind has been success-
fully carried out in selected instances. What a suitable drive
upon the whole matter would yield in happiness to the individual
and dollars and cents to society, time alone will show.
CHAPTER XIII
THE EFFECT UPON HUMAN EVOLUTION
The ubiquitous and deep-seated influence of the internal secre-
tions upon life and personality comprises but a fraction of what
is known, and only a hint of what is to become known. There is
an endocrine aspect to every human being and every human
activity, normal and abnormal, internal process and its external
expression, regulated by laws of which we are beginning to catch
a glimpse. Their control promises us now a dominion over the
most intimate and inaccessible recesses of our lives in a way
comparable only to the control we now exercise over the forces
and energies once revered as the instruments of the gods — light,
heat, magnetism, electricity. We have learned how to control
and change our environment. We are now learning, endocrine
research is now discovering, how to control and change ourselves.
The story of the evolution of the two types of control has
many analogies. When man ceased looking upon his surround-
ings as inhabited by spirits of good and evil, as he conceived him-
self, and discovered that they were composed of things malleable
and analysable in his hands, he became their master. When now
he drops the old superstitions about himself as a spirit, an emul-
sion of a spirit of good and spirit of evil, and sees himself more
and more clearly as the most complex of chemical reactions,
regulated and determined as are the simple and complex chemical
reactions around him, he will begin to rule and modify himself
as he rules and modifies them. Whether or not he will ultimately
come to this final lucidity of thought and action, it behooves us
to consider some of the uses to which our present knowledge
might be put.
Since every step of the daily routine or adventure, from waking
to sleeping, eating, drinking, marrying and giving in marriage,
working, idling, fighting, playing, feeling, enjoying, sorrowing,
every shade of emotion and nuance of mood, in short every
phase of happiness and unhappiness, are endocrine episodes in the
life history of the individual, the sphere of applications is as long
276
276 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
and broad and deep as life itself. Not only do the internal
secretions open up before us the great hope — that Life at last
will cease to stumble and grope and blunder, manacled by the
iron chains of inexorable cause and effect. They provide tools,
concrete and measurable, that can be handled and moved, weighed
and seen, for the management of the problems of human nature
and evolution.
Every department of human life, the questions of labor and
industry, science and art, education, puericulture, international
problems, crime and disease, may be illuminated. War and Sex,
those two master interests of mankind, may be understood and
handled sympathetically as they have never before. The reac-
tions of man alone, and man in the crowd, will be clarified. The
red thread of individuality which runs through the woof and
warp of all human affairs will be unraveled.
Inevitably, customs, morals, codes of procedure and practice,
institutions, all those expressions of opinion which make conduct,
all the currents which contrive the infinite variety of life, will be
transmitted into another set of values.
A remoulding, a remodeling will take place all along the line.
Manifestly an unstable thymocentric should not be treated as a
criminal, but treated in a sanitarium. A masculinoid woman
needs satisfactions not vouchsafed in the old "love, honor and
obey" home. How absurd it is to found codes of morality upon
sermons or even the latest psychologies. During the nineteenth
century progress in physics and mechanics overturned traditions
thousands of years had painfully toiled to erect. What is to
happen when man comes at last to experiment upon himself like
a god, dealing not only with the materials without, but also with
cry constituents of his innermost being? Will he not
indeed become a god? If he does not destroy himself before,
that is surely his destiny. For better or for worse, we possess
now in the endocrines new instruments for BWaying the indi-
vidual as individual, and as related to other individuals, as a
member of a type, family, nation, BIX 1 ^enus.
The Basis of Variation
The sense of likeness and the sense of unlikenc a de-
cisive rule in the diun dule of the individual His sense
of resemblance to ! ad moth in and elan, i
him and them off aga cosmos as an alliance of defense
THE EFFECT UPON HUMAN EVOLUTION 277
and offense. Yet no matter how closely he is like them and they
like him, he differs and varies, they differ and vary, with a sort
of mutual forgiveness, because the amount of resemblance over-
tops the degree of variation. In a paper on the "Rediscovery of
the Unique," H. G. Wells emphasized the unique quality of the
individual, and how, in spite of the cleverest devices of classifica-
tion, living things ultimately escaped the classifying net by virtue
of their tendency forever to vary.
The individual is unique. Yet when all is said and done, the
fact remains that between individuals there is resemblance, and
among them variation. What is the reason for their resemblances
and what is the cause of their variation?
The conception of a particular chemical make-up of the indi-
vidual, statable and relatively controllable in terms of the internal
secretions, supplies a more rational and satisfactory method of
approach to the problem than any so far suggested as far as
vertebrates are concerned at any rate. In effect, the differences
between individuals may fundamentally thus be grouped among
the differences which distinguish other chemical substances. The
difference between water, technically known as hydrogen monox-
ide, and the antiseptic fluid labeled hydrogen dioxide lies wholly
in the possession by the latter of an extra atom of oxygen in its
molecules. All the peculiarities and qualities by which hydrogen
peroxide is separated from water are referred to that additional
quantum of oxygen. So the diversity of constitution and appear-
ance of two brothers, alike in that they have inherited the same
internal secretion trends, may be traced to the superiority of the
pituitary of the one over the other.
Variation and resemblance are large issues, crucial material
of the science of biology upon which much has been thought and
written. That the proportion of the endocrines determines varia-
tion and resemblance, heredity and evolution is a hypothesis ad-
vanced, supported by a large amount of facts, and capable of the
most interesting experimental verification and observation. If a
child resembles particularly either of its parents, grandparents
or relatives, there is good reason for believing that it is because
their endocrine formulas are very much alike. When people
apparently not blood-related at all resemble one other, the same
law must hold. Resemblances may be partial or complete, and
the degree will depend upon the amount and ratio of the internal
secretions involved.
The same endocrine constitutions will produce corresponding
278 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
physiques, physiognomies, abilities and characters. Deviations
in endocrine type from that of the original stock, more of one
endocrine and less of another, is at the bottom of the phenome-
non of variation, basic for the origin of new species as well as
the extinction of the old. In short, viewing the internal secre-
tions as determinants, by their quantitative variations, of a host
of biologic phenomena furnishes a concrete and detailed founda-
tion for Darwin's theory of pangenesis.
Inheritance of Acquired Characters
Darwin's theory of pangenesis was an attempt to harmonize
everything known in his time about heredity. It supposed that
the various organs of the body gave off into the blood substances,
themselves in miniature, which were taken up by the sex cells,
and so became responsible for the development of their mother-
organ in the newly forming individual. Modern knowledge can-
not accept all this as a whole. But in a modified version, it has
become the germ of a theory of heredity of which J. T. Cunning-
ham, of Oxford, is the chief backer.
Beginning with the traits and qualities which distinguish the
sexes, grouped as the secondary sex characters, he showed that
they are correlated with the special sexual function of the species
in which they occur. These traits appear only when the hor-
mones occur which are present in one sex and that only when
the gonads of that sex are mature. In some cases they app
only at the period of the year when reproduction takes pi
disappearing again after the breeding season. Their presence
makes certain cells develop in excessive numbers at a particular
spot in the organism (as in the growth of 1 from a I
sweat glands) or causes them to specialise (to make hair on the
face in man, or to grow antlers on the head of a stag). After
castration, the hormones being absent) all these points of o<
trast between the sexes fail to appear. So by anal'
■lain all somatic and psychic differentiation as functions of
the glands of internal secretion. Contemplated from the angk
the effect of environment upon the endocrines, and a r<
'in upon the germ oells, we may out line a mechanism of
ace of acquired char rtain times and o
sequent adaptation. would be as follows:
1. A state of lability of cells at a pofall of in-
creased or decreased use.
THE EFFECT UPON HUMAN EVOLUTION 279
2. An increased or decreased appropriation by them of
the hormone controlling their function.
3. A corresponding increase or decrease in function of
the gland of internal secretion and so,
4. An increased or decreased representation of it in the
reproductive sex cells in the gonads.
To take a classic illustration, the long neck of the giraffe.
The neck of certain animals living in a district populated by-
trees with high branches would be in state of instability. If at
the same time the pituitary, for some reason, was unstable and
reacted with an extra supply of its secretion, it would stimulate
the neck cells to reproduce themselves. In turn the pituitary
would become stabilized in the direction of increased secretion,
and hand on the component of increased secretion to the sex cells.
That component, in conjunction with other factors, would there-
fore determine the emergence of a definite species character. In
other words, the glands of internal secretion, as intermediaries
between the environment and body, and between the body and
the reproductive sex cells or germplasm, tender the clue to a
phase of the puzzle of heredity, adaptation and evolution. It is
only a dotted outline of an explanation to be sure, but one cer-
tainly capable of being filled in.
The Bearing on Breeding
Since the endocrine glands are so subtly sensitive and respon-
sive to environment, and are at the same time so intimately con-
cerned in the process of inheritance — a law which sums up their
influence upon resemblance and variation in animals — there is
no need to stress their importance for the practical science and
art of good breeding, eugenics. Another mode of approach to its
problems is opened up, and fresh enthusiasm instilled into its
hopes and aspirations. A method of analysis of the factors in-
volved, together with rules for the prediction of the outcome of
certain matings, when finally worked out, will elevate its pro-
cedure to the level of the more exact sciences.
A man's chief gift to his children is his internal secretion com-
position. The endocrines are truly the matter of breeding as
they are of growth. They are the material carriers of the in-
herited physical and psychic dispositions, powers, abilities and
disabilities from the soma to the germplasm and back from the
germplasm to the soma. All kinds of questions arise as soon as
280 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
one attempts to consider the bearing of this underlying principle
upon concrete situations. What happens, say, when a pituito-
centric mates with a thyrocentric? Or when a pituitocentric
marries a pituitocentric? Is there a reinforcement or a cancel-
lation of the dominant endocrine? Is there a quantitative addi-
tion of internal glandular tendencies in the germplasm, or a more
complex rearrangement dependent upon reactions between all the
internal secretions?
The term endocrine dominants brings up the inquiries of Men-
delism, and the relation of Mendelian conceptions of dominant
and recessive to the internal secretions. The Mendelians have
emphasized the role of the unit factor in heredity, and the con-
servation of the unit factor as an entity through all the adven-
tures of matings. Also, that when unit factors, say of the color
of the eyes, come into conflict, brown or black being mixed with
blue or grey, one, the recessive., is submerged and overlaid but
not destroyed by the other, the dominant. So brown or black
eyes, dark hair, curly hair, dark skin, and so on, are dominant,
while blue or grey eyes, light or straight hair, light skin are
recessives. A nervous temperament is dominant to the phleg-
matic. A number of psychic qualities have been declared to be
Mendelian unit factors: memory, mechanical instinct, mathe-
matical ability, literary ability, musical ability, and even hand-
writing.
As architects of human qualities the endocrines must be in-
volved in the Mendelian unit factors. Moreover, they seem to
act upon a particular locale in different degrees, which is the
strongest argument against the resolution of a number of struc-
tural traits into Mendelian unit characters. Most characters,
somatic or psychic, are the products not of the action of I
internal secretion alone, but of the interlinked activities of all
of them. The amount of fat deposited under the skin, for in-
stance, is influenced by the pituitary, the thyroid, the pancreas,
the liver, the ad' lands. Other qualities, like-
wise -ultants of a coinpromi n all the endocrine
factors comprising the equation of the individual. If we are to
look for unr all in endocrine hen look
more deeply into e< • ore the hormone poten-
tials and t!:< ir rnobilizat ion or sup;
ill, in all probability! be found that the stability or e
bility of an flodoerlM will have a good deal to do with tl
played by it in inheritance as well ay in the life of the individ'..
THE EFFECT UPON HUMAN EVOLUTION 281
An unstable pituitocentric marrying another unstable pituito-
centric will have children either exceptionally small or tall, or
abnormally bright or stupid. The instability tends to right itself
in the next generation, or that following. Genius as a sport,
as well as sudden degeneration of family stock, the whole prob-
lem of mutation, may be closely connected with this tendency.
It has been noted that the extinction of species has been pre-
ceded by a great increase in their size, for example, the case
of the great reptilia of prehistoric time. That possibly represented
pituitary stabilization, and so an abeyance of the ability to vary,
necessary for fresh adaptation to a changing environment. In-
deed, endocrine instability appears the fundamental condition of
the tendency to vary, endocrine stability the opposite.
Certain endocrine facts in relation to heredity should be men-
tioned. The daughters of mothers who menstruated early, them-
selves menstruate early. Animals fed upon thyroid during preg-
nancy, comparable to the thyrocentric, give birth to offspring with
a very large thymus, comparable to the thymocentric. Women
with partial thyroid deficiency, or myxedema, bear cretins.
These are suggestive of what the internal secretions may do to
an individual in inheritance and development. Inherited en-
docrine potential is the maximum reaction of which a gland is
capable. This matter of potential is comparable to the factor
of reserve power or margin of safety demonstrated up to the hilt
for such organs as the heart and kidney as varying from indi-
vidual to individual. A low potential, like instability of an
internal secretion gland, may be latent, and not made manifest
until the proper stimulus, the maximum amount of stress and
strain, like accident, disease, shock or war, arrives.
When the individual is tested the effects may be purely local
because there is always in the organism a point of least re-
sistance. Physical changes alone may be prominent. Or because
somatic changes are minor, the psychic will dominate the pic-
ture. An attack of the "blues/' unaccompanied by any demon-
strable transformation of the bodily processes, may be the sole
symptom of an endocrine failure somewhere in the chain due to
hereditary weakness or low potential.
So we may account for family trends and streaks, for varieties
and strains among individuals, upon more precise lines based
upon endocrine analysis. Family disturbances of the internal se-
cretions of the extreme sort denominated disease are well known.
Indeed, a number of family diseases or predispositions to diseases.
282 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
have been traced to them. Predisposition in any direction will
probably be shown to be caused by them, within limits. Re-
search here has its opportunity.
The Improvement of Eacial Stock
A vast new territory of inquiry and achievement, as yet totally
unexplored, is opened by the endocrines to the eugenists, and
those idealists whose most earnest aspiration is the improvement
of racial stock as a necessary preliminary to improvement of
racial life. Beginning with Galton, they have brought to light
a great collection of data to prove that human traits and facul-
ties, good and bad, are inherited. Ability has been shown to run
in certain families and degeneracy in others. Yet all of the
practical net result has been summed up in the term "negative
eugenics," the eugenics of prohibition and warning.
Now the concept of personality, as woven around a system of
chemical reflexes, handed on from generation to generation, is
bound to change all that, and to create a structure of positive
eugenics. It has been said that what radium is to chemistry, the
internal secretions are to physiology. Just as radium enlightens
the chemist about the history of matter, and the integrations
and disintegrations constituting the life of an element — the in-
ternal secretions illuminate the history of the individual as part
of the life of the race, and of its integrations and disintegrations.
Seeing the individual as a system of chemical substances inter-
acting will assist enormously to predict the nature, character
and constitution of his descendants, which is essentially what
the eugenist is after.
The study of matings, the heart of the matter, will coi
itself with the investigation and comparison of the kind of en-
docrine personalities that mate, the internal secretion pr.
inances that cross, and the consequent endocrine personal:
the offspring. D. iflg upon p! md physiognomy,
ttomy and function, mind and behaviour will so be
co-ordinated as no eugenist has hitherto succeeded in d
Laws of endocrine inheritance will emerge that will bring the
control of heredity within IllftiHimblll di.-tance. Standards and
norms of a new kind would be obtain
A hmlllllJHfl ot this study of endocrine inheritance, on the
as been D -ohm- of thete have been i
Mend* ! lines. Following up abnormal growth (making i
THE EFFECT UPON HUMAN EVOLUTION 283
and dwarfs) and abnormal metabolism (goitre, diabetes, and so
on) , it has been stated that it would seem that abnormal growth
is dominant in the male, and recessive in the female, while abnor-
mal metabolism is dominant in the female and recessive in the
male. If an endocrine abnormality like a goitre, or cretinism, or
a dwarf or giant appear in a family as a sign of endocrine insta-
bility, other members of that family will very likely show internal
secretion abnormalities.
If one gland of internal secretion acts as the centre of the
system and the others as satellites, we should be able to trace
what happens to it in the different generations. Does it main-
tain its supremacy? Or will it be ousted by another member of
the group? The time will come when we shall thus be able to
advise prospective parents of the consequences of procreation
and to forecast the meaning for the race of a particular marriage.
Internal glandular analysis may become legally compulsory for
those about to mate before the end of the present century.
What are desirable and undesirable matings? The general law
followed by nature in her helterskelter way seems to be the pro-
duction of the greatest number of hybrids and variations pos-
sible, whether for good or evil does not matter. Certain endocrine
types appear to be specially attracted to others belonging to the
same group. Thus thymus-centered types frequently marry.
The ante-pituitary type of male, the strongly masculine, mates
often with the post-pituitary type of female, the markedly fem-
inine. The children exhibit the lineaments of the pituitary-
centered type. The general trend seems to be the establishment
of a better balanced, equilibrated type. Yet the children often are
apt to segregate into pituitary dominants or pituitary deficients.
Happiness and unhappiness in marriage should be examined from
the standpoint of endocrine compatibility or incompatibility.
Likewise those divorced or about to be divorced.
The correction of endocrine defects, disturbances, imbalances
and instabilities, before mating, presents another field. It re-
mains to be seen whether we shall thereby, in one generation, be
able to affect at all the germplasm, hitherto revered by all pious
biologists as an environment-proof holy of holies. No one can
deny, in the face of the multitude of evidence available, that in-
ternal secretion disturbances occur in the mother, which, when
grave, offer in the infant gross proof of their significance, and
therefore when slight must more subtly work upon it. Endocrine
disturbances in infancy have been traced to endocrine disturb-
284 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
ances in the mother during pregnancy. Pregnant animals fed on
thyroid give birth to young with large thymus glands. The diet
of the mother has been proved conclusively to influence the
development and constitution of the child. As the internal
secretions influence the history of the food in the body, they
affect development in the womb indirectly as well as directly.
Certainly, whether or no we learn how to change the nature of
germplasm within a short time, we have in the endocrines the
means at hand for affecting the whole individual that is born
and sees the light of day.
The Control of Mutations
The true physical and intellectual evolution of man depends
upon the production of mutations of a desirable kind that can
survive. The information furnished by the study of the en-
docrines concerning the genesis of personality provides the foun-
dations for a positive eugenics, a eugenics of the encouragement
of desirable matings, with the proper legal and social procedures.
Selective breeding for the production of the best endocrine types
should become practicable.
But the biologist should be able to go farther. If the
eugenist is to limit himself to the method of the animal breeder
he will have to rest satisfied with the characters or hereditary
factors given, that turn up spontaneously in an individual. But
with the internal secretions as the controllable controllers of mu-
tations, the outlook changes. It should become possible to pro-
duce new mutations, good and bad, to speed up their production
at any rate. The feeding of thyroid to a gifted father before
procreation might enhance immeasurably the chances of trans-
mission of his gift as well as of its intensification in his offspring.
A field of investigation is opened that would embrace in due time
the deliberate control of human evolution.
All the physical traits, stature, color, muscle function, and so
on, ofiVr themselves for improvement, as well ai and
intellectual and emotional factors which have dominated
n's social evolution. Th( ous dis-
orders in civilised count !l i'» the nervous infante
•ialist in children's diseases is called upon to treat, shows
that the nervous system of tin of mankind is in a
state of unstable equilibrium I ! tne
mi a of the En-
THE EFFECT UPON HUMAN EVOLUTION 285
vironment that the investigation of the endocrines promises to put
into our hands the instruments of the control of the future of the
nervous system. In general, meanwhile, the eugenist should
strive for raising the level of the endocrine potential, and dis-
courage its lowering. That means the encouragement of matings
in which all the internal secretion activities are reinforced. On
the other hand, those internal secretion combinations, generally
leading to a deficiency of all of them which produce types of
mental defectives, delinquency and crime should not be allowed
to occur.
The Influence of Environment
What suggestions now are there for the euthenist who would
control the influence of environment upon child culture. There
are certain pertinent facts and leads that are worth considering.
In analyzing environment, one must distinguish sharply in the
jungle, the non-living factors from the living. For while the non-
living act upon the endocrines directly, the living act upon the
vegetative system, as a whole. The non-living factors are those
with the intimate scrutiny of which physics and chemistry have
busied themselves: food, water, air, light, heat, electricity,
magnetism. The living are the animals that prowl all over the
planet, the predatories spreading the gospel of fear.
The dietetic habits of a person, for instance, are known to
have an influence upon the glands of internal secretion. Meat-
eating produces a greater call upon the thyroid than any other
form of food. In time this ought to produce a degree of hyper-
thyroidism in the carniverous populations. Pre-war statistics
concerning meat-eating in different countries show the greatest
meat-eating among the English-speaking groups, who all in all
must be admitted the most energetic. Mmt ^ Day per
Countries Capita in Grams.
Australia .>-.: 306
U. S. of America 149
Great Britain 130
France ,.- 92
Belgium and Holland 86
Austria-Hungary 79
Russia 59
Spain sa 61
Italy 29
Japan 25
\
286 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
Sea-water contains iodine. People living in contact with sea-
water would be apt to get more iodine in their systems, and so
a greater degree of thyroid activity. On the other hand, cer
bodies and sources of inland water hold something deleterious to
the thyroid, so that whole populations in Europe, Asia and
America drinking such water have become goitrous and cretinous,
and a large percentage straight imbeciles. Endemic cretinism is
the name given to the condition. In parts of Switzerland, Savoy,
Tyrol and the Pyrenees, in America around some of the Great
Lakes, there are still such foci. Marco Polo described similar
areas he encountered in his travels through Asia.
Certain foods with aphrodisiac qualities may act by stimulat-
ing the internal secretion of the sex glands. A type of pituito-
centric has an almost uncontrollable craving for sweets. Alcohol
and the endocrines remain to be studied.
Light, heat and humidity stand in some special relation to the
adrenals. Pigment deposit in the skin as protection against light
is controlled by the adrenal cortex. The reaction of the skin blood
vessels to heat and humidity is regulated by the adrenal medulla.
A change in the adrenal as a response to changes of temperature
and humidity in an environment would result in a number of
concomitant transformations throughout the body. So variation
and adaptation are probably connected. Most Europeans living
for a sufficiently long time in the tropics suffer from a combina-
tion of symptoms spoken of as "Punjab head" or "Bengal head."
The condition is probably the result of excessive adrenal stimu-
ion by the excessive heat and light of the tropical sun, followed
by a reaction of exhaustion and failure, with the con
phenomena of a form of neurasthenia. In the section on the
pineal gland there was mentioned the relation between light and
inland in growing animals, and how it serves to 1.
in ofaeok the sex-stimulating action of light. The earlier puberty
and menstruation of the warmer climates may be explained Bl
IB earlier regression of the pineal under the pressure of a gl
amount of li^ht playing upon the skin.
All these, and many more could be cited, are instances of the
direct influence of environmental factors upon one or moi
endocrines, and so upon the organism as a whole. Indeed, stimuli
may be considered to modify an organism only in so far as I
mo' glandi of in i Consequently, dim
factors will tend to make a population possess certain points of
resemblance in common.
THE EFFECT UPON HUMAN EVOLUTION 287
Varieties of the human race exist as do varieties of dogs. The
Pekingese and the fox terrier are as different as the Slav and
Latin are different: because of differences in internal secretion
make-up. The Slav peasant is definitely subthyroid in his general
effect: round head, coarse features, stubby hands, and his stolid,
brooding intellectual and emotional reaction. The Latin shows a
pronounced adrenal streak in his coloration, his emotivity, his
susceptibility to neurosis and psychosis. H. Laing Gordon, a Scot
physician, reported that of 700 cases he studied, more than twice
as many of duplex eyed individuals (brown or black, i.e., adrenal-
centered most often) , were susceptible to the mental disturbances
of war as the simplex (blue or gray-eyed, i.e., thyroid-centered
most often). He also pointed out that such individuals tend to
have a narrow and abnormally arched palate. The Anglo-Saxon
tends to be more sharply pituitarized, his features are more clean-
cut, his mentality more stable. The Frenchman is rather a cross
between the Anglo-Saxon pituitary-centered and the Italian or
Spanish adrenal-centered.
So national resemblances, traceable to climatic influences being
repeated from generation to generation upon the endocrines, may
be explained physiologically. The physiologic interpretation of
history will indeed be found the broadest, including as comple-
mentary Buckle's climatic theory, Hegel's ideas on the influence
of ideas, and Marx's on the superiority of the economic motives
and forces.
The Races of Mankind
Arthur Keith, conservator of the Museum of the Royal Col-
lege of Surgeons of England, was the first to apply the principle
of endocrine differentiation to the problem of the color-lines — the
lines which have divided mankind crudely into the yellow, the
red, the white and the brown, the Negro, the Mongol, the Cauca-
sian, the copper tinted American. It has long been recognized
by anthropologists that the differences of color march with dif-
ferences in every comparable trait. Thus the ideal Negro is
built upon a pattern in which all the elements are specific and
singular. When the looms revolve that make him, there is pro-
duced a gleaming black skin, kinky black hair, squat wide-
nostriled nose, thick protruding lips, large striking teeth, promi-
nent jaws, and staring eyes. As his upright carriage and bone-
muscle-fat proportions are distinctive, so are his musical voice
and his easily wrought upon nerves. In contrast the Caucasian
288 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
a good deal of hair on his body, his skin is a pale tan-pink, his
lips are thin, and his no the definite bridge which
narrows it. The Mongol, like the Negro, has the hairless body
and the beaidlen face, but unlike him baa lank straight hair
on his head, while his features are flattened and fore-shortened.
Upon the basis of these structural, functional and mental
differences, the qualitative and quantitative evolution of which
in the race as in the individual is guided by the glands of internal
ration, Keith presents a very good case for the view that the
white man is an example of relative excess of the pituit
thyroid, adrenal and gonad endocrines. "The sharp and pro-
nounced nasalization of the face, the tendency to strong eyebrow
ridges, the prominent chin, the tendency to bulk of body, and
height of stature in the majority of Europeans" are the sipns of
pituitary dominance. Keith is also of the opinion that "the sex-
ual differentiation, the robust manifestations of the male charac-
ters, is more emphatic in the Caucasian than in either the Mongol
or Negro racial types ... in certain negro types, especially in
Nilotic tribes, with their long stork-like legs, we seem to have
a manifestation of abeyance in the action of the interstitial
glands." As for the adrenal superiority of the white man, "it is
150 years since John Hunter came to the conclusion . . . that
the original color of man's skin was black, and all the knowledge
that we have gathered since his supports the inference he drew.
From the fact that pigment begins to collect and thus darken
the skin when the adrenal bodies become the seat of a destruet
ase we infer that they have to do with the clearing away of
pigment, and that we Europeans owe the fairness of our skins to
some particular virtue resident in the adrenal bodies." Finally,
as regards the thyroid, a comparison of the face of a eretin with
f of the Negro or Mongol tells the story. A certain van.
of idiocy, Mongolian idiocy, in which the face simulates en
>1 clinical ol if char-
acterized by a Chinese cast of the features and i
nam !! Africa, tin
even more start .lingly recalled.
re is ev< for believing that the white man
possesses more of pituit. nal
secretions as compared frith the yellow n a. And
since these < octroi oo( only phj log-
nomy, anatomic and functional ininutia-, but also mind and
behaviour, we a: i puttm man's pre-
THE EFFECT UPON HUMAN EVOLUTION 289
dominance on the planet to a greater all-around concentration in
his blood of the omnipotent hormones. While the Negro is rela-
tively subadrenal, the Mongol is relatively subthyroid. Their
relative deficiency in internal secretions constitutes the essence
of the White Man's Burden.
Man's Attitude Toward Himself
A last, but by no means least, application we may consider of
the developing knowledge of the internal secretions in relation to
human evolution is its effect upon Man's attitude toward himself
and so toward his fellow men. Whatever else he is, man is a land
animal with ideas. That makes him a thought-adventurer among
materials. In a word, he is the last word of mind working upon
matter. But persistently he has refused to recognize himself as
matter and as subject to the laws, to the physics and chemistry
of matter.
History consists of the protocols that record the high lights of
the interactions of materials and ideas which is the adventure of
man in time and space. Materials and ideas have reacted, the
record shows; materials come upon have begotten strange fanta-
sies. Ideas that flashed from nowhere into a consciousness have
transformed utterly the face of the earth. The herd-brute, agglu-
tinated with his fellows by a magnetism beyond his ken, could be
infected with thought, and so cast in the heroic mould. The possi-
bility of communion, — that possibility of possibilities, for without
it none other could be possible — has rendered man the heir of a
divine destiny. For the progressive education of the race, a single
discoverer here, an inventor there, and thinkers everywhere have
been inspired. In due time their inspiration becomes the posses-
sion of even the lowest brain but capable of grasping it.
Man's attitude toward himself, his self-consciousness, and his
attitude toward his fellow creatures has grown and varied and
evolved with his education about himself. According to the
theory he formulated concerning his being, his why and where-
fore, he directed and governed, punished and mutilated himself
and them. But the pressure of his curiosity, and the inexorable
quality of the truth would not let him stand still. The poetic
genius within him, as Blake called it, struggled on from one
dogma concerning his nature to another. Behaviour malignant
or beneficent, horrible in its tragedy and pitiable in its comedy,
flowed inevitably on. Witchcraft trials and the tortures of the
Spanish Inquisition belong among the more mentionable con-
290 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY
sequences of some of man's theories about his own nature and its
requirements.
Heretofore the imaginative spirit has had its day in the mat-
ter. And, curiously enough, an obsession to subjugate the natural
has made it exalt the supernatural. Visions, dreams, portents,
revelations, all symptomatic of an order of things above nature,
are the stuff of what more than ninety-nine per cent of the mil-
lions of the race believe about themselves and their fate. Man's
cruelty to man, through the ages, is a comment upon how vast and
ramifying may be the consequences of a delusion.
But now for a couple of centuries the critical spirit, which is
the spirit of science, has been invading the affairs of men. Hum-
ble but persistent corrosive of delusion, it has infiltrated the
furthest bounds of ignorance and superstition. It has not dared
lert the supremacy of its fundamental views upon the every-
day problems of human life because it was without concrete
means of vindicating its claims. That lack is now supplied by the
growing understanding of the chemical factors as the control-
lers and dictators of all the legion aspects of life.
The profoundest achievement of the physiologist will be the
change his teachings and discoveries will bring about in man's
attitude toward himself. When he comes to realize himself
chemical machine that can, within limits, be remodeled, over-
hauled and repaired, as an automobile can be, within limits, when
he becomes saturated with the significance of his endocrine-vege-
tative system at every turn and move of his life, and when
sympathy and pity informed by knowledge and understanding
will come to regulate his relationships with the lowest and most
despised of the men, women and children about him, the *
the r. civilisation will properly be said to be bora.
Morality, as society's code of conduct for its members, will have
to Change in the direction of a greater flexibility with t!
nt of organic differences in human types. Th-
pathologist than that
s meat is another man'i poison, in the familj
v for the inanir
1 secretions, allowances will be made for (U
in capacity and deportment Cram I DO! hooli
will fi ! inhibitors of the
I, as well as in\. ! of the individual! who have
not enough or too much of one or some of tin in. Pi
have the came function, on
THE EFFECT UPON HUMAN EVOLUTION 291
pitals. The raising of the general level of intelligence by the
judicious use of endocrine extracts will mean a good deal to the
sincere statesman. The average duration of life will be prolonged
for an enormous mass of the population. If the prevention of
war depends upon the burning into the imagination of the elec-
torates what the consequences of war are, a high intelligence quo-
tient and revaluation of life will count for a good deal.
Man is the animal that wants Utopia. So long as human na-
ture was looked upon as fixed constant in the ebb and flow of
life, a Utopia of fine minds could be conceived only by the
dreamer and poet. The desire for such a Utopia could only be
regarded as a tragic aspiration for an impossibility. The phy-
siology of the internal secretions teaches that human nature does
change and can be changed. A relative control of its properties
is already in view. The absolute control will come.
Nor need anyone fear that the science of the internal secretions
in its maturity will signify the abolition of the marvelous differ-
ences between human beings that create the unique personalities
of history. A derangement of the endocrines has been responsible
for masterpieces of the human species in the past and will be
responsible for them in the future. The equality of Utopia can
be the equality of the highest and fullest development possible for
each of its inhabitants. The applications of endocrine control
will not necessarily interfere with the life of the individual.
There will be breeding of the best mixtures of glands of internal
secretion possible. And there will be treatment for those born
with a handicap, or who have become handicapped in the life
struggle. There will be a stimulation of capacity to the limit.
But beyond that, compulsory equalization is a theorist's bogey.
The internal secretions are the most hopeful and promising of
the reagents for control yet come upon by the human mind.
They open up limitless prospects for the improvement of the race.
A few hundreds of investigators are engaged upon their study
throughout the world. That is one of the ironies of our contem-
porary civilization. A concerted effort at the task of understand-
ing them, backed by the labors of tens of thousands of workers,
would, without a doubt, accomplish as much for humanity as
the vast armies and navies that consume the substance of man-
kind. If we could not obtain Utopia then, we might, at least
by abolishing the subnormals and abnormals who constitute the
slaves and careerists of society, render the human race less con-
temptible and more divine.
INDEX
Ability, natural, 197
Acquired characters, inheritance of,
278
Acromegaly, 41
Addison, 34, 36
Addison's disease, 35, 72, 125
Adolescence, period of, 257, 258
Adrenal glands, 69, 95
and anger, 176
and courage, 175, 177
and emergencies, 74
and emotions, 75
and fatigue, 267
and fear, 75, 176
and neuroses, 191
and pseudo-hermaphroditism, 70
and puberty, 137
blood pressure and, 73
brain cells and, 71
chromaffin cells of, 73
cortex of, 69
excess of secretion, 80
failure of secretion, 77
function of, 95
glands of combat and fight, 74
hair and, 128, 204
influence of in hermaphroditism,
70, 143
insufficiency of secretion, 77
medulla of, 73
pigment cells and, 72
relation to pineal gland, 90
relation to pituitary, 99
secretion of, 95
sexuality and, 70
skin and, 125
Adrenal-centered type, 112
Adrenal face, 122
Adrenal personalities, or types, 112,
203
compensated, 205
insufficient, 206
in pregnancy, 158
of brain work, 204
of girl, 150
of hair, 204
of skin, 204
of teeth, 123
Adrenal personalities, or types of
women, 205
reactions to modernism in, 207
Adrenalin, 74
Alcoholism and endocrine types, 270
Analysis, endocrine, 115, 202
Anger, 175
and adrenals, 176
Antagonisms, 98
Anti-Fate, 14
Antitoxic function of thyroid gland,
60
Ape-parvenu, the, 202
Applications of endocrinology, 255
Autonomic system, 101
Backgrounds of personality, 186
Baldness and the thyroid, 128
Baumann, 48
Bayliss, 44, 45
Beard, 78, 186
Beard's neurasthenia, 78-
von Bechterew, 174
Behavior, 106, 171
Bell, Blair, 85
Bernard, Claude, 32, 43
Berthold, 32, 83
Black races, endocrine control in,
288
Blood pressure, and adrenals, 73
Body, influence of glands upon, 113
Body-mind complex, 167
Bones, 120
long, development of, 84
Bordeau, 29
Bossi, 85
Brain cells and adrenals, 71
Brain, growth of, 97
Brainwork, adrenal type of, 204
Breakdown, nervous, 189
Bleeding, bearing of endocrine
glands on, 279
Brown Sequard, 33, 35, 42, 73, 108,
130
Caesar, Julius, an epileptic, 245
pituitary in, 245
Capacity, 175
293
291
INDEX
Careerists, 7
as abnormals, 7
feminiri'
instincts of, 8
masculine, 8
super-, 8
Carlson, 108
Castration, 82
effects of, 83, 138
effects of, on thymus, 85
Character, 107
Charcot, 187
Charging of wishes, endocrine, 172
Cluck and drive system, 100
Chemistry of the soul, 22
Child - bearing, transfigurations of,
157
Childhood, epoch of the pineal, 257,
258
Chromaffin cells of adrenals, 73
Chromosomes, 135
Climacteric, 161
Color, endocrine control of, in races,
288
Combat, adrenals and, 74
Combinations of types of person-
ality, 228
Conduct, 106
Constitutions, endocrine, 277
Cooperation, 98
Corpus luteum, 151
and mammary glands, 160
Courage and the adrenals, 175, 177
Cretinism, 52
a thyroid deficiency, 52
effect of feeding thyroid in, 55
Cretinoid type, 215
Cretins, 182
Crime, treatment of, 272
Criminals and endocrine types, 273
i< al ages, 161
Cutting
Cushing, Harvey, 41, 197
Dangerous age, the, 161
Darwin, Charles, li-
as a neurastln mi J10
227
rv of Pangenesis, 278
l >v. i sport, 126
ntal, 199
i 12
U if, and the pancreas, 93, 94
locnne
sjand* 2s.r)
Directorate, endocrine glands as a,
96, 109
and endocrine types, 368
Division of labor, 116
•Miction and endocrine types,
270
Dwarfs, 40
Education, of vegetative system, 194
vocational. 20 1
Egomania, 179
Elixir of life, 43
Em Twenties, adrenals glands of, 74
Emotions, adrenals glands of, 75
Endocrine, 31
analysis, 115, 202
charging of wishes, 172
constitutions, 277
control in color of races, 288
corporation, 96
deficiency in old age, 257
epochs of life, 256, 257
glands, 31
and feeblemindedness, 200
and insanity, 199
as an interlocking directorate,
96, 109
bases of variation, 276
bearing on breeding, 279
discovery of, 28
effect of diet on, 285
influence upon body, 113
influence upon mind, 166
inferiority, 271
neurosis, 189
personality, 202, 268
sex traits, 136
types, 202
alcoholism and, 270
criminals and, 273
diseases and, 268
drug addiction and, 270
narcotism and, 270
Endocrines, evolution of, 193
Endocrinology, applications of, 255
poaaibilitiefl of, 255
Ener^v. lso
and thyroid, 180
Enthusiasm and thyroid, 199
ronment, influt oce of, 285
i in genius,
bs of hff, i
iniscs of,
Eunuchoid
220
Eunuchoidism, 83
. 82
human, . ternal
secretions upon, 275
INDEX
295
Exhibitionism, 169
Expressionism, 169
Eyes, 129
Face, adrenal, 122
eunuchoid, 122
hyperpituitary, 122
hyperthyroid, 122
Facial types, 121
Family, and mixed sex, 144
Fat, distribution of, 126
Fat people, 40
Fate and Anti-Fate, 14
Fatigue and industry, 265
as an endocrine deficiency, 266
relation of adrenals to, 267
relation of thymus to, 87
Fear, 175, 176
mechanism of, 75
relation of adrenals to, 75, 176
Feeblemindedness and the 'endocrine
glands, 200
Feminine pituitary type, 210, 211,
213
Feminine precocity, 141
Feminoid complex, 222
constitution and personality, 225,
226
Fertilization, 135
Fight, relation of adrenals to, 74
Fingers, pituitary and, 121
thyroid and, 121
Forgetting, 181
Freedom, 2
Freud, 195, 187
Freudianism, 187
Freudians, 20
Friedleben, 38, 87
Galli, 226
Galton, 180, 198
Genius, epilepsy in, 235, 236, 244
migraine in, 235
neurasthenic, 237
treatment of, 252
Giants, 40, 66
Girl, endocrine types of, 150
Glands, definition of, 28
endocrine, as an interlocking di-
rectorate, 96, 109
discovery of, 28
influence on body, 113
influence on mind, 166
Goitre, relation of iodine to, 51
Gonads, 80, 95
and libido, 84
and sexuality, 83
and thymus, 85
Gonads and thyroid, 99
function, 95
secretion, 95
Gonad-centric personalities, 224
homosexuality and, 226
Growth, 120
relation of thymus to, 86
Guilford, 60
Gull, 39. 50
Hair, 127
and adrenals, 128, 204
and pineal, 127
and thymus, 127
and thyroid, 128
Hands, and pituitary, 121
and thyroid, 121
Henle, 31
Hermaphrodite, 143
Hermaphroditism, 135
functional, 225
influence of adrenals in, 70, 143
influence of pituitary in, 143
Hibernation, 65
and the pituitary, 64
Historic personages, 231
Darwin, Charles, 240
Julius Caesar, 245
Napoleon, 231
Nietzsche, 237
Nightingale, Florence, 246
Wilde, Oscar, 249
History, internal secretions in, 231
von Hochwart, 89
Homosexuality, and gonad-centric
type, 226
and thymus type, 222
Hormones, 31, 44
harmony of the, 103
Horsley, 39, 41
Howitz, 39
Human nature, 10
attitudes towards, 1
case against, 1
science and, 17
Hunger, 106, 108, 173
Hunter, John, 288
Hygiene of the internal secretions,
270, 272
Hyperpituitary face, 122
skin, 125, 126
Hyperpituitrism, 65
Hyperthyroid face, 122
skin, 125, 126
type, 216
of girl, 150
pregnancy in, 158
premenstrual molimina in, 153
296
INDEX
Hyperthyroidism, 52, 58
Hysteria, 186
Imagination, an endocrine gift, 183
Improvement of racial stock, 282
Industry, and fatigue, 265
relation of endocrines to, 266
Infancy, epoch of the thymus, 257
Infantilism, 83
Infantiloid constitution or personal-
ity, 225
Inferiority, breeding of, 3
Inheritance of acquired characters,
278
Insanity, and the endocrine glands,
199
Instinct, 171
acta, pituitary, 178
thyroid, 179
Insuline, 93, 95
Intellectuality, and the pituitary,
178, 198
Internal secretions, determinants of
vegetative pressures, 107
effect of, upon human evolution,
275
hygiene of, 270, 272
in history, 231
Interstitial glands, see Gonads
type of teeth, 123
Iodine, in thyroxin, 48, 51
relation of to goitre, 51
Janet, 187
Judgment, 181
Julius Csesar, an epileptic, 245
pituitary in, 245
Keith, 287
lull, 48
tic (ham, 102, 103
dn 101
system, 99
Kocher, 39
Laennec, 31
Lanugo, 127
I
lo and gonads, 84
I
Lime salts, and sex. l U
MalLhunaxt law of slavery, 4
Mammary glands, 160
corpus luteum and, 160
N nta and, 161
Man, a transient, 12
attitude of towards himself, 289
a product of glands of internal
secretion, 26
critical age in, 163
secondary sex characteristics of,
137
Manic depressive psychoses, 179
Mankind, races of, 287
Marie, Pierre, 41
Masculine, the secret of the, 141
Masculine and feminine, mechanics
of, 132, and see Sex
Masculine pituitary type, 210, 212
Masculinoid women, 154, 205
Masochism, 147
Maternal instinct, 155
different from sex instinct, 156
relation of the pituitary to, 178
Matings, desirable and undesirable,
283
Megalomania, 179
Memory, 181
Mendelism, 280, 282
Menopause, 138, 161
Menstruation, 137
and ovaries, 138
cycle of, 151
Mental deficiency, 199
Migraine in genius, 235
M md, influence of glands on, 166
oldest part of, 101
Mitchell, Weir, 187
Mixed BOX and the family, 144
Mixed types, 114
Mobius, 39
ctions to in id
types, 207
. and the organic outlook,
185
Moral irresponsibility and tfa
Mujt-rados, 226
Miill.r, .li.hann, 31
Mum
Mutations, control of, 284
INDEX
297
Neurasthenia, 78
Neurosis, 186
adrenals and, 191
endocrine, 189
war, 189
Nietzsche, case of, 237
Nightingale, Florence, legend of,
246
Normal, what is, 118
Obesity, 126
Operative myxedema, 39
Ord, William, 39, 57
Ovaries, internal secretion of, 138
relation of to menstruation, 138
removal of, effect of, 138
role of, 137
Oversecretion, 116
Pancreas, 93, 109
diabetes and, 93, 94
function of, 95
removal of, 94
secretion of, 95
Pangenesis, Darwin's theory of, 278
Parathyroids, 91, 95
function of, 95
secretion of, 95
Paulesco, 41
Pawlov, 44
Permutations, of types of person-
ality, 228
Perry, Caleb, 38
Personality, background of, 186
combinations of types of, 228
determined by the endocrines, 268
endocrine, 202
eunuchoid, 224, 226
types of, 202
adrenal, 203
combinations of, 228
gonad-centric, 224
nature's experiments vs. man's,
229
permutations of, 228
pituitary of, 210
Philosophers, prejudices of, 27
Physics of the wish, 106
Physiologists, attitude of, 24
role of, 21
Pigment cells and the adrenals, 72
in skin of various races, 125
Pineal gland, 88, 95
and hair, 127
and childhood, 257, 258
feeding of to children, 90
function of, 89, 90, 95
muscle function of, 90
Pineal gland, obesity and, 126
puberty and, 137
relation of to adrenals, 90
to progressive muscular atrophy,
90
secretion of, 95
type of muscles, 130
Pituitary gland, 63
action of, 63
and fingers, 121
and toes, 121
compared with thyroid, 68
diminished action of, 64, 65
extirpation of, 64
function of, 94
in Julius Caesar, 245
in Oscar Wilde, 251
instincts, 178
overaction of, 65
personalities, 210
regulator of organic rhythms,
64
relation to adrenals, 99
to growth, 120
to hair, 128
to hermaphroditism, 143
to hibernation, 64
to imagination, 184
to intellectuality, 178, 198
to judgment, 182
to maternal instincts, 178
to memory, 181
to puberty, 137
to rejuvenation, 261
to sex difficulties, 222
to sexual glands, 83
to stature, 120
to thymus, 99
secretion of, 94
secretion, characteristics of in-
ferior, 214
characteristics of sufficient, 214
type, 210
feminine, 211, 213
masculine, 210, 212
of eyes, 129
of hands, 121
of muscles, 129
pregnancy in, 158
premenstrual molimina in, 153
Pituitary-centered type, 111
Pituitocentrics, Caesar, 245
Darwin, 243
Napoleon, 232
Nietzsche, 240
Nightingale, 248
Pituitrin, 63, 94
function of, 94
m
INDEX
Placenta, 159
and mammary glands, 161
Placental gland, 159
Plater, Felix, 38
Plummer, 50
. 181
Popielski, 44
Possibilities of endocrinology, 255
Postpituitary type of girl, 150.
Precocity, feminine, 141
male, 141
Pregnancy, in various endocrine
types, 158
Premenstrual molimina, in various
endocrine types, 153
Progressive muscular dystrophy and
the pineal gland, 90
Prostate, 163
Pseudo-hermaphroditism and the
adrenals, 70
Psychanalyst, as a therapeutist, 197
Psychology, new, 20
Psychopathology of every day life,
196
Puberty, 137, 163
glands, see Gonads
in female, 139
significance of, 140
Public health, prospects of, 267
Pure types, 113
Puericulture, science of, 262
Races of mankind, 287
Reactions to modernism in adrenal
types, 207
Rejuvenation, possibilities of, 260
Religion of science, 16
Repression, 188
Resilience of skin, 126
Restelli, 38
Reverdin, J. L., 39
Rhythms of sex, 149
Robertson, 63
Schiflf, Morits, 38, 39
.< M -, find human nature, 17
pa <>U 15
religion of, 16
Secondary sex traits, 136
Biaratin, v,
N | H tion '2H
a, 62, 67, 211
Senility, epoch of endocrine defi-
ciency,
interpretation of, 258
itivity, 180
Sex, 130, 131
and lime salts, 142
attitudes towards questions of, 133
cause of, 134
chemistry of, 133
characteristics, secondary, 136, 137
conflict, 81
crises, 163
difficulties, pituitary and, 222
glands, see Gonads
and hair, 128
and puberty, 137
and muscles, 130
centered, 224
chain, 150
index, 142
instinct, 171, 168
different from maternal instinct,
156
libido, 108
life, determining factors of, 164
mixed, and the family, 144
rhythms of, 149
traits, or characteristics, 136
endocrine, 136
origin of, 80
primary, 136
secondary, 136, 137
Sexual cravings, 108
glands, see Gonads, and Sex
glands
and pituitary gland, 83
Sexuality, and gonads, 83
and adrenal glands, 70
Shaw, G. B., 213
Shell-shock, 79, 189, 209
Skeletal types, 119
Skin, 125
adrenal type, 204
and adrenals, 125, 204
hyperpituitary type, 125, 126
hyperthyroid type, 125, 126
pigmentation, 125
Mil'udivnal type, 126
subpituitary type, 125, 128
subthyroi.l t 126
y, Malthu of, 4
origin of, 3
22
fltarfrnt. 1 1
Statesman, problems of, 6
wh>
aid, 120
Status lyi and thymus
type, 219, 221
Suhad renal akin, 126
INDEX
299
Subpituitary skin, 125, 126
Subpituitary type of women, pre-
menstrual molimina in, 153
Subpituitism, 64, 65
Subthyroid face, 122
skin, 125, 126
type, 215
of eyes, 129
of women, pregnancy in, 158
Subthyroidism, 52, 58
Sugar metabolism, 97
Super-Careerist, 8
Susceptibility, 175
Sympathetic system, 101
Teeth, 123
Tethelin, 63, 94
action of, 63
function of, 94
Thymic face, 123
Thymo-centric personalities, 217
Thymo-centric type, Oscar Wilde,
250
Thymus, 85
and gonads, 85
and pituitary, 99
and puberty, 137
and sexual glands, 83
and thyroid, 99
effect of castration on, 85
effect of feeding thymus to ani-
mals, 87
extirpation of, 86
function of, 86, 95
hair and, 127
hyperactivity of, 86
infancy, epoch of the, 257
persistent, skin of, 125
relation of fatigue to, 87
relation of growth to, 86
relation of weight to, 86
removal of, effect on gonads, 85
secretion, 95
type of teeth, 123
Thymus type, homosexuality and,
222
moral irresponsibility and, 223
status lymphaticus and, 219, 221
Thyroid gland, 46, 94
and adrenals, 100
and baldness, 128
and energy, 180
and enthusiasm, 199
and intersitial glands, 99
and judgment, 182
and memory, 181
and pancreas, 99
and pituitary, 99
Thyroid gland and puberty, 137
and rejuvenation, 260
and skin, 126
and thymus, 99
antitoxic function of, 60
as an accelerator, 48
as a catalyser, 50
as a differentiator, 59
as an energiser, 49, 50
compared with pituitary, 68
creator of land animals, 47
deficiency, 53, 180, 215
effect of feeding the gland, 55
excess, 216
functions of, 94
hair and, 128
instincts, 179
personalities, 215
secretion of, 48, 94, and see Thy-
roxin
type, of eyes, 129
of hands, 121
of muscles, 129
of teeth, 123
Thyroid-centered type, 111
Thyrotoxin, 94
Thyroxin, 48
and energy mobilization, 50
and energy production, 49
and speed of living, 48
Toes, pituitary and, 121
thyroid and, 121
Tonus, 106
Types, endocrine, 202
adrenal, 203
adrenal-centered, 112
alcoholism and, 270
combinations of, 228
cretinoid, 215
criminals and, 273
diseases and, 268
drug addiction and, 270
facial, 121
hyperthyroid, 216
mixed, 114
narcotism and, 270
of girls, 150
pituitary, 210, 211, 212, 213
pituitary-centered, 111
pure, 113
skeletal, 119
subthyroid, 215
thyroid-centered, 111
Unconscious, the, and the viscera,
192
physical basis of, 194
Undersecretion, 116
300
INDEX
Variation, 113
endocrine glands as basis of, 276
Varieties of internal secretions, 117
Vegetative apparatus, 103
Vegetative pressures, internal secre-
tions determinants of, 107
Vegetative system, education of,
194
Virilism, 71
Viscera, the unconscious and, 192
Vocational education, 264
War neurosis, 189
Weight relation of thymus to, 86
White races, endocrine control in,
288
Wilde, Oscar, explanation of, 249
Wishes, endocrine charging of, 172
physics of, 106
Women, adrenal type of, 206
masculinoid, 154, 205
secondary sex characteristics in,
137
X-chromosome, 135, 136
Yellow races, endocrine control in,
288
7 .
0
BINDING SECT. JUL 1 71SfT3
PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY
QP Berman, Louis
l£7 The glands regulating
B47 personality
Biological
& Medical