PREFACE 



THIS book is founded upon a course of lectures (Lane Medical Lectures) 

 delivered at Stanford University, California, in the summer of 1913. 

 The lectures were issued in the following year amongst the publications of 

 the University, but in an abbreviated form and without illustrations. It 

 also happened that the proofs, which had been sent for correction, failed 

 to reach me ; so that the work as it appeared contained an unusual number 

 of incidental errors. On these and other grounds, I have thought it 

 desirable, with the concurrence of the University authorities, to publish 

 the substance of the lectures in a revised form with the addition of the 

 tracings and photographs which were used to illustrate them : thus both 

 enabling the subject to be brought up to date and affording the oppor- 

 tunity of presenting it to a wider audience. 



The time at my disposal for the lectures precluded anything more than 

 a passing mention of some of the many workers who have contributed to 

 our knowledge of this, the newest, development of physiology ; and in 

 republishing, it has not been deemed desirable unduly to extend the 

 references to literature, seeing that they are already to be found in such 

 standard works as Biedl's Inn ere Sekretion, in which the bibliography 

 occupies more than 250 large octavo pages, and Swale Vincent's Internal 

 Secretions and the Ductless Glands, where they run to over 2000 titles. 

 Since the appearance of those works much new matter has been added ; 

 and more than one long list of literature has appeared in monographs deal- 

 ing with special internally secreting organs. It is to publications of a 

 comprehensive character such as these that the scientific worker will turn 

 for detailed information. The aim of this little book is less ambitious : it 

 is designed to supply a concise account of our present knowledge for the 

 benefit of students and practitioners who may be desirous of obtaining 

 more information regarding the internal secretions than is afforded by the 

 ordinary text-books of physiology, but have not the time or opportunity 

 to peruse extensive monographs or consult original articles. 



For a concise history of the subject, as well as a critical examination of 

 the main facts on which the doctrine of internal secretion is based, the 

 small but masterly compendium Les secretions internes, by E. Gley, cannot 

 be too warmly recommended. 



