DUCTLESS GLANDS 97 



metabolism. In 1886, von Mering produced an experimental diabetes 

 by the ingestion of phlorhizin. In 1889, von Mering and Minkowski 

 obtained diabetes by an experimental excision of the pancreas.-* The 

 histological, pathological and clinical studies of E. I. Opie (1901), 

 L. W. Ssobolew (1902) and W. G. MacCallum (1909), indicated that 

 the source of this pancreatic glycosuria is to be found in a specialized 

 group of cells, called the islands of Langerhans. Thus it would appear 

 that the pancreas possesses an internal secretion- as well as a digestive 

 function. The discovery of iodothyrin in the body by Eugen Baumann, 

 in 1896, suggested the relation of the thyroid gland to iodine metab- 

 olism and an adjoining pair of ductless glands, the parathyroids, dis- 

 covered by the Swedish anatomist, Ivar Sandstrom, in 1880, would 

 appear, from experiment, to have an influence on calcium metabolism. 

 In 1891. Eugen Gley showed that where excision of the thyroid is 

 negative in certain animals, these animals will speedily die if the four 

 parathyroids are also removed. In 1892, the Viennese surgeon Anton 

 von Eiselsberg made a successful transplantation of the parathyroid 

 glands from the neck to the abdominal wall in a cat and showed that 

 tetany may be produced upon its removal from this site. Subsequent ex- 

 periments by H. Leischner (1907) and by W. S. Halsted, at the Johns 

 Hopkins (1909), showed that the production of tetany is really due 

 to removal of the closely adjacent parathyroids. These observers found 

 as in Schiff's experiments, that the tetanoid spasms will be abolished 

 upon injection of an extract of the gland or after parathyroid feeding; 

 or upon regrafting the gland itself. In 1908 W. G. MacCallum and 

 C. Voegtlin showed, at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, that tetany may 

 be abolished by treatment of the patient with calcium salts. Another 

 ductless gland, the pituitary body, has been shown to have a marked 

 relation to carbohydrate metabolism and, like the suprarenal and para- 

 thyroids, to be essential to the maintenance of life. The ]iituitary 

 body, which the anatomist Soemmering called the hypophysis cerebri 

 in 1778, was, as we have seen, regarded as an organ discharging a 

 mucous secretion into the nostrils until this theory was disproved in 

 the seventeenth century. This structure consists of an anterior gland- 

 ular lobe (pars anterior) and a smaller posterior lobe (pars nervosa), 

 the whole being connected with the floor of the fourth ventricle of the 

 brain by means of a stalk or infundibulum. In 1838 the embryologist 

 Eathke showed that the anterior lobe is developed by the protrusion 

 of an ectodermal pouch (Rathke's pouch) from the roof of the pharynx 

 and is made up of epithelium derived from the buccal cavity. It lies 

 in the embryonic rest of Eathke's pouch " as a ball is held in a catcher's 

 mitten" (Gushing). The posterior lobe is made up of nervous tissue 

 and is derived from a corresponding prolongation from the anterior 



24 Von Mering and Minkowski, Arch. f. exper. Path. u. PharmaloL. Leipz-g, 

 1889, XXVI., 371. 



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