98 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



cerebral vesicle. Until recently the pituitary body has been inacces- 

 sible to sui'geons and to physiological experimenters by reason of its 

 encasement in the sella turcica of the sphenoid bone. Experimental 

 removal of tlio pituitary (hypophysectomy) was essayed by Horsley 

 (1886), Marinesco (1892), Vassale and Sacchi (1893-4), Gatta 

 (1896), Biedl (1897), von Cyon (1898-1900) and others, with nega- 

 tive or contradictory findings, resulting no doubt from the difficulties en- 

 countered in approaching the gland through the skull and of insuring 

 its entire removal under these conditions. In 1908, an important 

 advance was made by Nicholas Paulesco of Bucharest, who devised an 

 operation by the temporal route and showed that the pituitary body is 

 essential to life, its removal being fatal to the animal. At the same 

 time, he found that removal of the anterior lobe is equivalent to entire 

 removal and that excision of the posterior lobe is negative. Paulesco's 

 experiments were put to the test by Harvey Gushing, now professor of 

 surgery at Harvard, and his associates at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, 

 their experiments being performed mainly upon dogs. They found 

 that total removal or removal of the anterior lobe alone are alike fatal, 

 the animal dying in three days with a peculiar train of symptoms con- 

 sisting of lowered temperature and blood pressure, sluggishness, un- 

 steady gait, rapid emaciation, slowing of pulse and respiration, di- 

 arrlKca, diminished urine in adults; polyuria and glycosuria in pup])ies. 

 Partial removal of the anterior lobe in normal dogs was found to 

 produce a pronounced state of obesity, with a remarkable shrinkage 

 of the external (male) genitalia. In other words. Gushing produced, 

 by experiment, a genuine pathological reversion to the condition Icnown 

 as sexual infantilism or "dystrophia adiposo-genitalis " (Prohlich's 

 syndrome). In the case of the posterior lobe, which, as shown by 

 Gushing and Goetsch, discharges its secretion into the cerebro-spinal 

 fluid, partial removal or the production of insufficiency of the secretion 

 by putting a clip upon the stalk of the gland, produces, at first, a 

 temporary lowering of the animal's assimilation-limit for sugars, fol- 

 lowed by a marked and permanent increase in its tolerance for carbo- 

 hydrates, which is again promptly lowered by injection of an extract of 

 the posterior lobe. In 1895 Oliver and Schafer found that the mam- 

 malian pituitary possesses an active principle which, upon injection, 

 elevates the blood pressure and increases the force of the heart beat. 

 In 1898 Professor William H. Howell, of the Johns Hopkins Uni- 

 versity, showed that this property is possessed by the extract of the 

 posterior lobe alone. In his Harvey Lecture of December 10, 1910, 

 Gushing introduced the pathological idea of " dyspituitarism " or per- 

 verted function of the gland, as a generic concept, covering excess or 

 insufficiency of its function, and for the following reasons. In accord- 

 ance with the clinical and pathological findings of Parry, Graves and 

 Basedow, exophthalmic goiter was regarded as a state of " hyerthyroid- 

 ism," or excessive secretion of the gland, while the myxoedema of Gurl- 



