DUCTLESS GLANDS 151 



ning. The amazing fertility of achondroplasie women lias been empha- 

 sized in the statistical or biometrical investigations of Karl Pearson, and 

 that this type connotes extreme sexuality is borne out by the observations 

 of Pierre Marie and his co-workers at the Salpetriere. Crookshank 

 maintains that "the Bengalee is pretty much in the same state as a 

 sufferer from a forma frusta of exophthalmic goitre; while the pig- 

 mentation and genital gigantism of the negro are suggestive of adrenal 

 assertion." He further points out that " certain genital malformations 

 or abnormities are almost always accompanied by adrenal tumors; and 

 Iscovesco has shown that adrenal lipoids when administered hypoder- 

 mically rapidly produce genital overgrowth."^^ On very slender evi- 

 dence, achondroplasia has been correlated by some observers with 

 disease of the pineal body (epiphysis cerebri), which Descartes re- 

 garded as the seat of the soul. Disease of the pineal in young children 

 sometimes results in increased development of the sexual organs with 

 corresponding growth and mental precocity, whence it is inferred that 

 the pineal secretion inhibits growth, particularly the development of the 

 reproductive glands. 



Of the internal secretions of the pancreas and the sexual glands, 

 the thyroid, parathyroid, suprarenal and pituitary bodies, considerable 

 is known; less of the spleen, carotid gland and pineal body (epiphysis 

 cerebri); of the " parathymoid " and the paraphysis of the brain, 

 nothing whatever. The vast amount of recent investigation on the sub- 

 ject has been well summed up in the treatises of Sajous (1903), Arthur 

 Biedl (1910), Swale Vincent (1912) and Wilhelm Falta (1913) on the 

 internal secretions, and such individual monographs as those of Fried- 

 leben on the thymus (1858), von Eiselsberg on the thyroid (1901) and 

 Gushing on the pituitary (191-). All these are liberally provided with 

 bibliographies, Cushing's book being a model in this respect, and Gushing 

 and Falta give splendid illustrations. Gushing's work, which a compe- 

 tent critic has pronounced to be the most important American mono- 

 graph on a surgical subject printed in the last ten years, is also a 

 genuine contribution to internal medicine. With John Hunter the 

 surgeon began to be, not only an experimental physiologist and pathol- 

 ogist, but also a clinical observer. Modem medicine affords many 

 examples of original descriptions of new diseases by surgeons, in par- 

 ticular, Sir James Paget and Sir Jonathan Hutchinson, whose 

 "Archives of Surgery," twelve volumes entirely written by himself, is 

 a great storehouse of unique pathological observations. Professor Gush- 

 ing's work is in this class, the subject is approached from the physio- 

 logical, pathological, clinical, surgical and ophthalmological sides, and 

 in its combination of induction from experiment with the Hippoeratic 

 induction from experience, it is a fine exemplar of what Sir Michael 



36 Crookshank, "School Hygiene," London, 1914, V., 71-72. 



