462 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



The immense importance of the suprarenal bodies 

 in nutrition was first indicated by Addison, who in 

 1855 pointed out that the symptoms of the disease now 

 known by his name are associated with pathological 

 alterations of these glands. This was tested experimentally 

 by Brown-Sequard, who found a few years later l that re- 

 moval of the suprarenals was rapidly and unfailingly fatal 

 in all animals. The symptoms were practically the same 

 (although much more acute) as those of Addison's disease, 

 viz., great muscular weakness, loss of vascular tone, and 

 nervous prostration. These results attracted much atten- 

 tion, and numerous investigators set to work to verify them. 

 Some failed to confirm Brown-Sequard's results, probably 

 because the removal was incomplete, or accessory capsules 

 existed. The controversy, however, soon ceased, and the 

 subject was almost forgotten. The interest in the matter 

 has now been revived, and Brown-Sequard's experiments 

 have been repeated within the last few years by Brown- 

 Sequard himself, Abelous and Langlois, Tizzoni, Schafer, 

 and many others. All these observations have tended to 

 confirm the original statement of Brown-Sequard." Abelous 

 and Langlois found that the blood of animals dying in con- 

 sequence of the operation is toxic for other animals which 

 have been recently deprived of their capsules, though it 

 causes no toxic results in normal animals. The symptoms 

 caused by this blood are stated to be those of curare poison- 

 ing, that is, paralysis of the intramuscular nerve endings ; 

 they conclude that after removal of these glands a certain 

 toxic product of muscular metabolism accumulates in the 

 blood, and that the function of the glands is to remove or 

 destroy this principle. 



This is the " auto-intoxication " theory of the suprarenal 

 capsules, and is similar to that which has been applied to 

 the thyroid and other glands. It is chiefly founded on the 

 fact that the blood of animals which are moribund in con- 



1 Journ. de la physio I., t. i., 1858. 



2 Some few observers {e.g., Pal, Wiener klin. IVoch., p. 899, 1894) have 

 failed to produce death. Non-success was here, perhaps, due to the sources 

 of failure already indicated. 



