CHEMICAL REGULATORS 



303 



pancreatio 

 IslocncCs 



there is a deficiency of this hormone in the human body heart action 

 slows down, the skin becomes discolored, and the vital energy is 

 overcome by a growing, and usually fatal lassitude, symptoms 

 characteristic of Addison's disease. Biologists and the medical pro- 

 fession were led to this conclusion as to the effects of adrenal hormones 

 through numerous observations and experiments. Swingle, of 

 Princeton, recounts how cats 

 with extirpated adrenals 

 barely survived eight to ten 

 days. During this time their 

 temperature fell six to seven 

 degrees. Yet such animals, 

 at the brink of death, were 

 saved and restored to ap- 

 parent health within seventy 

 hours by the subcutaneous 

 injection of beef cortin. 



Cortin appears to have an- 

 other property, namely, to 

 stimulate the development of 

 the sex organs. This has been 

 shown by a series of experi- 

 ments on young male rats, 

 in which the injected animals 

 showed a much more rapid 

 growth of the sex organs than 

 the controls. These studies 

 suggested that the occasional 

 precocious sexual develop- 

 ment of young children may be due to an over-enlargement of the 

 adrenals through the presence of a tumor either in the cortex of the 

 gland or in the pituitary gland which largely regulates general 

 endocrine balances. Young girls under similar conditions develop 

 masculine characters. More or less complete cases of the reversal 

 of secondary sexual characteristics in women are on record, in a few 

 of which the removal of tumors involving the adrenals has restored 

 a normally characteristic feminine condition. 



The secretion of the medulla or inner portion of the adrenal gland has 

 been known to science for some time as adrenin or epinephrine. 

 This hormone was first isolated by Takamine in 1901 and has since been 



The location of the ductless glands. 



