THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN BODY 295 



George Howard Parker, the Zoologist of Harvard, sums up 

 the case against the Darwinian interpretation of the endocrine 

 glands as follows : "The extent to which hormones control the 

 body is only just beginning to be appreciated. For a long time 

 anatomists have recognized in the higher animals, including 

 man, a number of so-called ductless glands, such as the thyroid 

 gland, the pineal gland, the hypophysis, the adrenal bodies, 

 and so forth. These have often been passed over as unimpor- 

 tant functionless organs whose presence was to be explained 

 as an inheritance from some remote ancestor. But such a 

 conception is far from correct. If the thyroids are removed 

 from a dog, death follows in from one to four weeks. If the 

 adrenal bodies are excised, the animal dies in from two to 

 three days. Such results show beyond doubt that at least some 

 of these organs are of vital importance, and more recent studies 

 have demonstrated that most of them produce substances 

 which have all the properties of hormones." ("Biology and 

 Social Problems," 1914, pp. 43, 44.) 



Even the vermiform appendix of the caecum, which since 

 Darwin's time has served as a classic example of a rudimen- 

 tary organ in man, is, in reality, not a functionless organ. 

 Darwin, however, was of opinion that it was not only useless, 

 but positively harmful. "With respect to the alimentary 

 canal," he says, "I have met with an account of only a single 

 rudiment, namely, the vermiform appendage of the caecum. 

 . . . Not only is it useless, but it is sometimes the cause of 

 death, of which fact I have lately heard two instances. This 

 is due to small hard bodies, such as seeds, entering the pas- 

 sage and causing inflammation.'^ ("Descent of Man," 2nd 

 ed., ch. I, pp. 39, 40.) The idea that seeds cause appendicitis 

 is, of course, an exploded superstition, the hard bodies some- 

 times found in the appendix being fecal concretions and not 

 seeds — "The old idea," says Dr. John B. Deaver, "that foreign 

 bodies, such as grape seeds, are the cause of the disease, has 

 been disproved." (Encycl. Americana, vol. 2, p. 76.) What 

 is more germane to the point at issue, however, is that Dar- 



