X. THE ADRENAL GLAND, 

 A REGULATORY FACTOR 



BY C N. H. LONG' 



Quel est I'usage des glandes surrenales? 



— Academic des Sciences, Bordeaux, 17 16 



SOME thirty years before the founding of Princeton University, 

 after due consideration of certain unexplored fields of anatomy 

 and physiology, the Academy of Sciences of Bordeaux offered a 

 prize for the best essay submitted on the function of the atrabiliary or 

 suprarenal glands. These organs had been described by Bartholomaeus 

 Eustachius in 1563; but in common with the easy practice of those 

 days, since nothing was known of their function, they were assigned 

 the lowly role of acting merely as supporting elements for their neigh- 

 boring structures. Even in this regard but little attention was paid then, 

 far less indeed than that lavished on their sister ductless gland, the 

 thyroid, of which it was said by Thomas Wharton in 1656 that its 

 function was "the filling up of the vacant spaces around the larynx, 

 thus contributing much to the beauty and rotundity of the neck, espe- 

 cially in females." 



Since the Academy did not see fit to honor any of the contributors 

 with an award, the occasion might have passed unnoted and the record 

 lost to us were it not for the fact that the adjudicator for the Academy 

 was none other than Baron Montesquieu, the noted French jurist, 

 political writer and philosopher. Montesquieu, like many scholars of 

 his day, was equally well versed in the scientific as well as the human- 

 istic knowledge of the age. His skill as a writer and his knowledge of 

 contemporary anatomy and physiology were happily fused in the 

 learned and witty criticism which he later delivered to the Academy 

 ( I ) . In this essay are set forth not only the reasons that prompted the 

 Academy to offer the prize but also those for the rejection of all the 

 contributions that had been submitted. 



Let me quote a portion of his preamble in which the reasons for the 

 selection of this subject are set forth. Speaking of the functions of the 

 human body he says, "In this prodigious number of parts, of veins, 

 arteries, lymphatic vessels, cartilages, tendons, muscles, glands, one 

 cannot believe there could be any useless part. Everything contributes 

 to the well-being of the animated subject and if there is any organ 



1 Department of Physiological Chemistry, Yale University Medical School. 



