DUCTLESS GLANDS 533 



gastric, renal, uterine, seminal, etc. All this undoubtedly influenced 

 Bichat in the fundamental error of his scientific work, viz., the ascrip- 

 tion of specific vital property to each classifiable tissue. Bordeu's slen- 

 der reputation to-day is concentered in a single idea — the doctrine that 

 not only each gland, but each organ of the body, is the workshop of 

 specific substance or secretion which passes into the blood, and that upon 

 these secretions the physiological integration of the body, as a whole, 

 depends. This doctrine is contained in his "Analyse medicinale du 

 sang" (1776), the importance of which has been signalized by the emi- 

 nent medical historian, Professor Max Neuburger, of Vienna. 2 An 

 examination of this work will hardly realize the expectations which are 

 raised by Professor Neuburger's panegyric. It is a typical example of 

 the purely theoretical reasoning so common in the medical literature of 

 the eighteenth century, in which an intolerable deal of verbiage is spread 

 over the smallest substructure of fact. Cases are frequently cited but 

 they are not true clinical delineations, only gossipy personal anecdotes, 

 not unlike those of Brantome. A great deal is said about the sexual side 

 of man, and indeed the most interesting part of Bordeu's theory is his 

 observation of the effects of the testicular and ovarian secretions upon 

 the organism. He regarded the sexual secretions as giving "a male (or 

 female) tonality" to the organism, "setting the seal upon the animal- 

 ism of the individual," and as a special stimulus to the human machine 

 (novum quod dam impetum faci-ens). He described in detail, the sec- 

 ondary sexual changes, not only in eunuchs and capons, but also in 

 spayed animals of the female sex. In connecting all this with specific 

 secretions, discharged, not externally, but into the blood, Bordeu was, as 

 Xeuburger rightly contends, very close upon the modern theory of the 

 internal secretions, but, as he made no experiments, his ideas can only 

 be regarded as an interesting phase of eighteenth-century theorizing. 

 Aside from Bordeu's deduction from what he saw, almost any stock- 

 raiser or poultry-fancier might have noted the same facts, and facts 

 of equal moment had been noticed long before his time. 



To begin with, one of the oldest therapeutic notions is the idea that 

 such unsavory materials as the viscera or excreta of animals, administered 

 either singly or as a maximum compositum might avail in the treatment 

 of disease. This mode of therapy was a common feature of the Egyptian 

 medical papyri, was known to the Greeks and Eomans, made great head- 

 way during the dark ages, and reached its height in the seventeenth cen- 

 tury. The four London Pharmacopoeias of 1618, 1650, 1677 and 1721 

 abound with such remedies as the bile, blood, bones, brains, claws, eggs, 

 excrement, eyes, fat, feathers, hearts, horns, intestines, marrow, milk, 

 omentum, placenta, rennet, sexual organs, skin, teeth and urine of all 

 manner of animals; also bee-glue, civet, cock's comb, coral, crayfish, 

 2 Neuburger, Wien hlin. Wochenschr., 1911, XXIV., 1367. 



