152 READINGS IN BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE 



illusions! Perhaps it is not inappropriate to point out in this connection, 

 however, that a beautiful painting is none the less beautiful to one who 

 happens to know the chemistry of pigments. 



The emotional side of man is peculiarly sensitive to the ebb and flow of 

 the endocrines. Ugliness and beauty, melancholy and happiness, and even 

 to some extent goodness and badness, are reflections of hormonal har- 

 monies or disharmonies. The biologist can but pause and wonder at the 

 changes in behavior which sometimes follow even a slight shift in endo- 

 crine balance. Parathyroid deficiency, for example, with its ensuing deple- 

 tion of calcium and phosphorus in the blood, commonly means change 

 in an individual's whole attitude toward hfe so that he becomes irritable, 

 dissatisfied and disagreeable — a pest in home, school, or among companions. 

 Children afflicted with convulsive seizures, mental depression, spells of 

 irrational speech and terrifying dreams, or even those who manifest scream- 

 ing, fighting, maniacal attacks, have been brought back to normal, rational 

 behavior by means of parathyroid extract. The four parathyroid glands 

 of man — httle larger than four grains of wheat — constitute, indeed, a 

 slumbering volcano of misbehavior since, once their output is restricted 

 by injury, removal, or disease, a well-nigh demoniacal possession may fol- 

 low. In man, complete removal is followed by death. 



Even old age seems to be the result of a slow alteration of the internal 

 chemical complex of the body following a gradual change of the endocrine 

 balance. Every individual, in fact, is really a different chemical medium at 

 diff"erent ages. Several features of old age, such as lowered metabolic rate, 

 feelings of chilliness, dryness of skin and scantiness of hair, picture dis- 

 tinctly thyroid deficiency. Concomitantly the thyroids of the aged show 

 evidences of atrophy including partial replacement by inert fibrous tissue. 

 Whether or not we shall eventually be able to counteract the seniHty- 

 inducing factors remains to be seen. This much is certain: death is not an 

 inherent attribute of living matter. There is no natural death among the 

 protozoa. The rolling, flowing amoeba which the indiff"erent freshman 

 eyes nonchalantly through his microscope, is venerable almost beyond be- 

 lief, for it is a bit of immortal living matter that began existence in the 

 heyday of life's creation. Moreover, although the natural lifetime of a fowl 

 is only six or seven years, tissue removed from the heart of a chick embryo 

 has been kept alive and growing in artificial cultures for over thirty years. 



Then, possibly, if one but lets his fancy roam, there may be more ro- 

 mantic behavioristic applications of our rapidly accumulating store of bio- 

 chemical knowledge. May we not even come to the pass where our par- 

 sons, instead of trying to scare us out of hell, or hell out of us, will merely 

 line us up once a week for the proper dose of hormones or antihormones 

 as each case may require, and thus leave their sermon time free for the con- 

 templation of more pleasant things than the corrective terrors of the 

 damned? May not the timid lover be hormonized by his physician into 



