110 MEDULLA 



Rogoff 587 and Gley and Quinquaud 222 particularly have at- 

 tacked the validity of the experimental evidence presented by 

 Cannon and his co-workers as well as the interpretation of 

 their experiments. It is unnecessary to repeat again the 

 details of this controversy. In view of the results already 

 quoted it must be admitted that Cannon and his collaborators 

 are probably correct in assuming an increased output of 

 epinephrine under the various conditions in which epinephrine 

 by its pharmacodynamic reactions would be useful to the 

 organism in an emergency. It is very doubtful, however, if 

 the amounts of epinephrine secreted under these conditions 

 would suffice to be of any significance to the organism as 

 demanded by Cannon's theory. Moreover, adrenalectomized 

 animals maintained on an adequate dose of cortical hormone 

 are able to respond to emergencies as efficiently as normal 

 animals do. Such animals respond to fright, become enraged, 

 and fight as well as unoperated animals and hence any assumed 

 emergency function of the epinephrine must, at best, be an 

 easily dispensable one. Cannon's theory also fails to take into 

 account the phylogenetic and ontogenetic facts in the develop- 

 ment of the mammalian adrenal. As an emergency organ, one 

 can see no teleological significance in the migration of the 

 chromaphil into the interrenal tissue. 



All the ^physiological work on epinephrine secretion has been 

 carried out on mammals. Any conclusion based on our present 

 knowledge must be limited therefore to the mammalian body. 

 We must admit our complete ignorance of the function of epi- 

 nephrine in the lower animals. 



As suggested by Stewart, 587 epinephrine may be only a sur- 

 vival which though of little significance in the higher animals 

 is important in lower forms where hormonal control retains a 

 more fundamental influence than nervous control. Epineph- 

 rine may have assumed in the mammal an entirely different 

 function than it has in the lower vertebrates. 



A number of facts speak for an intimate relation between the 



