366 CLINICAL CONSIDERATIONS 



Diseases other than those cited in the preceding sections 

 have been associated with the adrenals. The evidence for this 

 association has usually been so flimsy and in violation of so 

 many well authenticated facts as to warrant little credence. 

 Thus glaucoma has recently been considered as a disease due to 

 adrenal cortical insufficiency. The basis for this view is the 

 assumption that the intra-ocular tension which characterizes 

 glaucoma is caused by an increased permeability of the capil- 

 lary endothelium. Administration of a commercial prepara- 

 tion of the cortical hormone is claimed to have relieved the 

 glaucoma. As we have seen (Chapter IX), there is no basis 

 for the view that the capillaries become more permeable in 

 adrenal insufficiency. Hence the conception of glaucoma as a 

 disease due to cortical insufficiency is not justified. Moreover, 

 the preparation used in "curing" the glaucoma contains so 

 little of the adrenal cortical hormone that one could scarce 

 attribute any therapeutic effect to its use. 



The adrenal has been cited by several authors as in some 

 way implicated in the causation of cancer. The claimed 

 curative effects of concoctions derived from the adrenals have 

 been shown to be unfounded. Joannovics 340 found that partial 

 adrenalectomy did not affect the percentage of successful 

 implants of virulent tumors into mice. The slight retardation 

 of growth of the tumors in the adrenalectomized animals is 

 attributable to their general poor condition and does not imply 

 any specific relation of the adrenals to the development of 

 carcinoma. 374 



There is a natural tendency to apply any new therapeutic 

 agent to all the sundry human ailments for which satisfactory 

 methods of treatment are lacking, and to rationalize these 

 attempts by a line of reasoning which is often fallacious, as 

 exemplified by the cases cited above. Besides such ill-advised 

 attempts to apply the newer knowledge, there may emerge, 

 however, genuine cases in which the cortical hormone shall 

 prove to be really efficacious and shall demonstrate relation- 

 ships between the adrenals and pathological processes con- 

 cerning which we are still in ignorance. 



