PINEALECTOMY WITH NEGATIVE EFFECTS 425 



which survived complete destruction of the pineal body by means of a 

 thermocautery, nothing abnormal was observed in their development. 



In one of the most recent publications on the effects of pinealectomy, 

 namely, by L. G. Rowntree in the Practitioners' Library of Medicine and 

 Surgery, 1938, Chapter 5, this author summarizes the general results of 

 this operation in the following words : " Pinealectomy in the hands of 

 many investigators has led consistently to negative results ; in the rat 

 (Foa, Horrax, Kolmer, Loewy, del Castillo, Renton and Rushbridge, 

 Anderson and Wolf) ; in the rabbit (Exner and Boese) ; in the dog 

 (Dandy) ; and in the chick (Badertscher). Positive results have been 

 claimed in the rat by Izawa and Yohoh ; in the guinea-pig (Horrax and 

 Clemente) ; and in the chick (Foa, Zoia, and Clemente). The most 

 common results of pinealectomy are said to be : premature development 

 of secondary sexual characters in the male ; enlargement of the gonads, 

 overgrowth of the body, and obesity. Anderson and Wolf, after a critical 

 analysis of the several papers submitted, expressed the opinion that the 

 data submitted do not justify the conclusions reached." 



The Effects of Feeding with Pineal Substance and the Injection of 



Pineal Extracts 



Precocious sexual and mental development and early somatic develop- 

 ment when occurring in the human subject are usually interpreted as 

 indicating pineal deficiency or hypopinealism. If this opinion is correct, 

 one would expect that feeding with pineal substance or the injection of 

 pineal extracts would produce a condition of retarded sexual and mental 

 development and deferred somatic maturity. The effect of feeding 

 experiments, however, appears in many instances to be just the reverse, 

 namely, in place of inhibition of growth of the sexual organs and of the 

 body, there is often a rapid sexual and somatic development. There are, 

 however, a considerable number of experiments which have given results 

 which appear to confirm the general opinion of the restraining influence 

 of the pineal and which may, according to Calvet, be regarded as positive 

 in nature, whereas the accelerating and stimulating influence may be 

 regarded as negative. 



Positive Effects. — Sisson and Finney obtained a retardation of growth 

 in young rats by feeding with the epiphysis of the calf. Priore found that 

 repeated injections of pineal extracts produced a definite retardation of 

 development in young male rabbits. M'Cord and Allen dissolved the 

 desiccated powder of the pineal in water containing living Amblystomes [ 



1 The type of this group of tailed amphibians is the Mexican axolotl, which is the 

 permanent larval form of a salamander from the United States, Amblystoma tigrimon. 



