DUCTLESS GLANDS TAYLOR 709 



which the normal individual can use. It would appear that this 

 excessive utilization can not be accounted for by increased combus- 

 tion of the sugar and consequently by a greater production of heat, 

 for these subjects have a body temperature that is lower than the 

 normal, and the general metabolism is actually depressed. The excess 

 sugar is evidently used for the formation of fat, since the outstanding 

 feature of these subjects is the great overdevelopment of fatty tissue. 

 Injections of an extract of the posterior lobe produce the opposite 

 effect, a reduction in the body's ability to use sugar. 



Pituitary disorders of this nature are not infrequently seen in chil- 

 dren. Many children, as we know, have a tendency to increase their 

 fatty tissue at a certain age, and this may be due to a normal varia- 

 tion of the posterior-lobe hormone. But these individuals with 

 posterior-lobe deficiency are not just ordinary fat children. Their 

 fatness is really extraordinary; they are veritable roly-polies and 

 present a striking appearance. They have often a voracious appe- 

 tite and have, even for children, an inordinate longing for sweets of 

 all kinds. They are, as a rule, somewhat below par mentally, progress 

 slowly at school, and show an unchildlike lethargy — ready to sleep at 

 any time. Dickens's fat boy, I think, must have been a pituitary 

 case ; and the little fat boy whom many of you may have seen in 

 the movies, as a member of that humorous group of children known 

 as "the gang," has, I think, if the truth were known, a pituitary 

 whose posterior lobe is not quite doing its duty. Great obesity may 

 result from posterior-lobe deficiency in adults also, and the fat 

 woman of the circus is in many cases, no doubt, an example of this 

 condition. Indeed the vagaries of the pituitary have proved a great 

 source of profit for the circus proprietor. 



When there is a deficiency of the anterior lobe accompanying the 

 deficiency of the posterior lobe, there is a combination of the effects 

 characteristic of both parts of the pituitary. Arrested growth, added 

 to the extreme obesity, produces a remarkable type of dwarf. His 

 length and breadth approach equality. Gigantism with obesity will 

 also occur if overactivity of the anterior lobe be associated with 

 deficiency of the posterior. 



EXPERIMENTAL 



All these instances go to show the direction in which the activities 

 of the pituitary lie. If disorders of its function produce these ab- 

 normalities, it is, I think, logical to assume that its physiological 

 function is to influence the growth of the body within normal limits 

 (anterior part) and to furnish a hormone which controls in some 

 way or other the conversion of sugar into fat (posterior part). Until 

 recent years little support for these conclusions, arrived at from 

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