DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN PHARYNX 379 



self (Kingsbury '14 a) made, from the morphological side, a 

 critical study of these cells and the conditions that determine 

 their appearance, with results opposing the use of the term 

 'interstitial gland.' We are compelled, I think, to look to the 

 general metabolic processes of the organ for the basis of the effect 

 on general bodily growth and metabolism, and it is quite sugges- 

 tive that regressive change is constantly an accompaniment 

 of the growth processes therein proceeding. 



Disregarding the ovary and testis, in which no distinct mor- 

 phological gland is recognizable and in which regressive change 

 is constantly present, in all the other glands grouped together 

 as endocrine glands — even to a degree in those whose genetic 

 significance is still obscure — there is found one feature in com- 

 mon. In the midst of the heterogeneity and atypicality of their 

 origins, as apparently the one embryologic bond paralleling the 

 physiological community that they evince, is the fact that they 

 arise or have evolved out of structures quite different. This is 

 most clearly shown in organs whose history is better known (cor- 

 pus luteum, pineal body, thyreoid, thymus, parathyreoids) . 

 'They appear by a process of metamorphosis and their persist- 

 ence is attended by a 'metaphysiosis' — if one might coin the 

 word — to which is due their influence on bodily metabolism 

 and growth. Their activity and its peculiar effects would thus 

 be a function of their origin, in its peculiarity. Nor could the 

 analysis stop here; their physiological community, it would seem 

 to me, must have its basis in the general bodily metabolism and 

 the relation they bear to it in virtue of their unique genetic 

 qualities. The acceptance of such a point of view would 

 mean, however, a marked reversal of what is, I believe, the 

 accepted interpretation, and a transference of emphasis from the 

 organ to general bodily metabolism; from the body as a col- 

 lection of organs to the body as a metabolic unit. More speci- 

 fically, in the case, for example, of exophthalmic goiter, cretinis- 

 mus, status thymico-lymphaticus, giantismus and acromegaly, 

 dystrophia adiposogenitalis, or Addison's disease — I must con- 

 fess it is difficult for me to conceive of the primary cause lying 

 in thyreoid, thymus, hypophysis, gonad or suprarenal, but in 



