SECRETORY FUNCTIONS IN HUMAN PLACENTA 487 



or to transplant the placenta, and the results in either case were 

 for the most part positive (Feller, '09; Lederer and Pribram, 

 '10; Aschner and Grigoriu, '11; Cristea and Aschner, '12; 

 Basch, '12; G. Kawaida, '12; M. Dohi, '16). However, as it 

 was incidentally discovered at the same time that the placenta 

 had shown some strong special reaction upon the other organs, 

 e.g., the vascular organs (Schickele,'12), the internal secretory 

 glands (Fellner, '13; Colle, '13), and the uterus (Fellner, '09; 

 Okintschitz, '14; Hermann, '15), it naturally became difficult 

 to assert that the ingredients of the placenta have such proper- 

 ties as react upon the mammary glands alone. And, further, 

 as it became known generally that such changes in the mammary 

 glands as mentioned above were not only due to pregnancy or 

 the placental ingredients, but were also caused by extracts of 

 the various organs, such as the embryo (Handle, '05; Bayliss 

 and Starling, '06; Foa, '10; Biedl and Kdnigstein, '10; Aschner 

 and Grigoriu, '10), the ovary (Ott and Scott, '10; Aschner and 

 Grigoriu, '11; Frank and Unger, '11; Hermann,' 15; Y. Tani- 

 guchi, '16), the pituitary body (Hofstatter, '11), the pineal and 

 thyreoid glands (Ott and Scott, '11), the uterus while in child- 

 bed and the mammary glands which are giving suck (Schoefer 

 and Mackenzie, '11), the intestines, the testicles, the spleen, 

 and the thymus (Kehrer, '15), the decidua (Gentili and Bina- 

 ghi, '17), as well as by a certain kind of chemical matter, such 

 as 'Lymphagoga' (Aschner and Grigoriu), and albumin, too 

 (Frank and Unger, '11; Fraenkel, '14), the theory of internal 

 secretion in the placenta which had begun to be adopted gen- 

 erally for a time began to lose its value by degrees. 



In the next place, along lines of biological chemistry, there 

 are the researches made by such authors as Higuchi ('09), 

 Hermann ('15), and Harada ('16). These authors extracted from 

 the placenta various kinds of chemical matter as its principal 

 ingredients and subjected them to close examination, but they 

 never mentioned a ' hormone, ' which is always existent in the 

 placenta. 



Thirdly, with regard to the histological studies of the placenta, 

 many researches have been made in the subject from earlier 



