GLANDS AND PERSONALITY 



A REVIEW 



The Glands Regulating Personal- 

 ity, hy Louis Berman, Associate 

 Professor of Biological Chemistry at 

 Columbia University. 300 pp. Price, 

 $2.50. The Macmillan Company. 

 New York, 1922. 



Dr. Berman seeks in this book to 

 point the way to the regulation of 

 personality. He is deeply imbued with 

 the idea that traits of character, dis- 

 position, our transient moods, are the 

 expression of the process of secretion 

 of these glands. "What in our cells 

 is pugnacity? What in our bones is 

 greed? What in our blood is sex? 

 What in our nerves is fear? Until 

 these inquiries are respected, conscious 

 character building or even stock breed- 

 ing must remain the laughing stock of 

 the smoking rooms and the regimental 

 barracks." Speaking of the glands of 

 internal secretion, "In short, they con- 

 trol human nature and whoever con- 

 trols them controls human nature." 



The author gives a most interesting- 

 historical account of the studies upon 

 the endocrine glands, and then takes 

 up each in turn and gives pithy, epi- 

 grammatic characterizations of them. 

 "It is . . . permissible to think of the 

 thyroid as a dictator of evolution, to 

 crown it as the vertebrate gland par 

 excellence and to call the typical verte- 

 brate brand-marks secondary thyroid 

 characteristics in precisely the sense of 

 Darwin classing the horns of cattle as 

 secondary sexual characteristics." 



Functions of the Glands 



In dealing with the pituitary gland, 

 he distinguishes only two portion.s — 

 the anterior and posterior. Really the 

 matter is more complex, since the part 

 that he designates the anterior lobe is 

 made up of three different elements, 

 at least two of which have entirely dis- 

 tinct functions. In a summary state- 



ment, he says, "while the thyroid in- 

 creases energy evolution, and so makes 

 available a greater supply of crude 

 energy by speeding up cellular pro- 

 cesses, the pituitary assists in energy 

 transformation, in energy expenditure 

 and conversion, especially of the brain 

 and of the sexual system. In short, 

 the thyroid facilitates energy produc- 

 tion, the pituitary its consumption." 



In discussing the well known dis- 

 tinction between the cortical and medul- 

 lary portions of the adrenal gland, he 

 makes the statement that the cortical 

 portion is relatively larger in man than 

 in any other animal. Upon this claim 

 and from asserted cases of abnormal 

 development, he draws the rather bold 

 conclusion that "the human brain there- 

 fore owes its superiority over the ani- 

 mal brain to the adrenal cortex, in 

 de\elopment anyhow. The growth of 

 the brain cells, their number and com- 

 plexity is thus controlled by the adre- 

 nal cortex." 



Of the thymus gland he says, "The 

 thymus is the gland which dominates 

 childhood. It appears to do so by 

 inhibiting the activity of the testes and 

 ovaries. Castration causes a persistent 

 growth and retarded atrophy of the 

 thymus. Removal of the thymus has- 

 tens the development of the gonads." 

 He lays much stress upon the experi- 

 ments of Gudernatsch in which he 

 claimed that he had retarded develop- 

 ment toward maturity in tadpoles by 

 feeding them thymus material. This 

 experiment, however, has not stood the 

 test of repetition in later experiments 

 by Swingle, Uhlenhuth and others. 

 We must frankly admit that we have as 

 yet no reliable knowledge of the func- 

 tion of the thymus gland — today we 

 are more in the dark about it than 

 ever. This is an example from many 

 that miHit be chosen to illustrate the 



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