170 THE INTERNAL SECRETIONS—1920 
and credited if we remember the common blastodermic 
origin of the adrenals and the sympathetic nervous sys- 
tem, and how both seem to work together to keep the 
machinery going, while we go on with our work and 
play without troubling ourselves as to details, unless 
one finds difficulty with its job and the functions which 
usually are going on so quietly, rise to consciousness, 
when a little regulation of the right kind may make 
all right again. 
We have always to keep in mind that life is consist- 
ent only with a certain chemical equilibrium and the 
retrograde changes that appear when the circulation is 
depressed, to think of innumerable instances in which 
this therapy is applicable. 
Until we are able to diagnose slight endocrine dys- 
function more accurately and to determine the result- 
ing pathology, we shall not be able to treat these cases 
other than empirically, but a beginning is already being 
made to place this matter on an unassailable, scientific 
basis. 
The work of Georgine Luden is interesting; her ex- 
perimental work tending to show the metabolic upset 
attendant on the climacteric glandular changes is a 
factor that allows of the excessive cell proliferation in 
malignancy. She argues that there is an increase of 
cholesterin in the blood and that this favors excessive 
cell proliferation and malignancy. The cholesterin 
metabolism and its elimination are regulated by the 
adrenals, liver, spleen, ovary and corpus luteum in 
order of importance. Incidentally, her argument goes 
to show that the accumulation of fat at that time is a 
factor of safety under the conditions, serving as a 
storehouse for the surplus cholesterin, and that it is 
not the adiposity that should be treated, but rather the 
glands of internal secretion, whose faulty working al- 
lows the accumulation of abnormal amounts of choles- 
terin in the blood and tissues. 
