234 THE INTERNAL SECRETIONS—1920 
fundamental to life, because their hormones, appar- 
ently, keep in check the toxins in the blood, which, once 
liberated, cause havoc with the organism, producing 
syasms, tetany and other morbid symptoms that rapid- 
ly kill the patient. This view is expressed by Falta (4) 
from whom we quote: “The parathyroids would seem 
to furnish to the blood-path a hormone which renders 
innocuous poisons that exist in the body.” This func- 
tion he calls “the detoxicating function.” 
THE ADRENAL GLANDS 
Now let us see what role the adrenals play in the 
organism. According to Sajous (5), “It is the adrenal 
secretion which, after absorbing oxygen from the pul- 
monary air and being taken up by the red corpuscles, 
supplies the whole organism, including the blood, with 
its oxygen. It is, as such, the oxidizing constituent of 
the hemoglobin, which, in turn, sustains tissue oxida- 
tion and metabolism.” An excess of the adrenal secre- 
tion, as produced during infectious diseases, causes in 
the organism a heightened temperature, fever, due to 
the excessive oxidation that it causes. Thus the adre- 
nal secretion becomes a powerful factor in the auto- 
protective apparatus of the organism. The vital im- 
portance of the adrenals is evidenced from the fact that 
the removal or destruction of these glands is followed 
by death of the animal. 
In the so-called Addison’s disease we have a symptom 
complex of adrenal insufficiency, or chronic progressive 
hypoadrenia. It manifests itself in hypothermia—the 
patient always feels chilly—in dyspnea, in progressive 
asthenia, weak heart action, and low blood pressure, in 
emaciation, anorexia, vomiting, diarrhea, in bronzing 
of the skin, in lumbar and abdominal pains, in a marked 
tendency to syncope, impairment of vision and hearing, 
in headache, irritability, hallucinations, delirium, con- 
vulsions, and finally in coma and sudden death. 
