246 THE INTERNAL SECRETIONS—1920 
keeps active vital function, the endocrines. Disease, 
aside from severe traumatisms, causes in the organism 
a toxic condition which retards by action of the degen- 
erative changes produced the delicate metabolic equi- 
librium, and as a result death ensues either from par- 
alysis of the respiratory center or a failure of the myo- 
cardium. In other words, the endocrines are reduced 
to a minimum, activation ceases and death ensues. 
In nineteen hundred and fourteen it was my privilege 
to be in Bahia, Brazil, at the time Dr. Fernandez,a Span- 
iard, was using with some success a pluriglandular se- 
rum in treating sex conditions, such as sterility in the 
young female. His method was to give an injection of 
his product intramuscularly twelve hours previous to 
the act of intercourse. He was able in a series of 
twenty cases to induce pregnancy in two women so 
treated. All applicants were examined previous to in- 
jection, and any visible gynecological condition, such as 
atresia, or malpositions of the uterus were eliminated. 
Dr. Fernandez’s work on the internal secretions in- 
terested me, and as I was personally interested in meta- 
bolism, I devoted my time to its study: not, however, 
from the viewpoint of sterility, but metabolism in gen- 
eral, especially diabetes mellitus. In March, 1919, I 
published a paper dealing with the treatment of dia- 
betes by the Edgar serum. At a later date a second 
paper was presented dealing with cases treated. At 
this time I was impressed with the number of patients 
who showed improvement in their sex relationship. 
Other patients manifested improvement in their men- 
tal condition. I became interested and found that many 
patients regained the power of erection and ejaculation. 
I became interested in the surprising results and imme- 
diately studied a series of cases that were not diabetic, 
in order to check up my results. 
