WHAT IS PHYSICAL LIFE 



through ducts, peculiar substances which 

 are very necessary to life. The pituitary 

 gland is a small affair from five to ten 

 grains in weight, only its anterior half 

 heing of much account, and its resting 

 place is in the sella turcica or Turkish 

 saddle-like depression in the most solid 

 bone in the body, at the base of the skull. 

 Disease of this gland has been supposed 

 to be the cause of those fearful deformities 

 in the growth of the skull and of other 

 bony structures to which the name acro- 

 megaly has been given. That it has im- 

 portant relations to bodily nutrition can- 

 not be doubted, because its experimental 

 excision leads in time to death with very 

 characteristic symptoms. But as its phys- 

 iological mysteries have not yet been fully 

 solved, we must await their future dem- 

 onstration. The thyroid also we omit, 

 because more than two thousand books 

 and articles have been published so far on 



