life they develop hyperthyroidism, neurocirculatory as- 

 thenia, or nervous breakdown. 



The Adolescent Pupil 



In the adolescent pupil there is a crescendo of activity 

 of the ductless glands expressing itself in a rapid growth of 

 the body and the development of the organs of procreation. 1 

 Rapid growth is hard work, overwhelming the organism not 

 only with the novelty and strangeness of the development 

 of the procreative mechanism but also by the magic change 

 in the entire anatomy as well as in the entire emotional 

 state. The changes of senility are as nothing compared with 

 the transformation enacted in adolescence. Fortunate it is 

 that the process of adolescence is spread over several years. 

 What if it occurred in a night! 



Not only is the physical fact of this transformation a 

 heavy load on the organism of the adolescent boy and girl 

 but the dominating organs themselves, new to their tasks, 

 may be in one instance too active, in another too inactive, 

 thus adding to the overload of general growth and procrea- 

 tion growth the disturbance of organs and emotions gone 

 wild. Therefore, in training the mind of the adolescent, the 

 hard work of growth and the hard work of the fabrication 

 of the mechanism of procreation as well as the hard work 

 in the expression of the excessive emotion of this period 

 should be taken into account in terms of competition for 

 energy required in the process of training the mind. 



Because the female has a greater need for sustained 

 energy in her role of reproduction, the thyroid gland that 

 controls the rate of oxidation and metabolism is larger 

 relatively to the body weight in the girl than in the boy; 

 therefore, as one might expect, the female is more subject 

 to simple goiter and exophthalmic goiter during adolescence 

 than the male. 



1 CRILE, GEORGE, "The Phenomena of Life," W. W. Norton & Company, New 

 York, 1935. 



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