CHAPTEK II. 



THE INTERNAL SECRETION OF THE ADRENALS 



IN ITS RELATIONS TO THE RESPIRATORY 



PROCESSES AND THE COMPOSITION 



OF THE BLOOD. 



THE PATHOGENESIS OF BRONZING AND ADDISON'S DISEASE. 



BoiNET 1 found a large proportion of black pigment and 

 hgematoidin crystals in the blood of a decapsulated rat which 

 had lived several months after removal of its capsules. This 

 pigment proved on analysis to be similar to that obtained from 

 the skin, mucous membrane, and other structures of two fatal 

 cases of Addison's disease. The identical black pigment was 

 also found by him in more or less great quantities in 75 per 

 cent, of 109 decapsulated rats. It was distributed practically 

 everywhere, including the lungs. In several of these animals 

 and in a number out of another series of 20 in which the ad- 

 renals had been experimentally cauterized with tincture of 

 iodine, silver nitrate, ferric chloride, or zinc chloride, or irri- 

 tated with pus from inflammatory or tuberculous lesions, the 

 pigment had permeated the subcutaneous cellular tissue besides 

 the other structures. In 3 animals in which the pigment in- 

 filtration had been abundant, the adrenals had not only been 

 removed, but excessive fatigue had been induced by rotation 

 or frequently repeated electric shocks. All the rats from which 

 the glands had been removed sooner or later presented the 

 characteristic signs that follow this operation. Some of those 

 in which the organs had been cauterized showed "marked mus- 

 cular paresis with tardy asthenia: features that gave them the 

 aspect of incompletely curarized animals and which further 

 completed the analogy between the pigmentary infiltration and 

 a sort of Addison's disease." 



The liberation of this pigment through removal of the 

 adrenals suggests as a working hypothesis that the secretion of 



i Boinet: Marseille Medical, April 15, 1896. 



(77) 



