184 THE THYROID, THE THYMUS, AND THE ADRENALS. 



paired suprarenal activity reduces the nutritional standard of 

 all structures and that all cells fail to appropriate through 

 the reduced metabolism involved their physiological con- 

 stituents. While, therefore, paralysis agitans should not be 

 classed as a nervous disease, it is nevertheless true that the 

 nervous system, if the adrenals underlie the whole trouble, also 

 suffers from impaired nutrition, and that phosphorus, its source 

 of intrinsic energy, is as necessary to it as oxygen itself. 



The purpose of this chapter being to ascertain, as we did 

 in the case of the thyroid, whether any special symptom or 

 disorder could be traced to the adrenals through the mediation 

 of the thymus, we will now summarize the results attained in 

 this connection: 



The testimony adduced seems to show that the stimulation 

 of the adrenals by the thymus is purely incidental, and due to 

 the phosphorus the latter contains in organic combination. 

 Yet experimental evidence demonstrates that the withdrawal 

 of this stimulation and deprivation of phosphorus to which the 

 adrenals are thus subjected can induce suprarenal insufficiency, 

 while, on the other hand, its therapeutic and experimental ad- 

 ministration has shown that thymus is able not only to restore 

 the activity of insufficient adrenals, but also to induce over- 

 activity of these organs. A normal deduction suggested by 

 these phenomena is that they are interdependent as long as the 

 activity of the thymus lasts, i.e., until puberty, and that 

 insufficiency of either the adrenals or the thymus during the 

 development of the organism gives rise to morbid phenomena 

 in which both oxidation and the nutritional processes that de- 

 pend upon bodies containing phosphorus in organic combina- 

 tion are the leading pathogenic factors. Insufficiency of the 

 thymus by correspondingly reducing the supply of phosphorus 

 to the nerve-centers of the adrenals impairs the activity of 

 both, while the deficient oxidation of the cellular elements of 

 the thymus further inhibits their function. This vicious circle 

 may also prevail in the opposite direction: i.e., in connection 

 with overactivity of either organ. 



We thus have again constituted two general classes of 

 pathogenic factors, i.e., overactivity and insufficiency of both 

 organs, which, if examined into in respect to their far-reaching 



