

RELATIONS OF ANTERIOR AND POSTERIOR PITUITARY. 211 



this substance, when injected into the veins of animals, effects 

 identical to those previously referred to when the organ was 

 electrically stimulated or touched: i.e., it caused slowing of 

 i the heart's action and increased vascular pressure. He further- 

 more obtained clinical results with it which led him to conclude 

 that "mental disorders, cephalic pains, and irregularities of 

 the heart-functions are the irrefutable results of impaired 

 function of the hypophysis/' so active did his phosphoro- 

 hypophysin prove in the particular symptoms mentioned. The 

 effects might be ascribed to the property common to all toxics, 

 of stimulating the adrenals; but this could not hold in the 

 presence of the results of pressure on the gland and the col- 

 lateral testimony previously adduced herein. 



Notwithstanding the fact that their organic active con- 

 stituents are totally different, we have ascertained that there 

 is a functional relationship between the pituitary and the thy- 

 roid. The former organ may become enlarged after removal of 

 the latter (Eogowitsch, Stieda, Gley), or during myxcedema 

 (Boyce and Beadles, Comte, Gron), or in cretinism (Bourne- 

 ville and Bricon, Dolega, Niepec, Osier), after thyroidectomy 

 (Kocher), or in goiter (Comte, Mitchell and le Count), 47 while 

 de Coulon, 48 in a careful study of the thyroids and the pitui- 

 taries of five cretins, found a similar atrophy of both organs 

 in each instance. As both lobes contain acini in which col- 

 loidal substance is to be found, and as the anterior lobe is the 

 more glandular of the two, while also that most frequently 

 involved vicariously when the thyroid becomes incompetent, it 

 stands prominently as the one upon which the compensatory 

 function should devolve. 



When this question of compensation is at all searchingly 

 scrutinized, however, it is soon found wanting. In the first 

 place, its claims are based only upon more or less marked 

 fluctuations in the dimensions of the pituitary as compared 

 to those of the thyroid. While there is considerable parallelism 

 between these organs, both in hypertrophic and atrophic 

 processes, owing to hypernutrition and hyponutrition of both 

 through general disease, such parallel variations cannot be con- 



Mitchell and le Count: New York Medical Journal, April 29, 1899. 

 De Coulon : Virchow's Archiv, vol. cxlvil, p. 53, 1898. 



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