218 THE PITUITARY, THYROID AND ADRENALS AS A SYSTEM. 



That the anterior lobe of the pituitary and the adrenals 

 are directly connected, the former constituting the center of 

 the latter, is further sustained by the fact that both organs are 

 united solely by sympathetic structures. Thus, while Berkley, 

 referring to this lobe, says, "nerves, other than those belong- 

 ing to the sympathetic system, are not found," confirming 

 de visu what other anatomists, among which are Tiedmann, 

 Pourfour de Pettit, Fontana Bok, Hirschfeld, and Bourgery, 

 had been led to surmise, Dogiel, 54 alluding to the nerve-ele- 

 ments of the adrenals, says: "There are, in the medullary sub- 

 stance, glandular and nerve-cells; . . . the nerve-cells in 

 no way differ from those of any sympathetic ganglion' 7 : a con- 

 clusion as to the system involved which Cybulski, Biedl, Dreyer, 

 and others have sustained by experimental investigations. 



Again, we have seen that Hirschfeld always found a large 

 number of fibers to connect the cervical sympathetic ganglia with 

 the pituitary. Berkley states, referring to the anterior lobe: 

 "All nerves belonging to it appear to be derived from branches 

 of the carotid sympathetic plexus." As this plexus is made up 

 of filaments from the superior cervical ganglion on each side, 

 the latter observation confirms the former. We thus have un- 

 deniable evidence of a structural connection between the ante- 

 rior lobe and the sympathetic system. The directness of the 

 path that an impulse starting from this lobe could follow to 

 reach the suprarenal glands i.e., through the chain of sym- 

 pathetic ganglia on each side of the vertebral column down to 

 the splanchnic nerves, and through them to the solar plexus, 

 the source of the suprarenal plexus also points to the ante- 

 rior pituitary body as the suprarenal center. This is clearly 

 indicated in the annexed colored plate, which shows the course 

 of the nervous tract. The entire adrenal system is colored 

 yellow. 



The prevailing doctrine as to the source of the functions 

 of the sympathetic is well illustrated by M. Duval 55 when he 

 says: "It is now recognized that most of the nervous phe- 

 nomena of the visceral functions have the spinal cord for their 

 center, and that even for its vasomotor functions the sympa- 



M Dogiel: Archiv fttr Anatomie u. Physiologic, p. 90, 1894. 

 66 M. Duval: Loc. cit. 



