THE GOVERNING CENTERS OF VITAL PROCESSES. 607 



the source of life, for this is a property of every cell in the 

 organism. During the earlier years of our existence, while the 

 adrenal and nervous systems (including their chief centers) are 

 undergoing development, their functions are relatively circum- 

 scribed, the thymus supplying deficiencies. As will be shown 

 in the next chapter, we have evidence of this in the liability 

 of children to certain infectious diseases which do not affect 

 the adult. While the latter is able to counteract the patho- 

 genic organisms and their toxins by means of adequate immu- 

 nizing agencies, the child is not, because it is only supplied, 

 through the intermediary of its thymus, with relatively ineffi- 

 cient quantities of these agencies; in other words, the total 

 immunizing energy developed by its organs is inadequate. 

 Indeed, the first year of a life is the period of greatest exposure: 

 Nature supplies, in the mother's milk, not only nutriment, but, 

 as previously stated, oxidizing substance besides other anti- 

 toxic elements. 



Even the anterior pituitary, the governing center of the 

 oxidation processes, can in no way be deemed a life-center. 

 During the earlier portion of its existence the organism is, in 

 a measure, independent of its pituitaries, and able to sustain 

 life with the centers of the lower brain and cord as governing 

 ganglia. Even in the adult the adrenals are not solely de- 

 pendent upon their own center. As we have seen, they are 

 connected with the cord by communicating filaments: those 

 which probably supplied them with their first impulses and 

 sustained their functional activity until their chief center had 

 reached a state of development able to satisfy the needs of the 

 perfected organism. That these spinal communicating nerves 

 may be able to resume or continue their role as channels for 

 impulses to the adrenals, in case of injury to, or destruction 

 of, the pituitaries, is probable. The very importance of these 

 organs in the economy suggests the presence of a mechanism 

 capable of insuring the continuation of life even though in- 

 competent to afford protection against disease. 



The two pituitaries, intrusted, as they are, with functions 

 which include high powers of differentiation, are complement- 

 ary, and, so to say, terminal structures. They develop with 

 the body, and are only functionally perfect when the latter has 



