CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM AND DUCTLESS GLANDS 37 



pancreas, and chromaffin tissue as organs affected by these fields) is diseased, 

 in the course of which disease process diminution of function in one part and 

 excess of function in another come. to exist in juxtaposition. 



Nor can we explain the cause of the hyperfunction better if we regard 

 as its seat the central projection-fields. The problem is only shifted, 

 although we cannot deny that in this manner the solution of the symptom- 

 complex is made easier, or indeed first made possible. 



Relation between Diseases of the Central Nervous System and the Duct- 

 less Glandular System 



The knowledge that the ductless glands as vegetative organs indeed show 

 a certain autonomy, but in part, as far as their function is concerned, stand 

 under control of the central nervous system, together with the supposition 

 that we have to reckon with the possibility of a purely functional increase 

 or decrease of their secretion, requires of us that we now investigate whether 

 in the diseases of the central nervous system alterations of the ductless glands 

 are demonstrable. The investigations should first of all be important 

 for neuroses of the vegetative nervous system, but must also reach to the 

 psychoses and the other diseases of the central nervous system. So far as 

 the psychoses are concerned there have been pointed out very recently ap- 

 preciable variations in the condition of excitement and the tonus of the 

 vegetative organs. I refer, among other investigations, to the investigations 

 of Potzl, Eppinger, and Hess, who have found in melancholia a reduction 

 in the excitability of the vegetative nervous system, and in mania, especially 

 during the first attack, appreciable heightening of the excitability of the 

 vegetative nervous system. Also in other diseases of the central nervous 

 system, for example in tabes, symptoms on the part of the vegetative nervous 

 system become conspicuous in the disease picture. 



This investigation seems to have so much the more force because later ob- 

 servations always confirm the view that in diseases of the nervous system and 

 in the psychoses 1 the metabolism is often altered in a profound way. I would 

 here quote some examples. Rosenfeld first established that a considerable 

 nitrogen retention occurs in catatonics. Siege found enormous variation in 

 the nitrogen elimination in the circular psychoses. Especially intensive 

 studies on metabolism have been made by Kaufmann from Anton's clinic. 

 Especially mentionable are, for example, the enormous variations in body 

 weight in psychoses: for instance, Kaufmann found rapid fall of the body 

 weight in spite of copious forced feeding. According to Kaufmann, such rapid 

 variations are to be referred chiefly to disturbances in the amount of water in 

 the organism in the wake of nervous influences. In hysteria, Kaufmann found 

 considerable variations in the amount of urine and in body weight, together 

 with the fact that the pyschical disturbances may recede while the vegetative 



1 For remarks as to the results of the Abderhalden reaction in mental diseases see foot-note, 

 p. 49. Editor. 



