THE ADRENALS 25 



particular, have popularized the knowledge of 

 the condition. Virilists have to shave, or be 

 shaved, regularly, and are not bothered in the 

 least by the cares, responsibilities, jealousies, and 

 anxieties of personal beauty, for the change in 

 their spirituality makes them immune to the 

 preoccupations of the feminine. The cause of 

 such a transformation in a previously entirely 

 normal woman has been found to be a tumour of 

 the adrenal cortex. 



"But not only is sexuality, and the conduct of 

 the secondary sex characters, connected with the 

 adventures of the adrenal cortex. The develop- 

 ment of the master tissues of the body, the brain, 

 the pride and darling of evolution, is in some 

 subtle way correlated with it. The adrenal cor- 

 tex contains more of the phosphorus-containing 

 substances of the general nature of those found in 

 the central nervous system than any other gland 

 or non-nervous tissues in the body. During human 

 mtra-uterine life the adrenal glands are large and 

 conspicuous, in the first half of the second month 

 being twice as large as the kidneys. Most of this 

 relatively huge size, which happens in the human 

 alone, and not in other animals, is due to enlarge- 

 ment of the cortex. Should this preponderance 

 of the cortex over the medullary portion not 



