History of Endocrine Doctrine* 



FIELDING H. GARRISON 

 Lieutenant Colonel, Medical Corps, U. 8. Army 



WASHINGTON 



In the following paragraphs will be presented, in brief scope, the 

 outstanding features in the development of the endocrine doctrine, as 

 we know it to-day. While many of the data making up this chapter 

 will be found treated at greater length in the sections devoted to each of 

 the endocrine organs, it is thought that a bird's-eye view of the field as 

 a whole may be helpful. 



Since the development of the bacterial theory of infection, there is 

 probably no pathological concept that has latterly so dominated mod- 

 ern medicine as the doctrine of the internal secretions of the ductless 

 glands. In virtue of this theory which, like that of the specific infec- 

 tious diseases, is founded upon rigid laboratory experimentation we are 

 what we are, bodily, mentally, sexually, emotionally, facially, largely 

 through the balance or imbalance of certain secretions, discharged in 

 minute quantities into the blood by a set of glands which have no ex- 

 cretory ducts communicating with the external world ; and upon disturb- 

 ance of function of one or more of these glands depends a large group of 

 unusual and hitherto unclassified diseases. Some vague notions of this 

 doctrine were entertained or adumbrated in the past ; but the true bear- 

 ings of the theory of internal secretions were first grasped by Claude 

 Bernard about the middle of the nineteenth century, and the main body 

 of doctrine, as currently accepted, was developed during the first two 

 decades of the twentieth century. 



Of the five principal ductless glands, the pituitary was known to 

 Galen, named by Vesalius (1543), described and called the hypophysis 

 cerebri by Sommerring (1778) ; the thyroid was vaguely described in 

 the De voce of Galen, and more completely by Yesalius (Fabrica, 1543, 

 lib. vi, cap. iv), Eustachius (1552) and Wharton (Adenograpliia, 1656), 

 who gave it its present name; the thymus was known to the Greeks and 

 described by Rufus of Ephesus; the suprarenals were described by Eus- 

 tachius (1563), and named by Riolanus (1628) ; the parathyroids were 



* Published by permission of the Surgeon General, U. S. Army. Based upon an 

 article printed in the Popular Science Monthly during December, 1914-February, 1915; 

 permission to use this material has been accorded by the Editor, Professor J. McK. 

 Cattell. 



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