HISTORY OF ENDOCRINE DOCTRINE 47 



according to their clinical or pathological manifestations, hut arbitrarily 

 as cachexias, of which he devised a prodigious list, e. g., bilious, mucous, 

 albuminous, fatty, splenic, seminal, urinary, stercoral, perspiratory; with 

 an equally complex classification of the pulse as critical, noncritical, nasal, 

 tracheal, gastric, renal, uterine, seminal, etc. All this undoubtedly in- 

 fluenced Bichat in the fundamental error of his scientific work, viz., the 

 ascription of a specific vital property to each classifiable tissue. Bordeu'g 

 slender reputation to-day is concentered in a single idea the doctrine 

 that not only each gland, but each organ of the body, is the workshop of 

 specific substance or secretion which passes into the blood, and that upon 

 these secretions the physiological integration of the body, as a whole, de- 

 pends. This doctrine is contained in his "Analyse medicinale du sang" 

 (1776), the importance of which has been signalized by the eminent med- 

 ical historian, Professor Max Neuburger, of Vienna. The book is a 

 typical example of the purely theoretical reasoning so common in the 

 medical literature of the eighteenth century, in which an intolerable deal 

 of verbiage is spread over the smallest substructure of fact. Cases are 

 frequently cited, but they are not true clinical delineations, only gossipy 

 personal anecdotes, not unlike those of Brantome. A great deal is said 

 about the sexual side of man, and indeed the most interesting part of 

 Bordeu's theory is his observation of the effects of the testicular and 

 ovarian secretions upon the organism. He regarded the sexual secretions 

 as giving "a male (or female) tonality" to the organism, "setting the 

 seal upon the animalism of the individual," and as a special stimulus to 

 the human machine (novum quoddam impetum faciens). He described 

 in detail, the secondary sexual changes, not only in eunuchs and capons, 

 but also in spayed animals of the female sex. In connecting all this with 

 specific secretions, discharged, not externally, but into the blood, Bordeu 

 was, as Neuburger rightly contends, very close upon the modern theory 

 of the internal secretions, but, as he made no experiments, his ideas can 

 only be regarded as an interesting phase of eighteenth century theoriz- 

 ing. Aside from Bordeu's deduction from what he saw, almost any 

 stock-raiser or poultry fancier might have noted the same facts, and facts 

 of equal moment had been noticed long before his time. 



To begin with, one of the oldest therapeutic notions is the idea that 

 such unsavory materials as the viscera or excreta of animals, adminis- 

 tered either singly or as a mixtum compositum, might avail in the treat- 

 ment of disease. This mode of therapy was a, common feature of the 

 Egyptian medical papyri, was known to the Greeks and Romans, made 

 great headway during the dark ages, and reached its height in the seven- 

 teenth century. The four London Pharmacopeias of 1618, 1650, 1677, 

 and 1721 abound with such remedies- as the bile, blood, bones, brains, 

 claws, eggs, excrement, eyes, fat, feathers, hearts, horns, intestines mar- 

 row, milk, omentum, placenta, rennet, sexual organs, skin, teeth, and 



