60 FIELDING H. GARRISON 



as such, that established the theory of internal secretions as a working 

 principle in, physiology. The epoch-making character of Bernard's dis- 

 covery is best indicated in the language of Sir Michael Foster, who has 

 given the most fascinating appreciation of his work in medical literature: 



"The view that the animal body, in contrast to the plant, could not construct, could 

 only destroy, has, as we have seen, already being shaken. But evidence, however 

 strong, offered in the form of statistical calculations, of numerical comparisons between 

 income and output, failed to produce anything like the conviction which was brought 

 home to every one by the demonstration that a substance was actually formed within 

 the animal body and by the exhibition of the substance so formed. 



"No less revolutionary was the demonstration that the liver had other things 

 to do in the animal economy besides secreting bile. This, at one blow, destroyed the 

 then dominant conception that the animal body was to be regarded as a bundle of 

 organs, each with its appropriate function, a conception which did much to narrow 

 inquiry, since, when a suitable function had once been assigned to an organ, there 

 seemed no need for further investigation. Physiology, expounded, as it often was at 

 that time, in the light of such a conception, was apt to leave in the mind of the hearer 

 the view that what remained to be done consisted chiefly in determining the use of 

 organs such as the spleen, to which as yet no definite function had been allotted. 

 The discovery of the glycogenic function of the liver struck a heavy blow at the whole 

 theory of functions. 



"No less pregnant of future discoveries was the idea suggested by this newly found 

 out action of the hepatic tissue, the idea happily formulated by Bernard as "internal 

 secretion." No part of physiology is at the present day being more fruitfully studied 

 than that which deals with the changes which the blood undergoes as it sweeps through 

 the several tissues, changes by the careful adaptation of which what we call the health 

 of the body is secured, changes the failure or discordance of which entails disease. 

 The study of these internal secretions constitutes a path of inquiry which has already 

 been trod with conspicuous success and which promises to lead to untold discoveries 

 of the greatest moment; the gate to this path was opened by Bernard's work." 



In 1856, one year before Claude Bernard obtained glycogen in the 

 pure state, the doctrine of internal secretions was put upon a firmer basis 

 through the important experiments of Brown-Sequard and Moritz Schiff 

 (a). Only a year after the publication of Addison's great monograph on 

 suprarenal disease, Brown-Sequard (a) succeeded in producing an exag- 

 gerated form of Addison's disease in different animals by removal of the 

 suprarenal capsules, the symptoms being the same and the result of the ex- 

 periment being rapidly and invariably fatal (1856). If only one capsule 

 were removed, there was no appreciable change in the normal animal, but 

 death would rapidly supervene upon removal, even after a long interval of 

 time, of the other capsule. Furthermore, Brown-Sequard found that a 

 transfusion of normal blood into the veins of an animal deprived of its 

 suprarenal capsules will prevent its death for a considerable time, indi- 

 cating that the normal suprarenal capsules secrete a material which is 

 necessary for the maintenance of life. 



In the same year (1850), Moritz Schiff, of Frankfort on the Main, 

 found that excision of the thyroid gland in dogs is invariably fatal. His 

 results were forgot ton for over twenty-five years, when, following the de- 

 scription of myxedema by Gull (1873) and Ord (1878) and the first exci- 

 sion of the thyroid gland for goiter by the Swiss surgeon, Theodor Kocher 

 (a) (1S7S), J. L. Keverdin of Geneva showed that an "operative myxe- 



