62 



FIELDING H. GARRISON 



and achondroplasia not associated with thyroid insufficiency, are now 

 sharply differentiated from one another. In 1889, Brown-Sequard, then 

 aged seventy-two, found himself vastly rejuvenated as to general health, 

 muscular power, and mental activity ' by the subcutaneous injection of 

 testicular extracts, the active principle of which Pohl, the Russian physiol- 

 ogist, holds to be the substance spermin (C 5 H 14 N 2 ). 



These experiments of Brown-Sequard easily lent themselves to ridicule, 



but he followed them up, even 

 to the extent of giving pituitary 

 extract for disease of that or- 

 gan (1893), and it was his 

 work upon these extracts which 

 led him to formulate the fol- 

 lowing statement of the old 

 Bordeu theqry of internal 

 secretions : 



"All the tissues, in our view, 

 are modifiers of the blood by means 

 of an internal secretion taken from 

 them by the venous blood. From 

 this we are forced to the conclusion 

 that, if subcutaneous injections of 

 the liquids drawn from these tissues 

 are ineffectual, then we should in- 

 ject some of the venous blood sup- 

 plying these parts. . . . We admit 

 that each tissue and, more gener- 

 ally, each cell of the organism se- 

 cretes on its own account certain 

 products or special ferments, which, 

 through this medium, influence all 

 other cells of the body, a definite 

 solidarity being thus established 

 among all the cells through a mech- 

 anism other than the nervoue sys- 

 tem. . . . All the tissues (glands 

 or other organs) have thus a spe- 

 cial internal secretion and so give 

 to the blood something more than 

 the waste products of metabolism. 

 The internal secretions whether by 

 direct favorable influence, or whether through the hindrances of deleterious processes, 

 seem to be of great utility in maintaining the organism in its normal state." 



As theory goes, nothing new has been added to the doctrine of internal 

 secretions since Brown-Sequard stated it in this form in 1891. In his 

 essay on "Variation" (1808) Darwin seems to have had a glimmering of 

 the idcM, when lie stated that gemmules are transported from all parts of 

 the hod v to Ilie ovum to insure their reproduction (pangenesis), and the 

 Bayliss-Starling doctrine of the "hormones" or chemical messengers, as 

 we shall see, is not essentially different from that of Bordeu and Brown- 

 Sequard. 



Fig. ( J. Charles-Edouard Brown-Sequard 

 (1817-1894) 



