HISTOEY OF ENDOCRINE DOCTRINE 



67 



an artificial change of life. Ovariotomy has been found in some cases to 

 have a beneficial effect upon osteomalacia in women. Glass (1899), Mor- 

 ris (1901), Marshall and Jolly (1905) have shown that grafting or trans- 

 plantation of the ovaries in previously ovariotomized women will reestab- 

 lish menstruation, sexual desire, and general well being. Eunuchoidism 

 and the effects of castration upon the male and female organism have been 

 investigated in detail by J. Tandler and S. Grosz (1907-10). The experi- 

 ments of Lane-Claypon and Starling (1906) demonstrated that the in- 

 hibitory effect upon pregnancy and lactation of a Battey's operation in 

 rabbits will not be produced by section of the mammary nerves or 'of the 

 spinal cord. Similarly, the experiments of Brown-Sequard and Pohl on 

 spermin and the fact that ligation 

 of the vas deferens in young ani- 

 mals will abolish the power of re- 

 production, while permitting full 

 development of the sexual charac- 

 ters and the sexual appetite, go to 

 show that the sexual gonads in the 

 male have an internal secretion, 

 which is supposed to arise from 

 the interstitial cells of Leydig in 

 the seminal tubules. 



The pineal gland, or epiphysis 

 cerebri, known to Galen (De usu 

 partium, viii, 3) and the Greeks 

 as the conarium (Kavapioj/), was 

 regarded by Descartes as the seat of 

 the soul, and by later naturalists 

 as a vestigial eye in certain ani- 

 mals. As this gland undergoes in- 

 volution at puberty, pathological evidence has been sought to prove that the 

 function of the pineal secretion is to inhibit overripening of the organism, 

 particularly overdevelopment of the gonads and the sexual system. In 1898, 

 the pediatrist Heubner described a case of precocious sexual and somatic 

 development in a boy of four and one-half years, which, coming to autopsy, 

 revealed a teratoma of the pineal. In 1907, Marburg (a) (b) had collected 

 forty such cases, from which he sought to establish the doctrine of "macro- 

 genitosomia precox" from pineal dysfunction (hypopinealism), character- 

 ized by pressure and neighborhood symptoms referred to the eye and cere- 

 bellum, with precocious sexual, somatic, and mental maturity. Frankl- 

 Hochwart maintained that this syndrome connotes a pineal tumor. Of sev- 

 enty cases since collected (all but two in boys), only twenty-five occurred 

 before puberty, and many of these had no signs of precocious development. 

 Experimental surgery of the organ was difficult and consequently fatal 



Fig. 13. Robert Battey 

 (1828-1895) 



