HISTOEY OF EKDOCRINE DOCTRINE 77 



transformed into substances of low chemical potential (carbon dioxid, 

 urea, and water), the energies passing, as in a Carnot cycle, from a source 

 at high potential to a sink at low potential energy. The second law is 

 operative here, but the process is more economical than in a heat engine. 

 Still more economical is it in cold-blooded animals, while in green plants 

 there seems to be an actual reversal of the process, in that substances of 

 low chemical potential (nitrogen compounds, carbon dioxid, and water) 

 are transformed into substances of such high chemical potentiality as car- 

 bohydrates, proteins, and oils. There is thus some indication that in plant 

 cells, or those organisms, like bacteria, which lie between animals and 

 plants, there is a possibility of reversal of those physical processes which 

 take place in inanimate nature. Of this we have further examples in the 

 nitrification of the soils by bacteria buried in it (without the aid of radiant 

 energy from the sun) or in the Brownian movements of bacteria contained 

 in a liquid (Johnstone). Of the possibility of reversing the second law in 

 the human organism, Lord Kelvin said that, "even to think of it, we must 

 imagine men with conscious knowledge of the future, but no memory of the 

 past, growing backwards and becoming again unborn, and plants growing 

 downwards into the seeds from which they sprang." This would assuredly 

 be an extreme case, but Gushing' s production of sexual infantilism in dogs 

 by partial excision of the anterior lobe of the pituitary body fulfills some 

 of these conditions. At best, we can only affirm that the whole matter is 

 transcendental, that is, so far, beyond our ken, since it involves an assump- 

 tion of the old metaphysical "vital principle," the elan vital of Bergson. 



Of the internal secretions of the pancreas and the sexual glands, the 

 thyroid, parathyroid, suprarenal and pituitary bodies, considerable is 

 known; less of the spleen, carotid gland, and pineal body (epiphysis cere- 

 bri) ; of the "parathymoid" and the para phy sis of the brain, nothing what- 

 ever. Some of the most interesting phases of the subject, such as the rela- 

 tion of internal secretions to insanity, or the treatment of diabetes insip- 

 idus with pituitary extract by Barker and others, have only just had their 

 beginnings. The vast amount of recent investigation on the subject has 

 been well summed up in a number of excellent treatises. The earliest of 

 these was that of Charles E. de M. Sajous (1903), which is ; in effect, a 

 complete system of medicine based upon the ductless glands. Sajous 

 assumes that suprarenal, pituitary, and thyroid glands constitute the im- 

 munizing mechanism of the body, whence its germicidal and antitoxic sub- 

 stances are derived. Hence, the only use of drugs is to stimulate the in- 

 ternal secretions. Of more recent date are the treatises of Arthur Biedl 

 (1910), Swale Vincent (1912), Wilhelm Falta (1913), Mcola Pende 

 (1916), and Sir E. S. Schafer (1916). Admirable surgical monographs 



