ORGANOTHERAPY AND HORMONOTHERAPY 121 



The last method has been employed by him in a few cases in which as 

 much as 2 or 3 c.cm. of antuitrin have been given daily. 



Timme also has reported marked benefit from the oral administration 

 of anterior pituitary substance, either alone or in the form of prepara- 

 tions of the whole gland. His report is based on a series of cases con- 

 sidered by him as examples of pluriglandular (thymus, adrenal and pitui- 

 tary) dysfunction or hypofunction. Here the outstanding clinical feature 

 is great muscular fatiguability, often associated with temporal headache, 

 delayed genital development, menstrual disturbances, and anomalous 

 growth. It was especially in the cases with deficient genital development 

 that anterior pituitary feeding proved beneficial. Of the whole gland 

 preparations, Timme uses fairly large doses (gr. ii to gr. iii t.i.d.), while 

 occasionally for a week or two at a time he gives daily injections of 0.5 to 

 1.0 c.cm. of pituitrin. He reports that pituitary feeding alone produces 

 highly satisfactory results in almost all of these patients, the fatiguability 

 and headache disappearing, and the case going on to cure. In the older 

 and more advanced cases, relapse is likely to occur if treatment be 

 discontinued. 



Osteomalacia. In osteomalacia, in which success has also been claimed 

 from posterior pituitary therapy, good results have been claimed also from 

 the feeding of anterior pituitary extract (Pal (&), 1912). 



Impotence. Impotence in the male is another condition in which an- 

 terior pituitary has been administered with claimed benefit. Stellwagon 

 reports cures in several cases in which desiccated anterior lobe was ad- 

 ministered. As other methods of treatment were also employed, there is 

 reasonable ground for questioning the role played in the cure by organo- 

 therapy. 



Epilepsy. Anterior pituitary therapy in epilepsy is briefly considered 

 elsewhere (p. 123). 



Organotherapy with the Whole Pituitary 



For reasons sufficiently well known, it is even yet often impossible 

 to determine whether it is dysfunction of the pars anterior, or of the 

 pars posterior, or of the whole gland, which is responsible, wholly or in 

 part, for the symptoms and pathological conditions presented by many 

 cases. Consequently, preparations of the whole gland are very often 

 administered in the attempts to secure therapeutic results. In some 

 cases, it is true, one may by careful study obtain evidence that the whole 

 gland is at fault, in which case the employment of the whole gland prepara- 

 tions is indicated, but all too often one is left in doubt whether one or 

 both portions are involved. 



Among the conditions in which, with claimed benefit whole pituitary 

 preparations have been used are (in addition to those mentioned in the 



