. 284 BENSON A. COHOE 



the glands were excised, contained toxic substances. His views were 

 strongly coirfbated at the time hut were later confirmed by the work of 

 Tizzoni (1889) and other investigators. Somewhat similar researches 

 by Abelous and Langlois (1892) have had an important bearing upon the 

 interpretation of the glandular theory of the disease. These authors ob- 

 served that the injection of the blood of frogs, dying as a result of extir- 

 pation of the suprarenals, into frogs recently deprived of these glands was 

 markedly toxic, causing rapid paralysis and death, and further that a 

 similar injection into healthy frogs with intact suprarenals produced only 

 slight symptoms. These observations led them to believe that death was 

 caused by the accumulation in the blood of toxic substances of an unknown 

 nature, and to postulate the antitoxic function of the suprarenal glands, 

 according to which the glands are concerned in the elaboration of a sub- 

 stance which is capable of neutralizing these toxic bodies present in the 

 blood. Their experiments, further, afforded some evidence to show that 

 the poisonous products of excessive muscular contraction are identical 

 with the toxic substances accumulating in the body after the removal 

 of the glands. In this connection it is of interest to note that Hoskins 

 has more recently re-investigated these earlier observations of Abelous 

 and Langlois, concerning the toxicity of the blood, and has found the 

 blood of dogs dying of suprarenal deficiency to be in no degree toxic when 

 injected into frogs. 



The second method employed by the physiologists for investigating the 

 function of the suprarenal glands, viz., the observation of the symptoms 

 produced by the injection of the gland substance into animals, resulted 

 in the epoch-making discovery by Oliver and Schafer (1896) of the pres- 

 ence of a pressor substance in the medulla of the gland, from which they 

 concluded that the suprarenals elaborate an internal secretion. In this 

 manner physiological research, by the employment of two different experi- 

 mental methods of investigating the function of the glands, viz., gland ex- 

 tirpation, and gland substance injection, has given rise to two possible 

 interpretations of the glandular theory of the disease, (1) the antitoxic 

 theory and (2) the theory of internal secretion. According to the anti- 

 toxic theory the symptoms of Addison's disease are due to the accumu- 

 lation of poisonous products (e. g., of muscular activity), the removal 

 or neutralization of which is the function of the suprarenal glands. A 

 variant of this theory assumes that the suprarenal gland products repre- 

 sent these detoxicated substances. The antitoxic theory obtained wide 

 recognition prior to the observations of Oliver and Schafer and the sub- 

 sequent postulation of the theory of internal secretion, according to which 

 Addison's disease is due to an interference with, or a deficiency of, the 

 normal secretion. This theory of the origin of the disease is now very 

 generally accepted, while any detoxicating power which the gland may 

 possibly possess is regarded as a function of the cortical tissue. 



