DISORDERS IN RELATION TO THE EYE 



805 



shown in some cases by the beneficial effect of hygienic and dietetic regu- 

 lation, yet a link is missing in the pathogenetic or etiological chain. The 

 modus operandi is not clear, and is not made any more so by reference 

 to intestinal auto-intoxication, anemia, or indicancuria. 



There is reason to believe that all the agencies mentioned bring about 

 a relative deficiency of endocrin secretions (hormones), and that the symp- 

 toms of seasonal disease, not a few of them ocular affections, are manifesta- 

 tions of deficiency which can be favorably influenced by appropriate en- 

 docrin therapy. It is quite probable that there is, apart from this, a sea- 

 sonal ebb and flow in endocrins depending partly on climatic and tem- 

 perature factors and on the other hand on the needs of the organism. (It 

 has been shown for instance that there is a wide variation in thyroxin and 

 adrenalin content in the glands of winter-killed and of summer-killed 

 animals, respectively.) This, like all periodicity, is largely under the 

 control of the pituitary; thus, hibernation in animals is dominated by this 

 endocrin gland. The prevalence of certain ocular affections in warm 

 weather such as that of Saemisch's spring catarrh cannot be explained so 

 easily by the purely hygienic factors mentioned above. The basic proc- 

 ess, that of lymphoid hypertrophy, associated the disease in our minds 

 with others like adenoid hypertrophy, tonsillar and Mikulicz's disease, 

 and Parinaud's conjunctivitis. In these ocular conditions, there is an 

 eo'sinophilia which is probably of endocrin origin and is seen, as we have 

 noted elsewhere, in a large number of hormone deficiency states associated 

 with acido'tic vagotonia (asthma, migraine). 



