40 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY 



patient, a Mrs. H., was shown before the Northcumberland and 

 Durham Medical Society, an English country medical organiza- 

 tion, in February, 1891. She was forty-two years old and had 

 borne nine children. The illness attacking her had begun in- 

 sidiously, with a gradual enlargement and thickening of her face 

 and hands. She had become very slow in speech and gait, sensi- 

 tive to cold, and languid and depressed in spirit to the point of 

 inability to go about alone. Murray, employing the glycerin 

 extract of the thyroid gland of a freshly killed sheep, injected 

 twenty-four drops hypodermically, twice a week. There was 

 an immediate and marvelous improvement, which continued 

 steadily, Murray finding that it could be maintained by feeding 

 the gland by mouth. The features and skin returned to the 

 normal, speech quickened and she became able to walk about 

 and live her life without hesitation or assistance. She lived to 

 the age of seventy-four, dying in 1919. In the twenty-eight 

 years, during which it was always necessary to administer the 

 thyroid, she consumed over nine pints of thyroid, comprising the 

 glands of 870 sheep. 



Giants and dwarfs and fat people have always interested people 

 as freaks, departures from the usual and the normal, and have 

 formed the stock of popular museum, circus and country fair. 

 Every mythology has concerned itself with them. The Titans 

 among the Greeks, Og, Gog and Magog among the Hebrews, are 

 examples of the fascination of the superlarge. John Hunter, the 

 founder of experimental surgery, spent a fortune in chasing after 

 the skeleton of a famous Irish Giant in 1783. Dwarfs have also 

 fascinated — witness the short-limbed satyrs of the Greeks and 

 the dwarf gods (Ptah and Bes) of Egypt, as well as the vogue 

 of the court dwarf-buffoons, of whom Velasquez has left us 

 some portraits. Fat people, obesity as a manifestation of per- 

 sonality, have aroused wonder and amusement the world over. 

 The Fat Boy has always furnished good sport to the Sam 

 Wellers. 



All these characters, tall or short, fat or lean, are related to 

 the activity of a gland of internal secretion in the head, the 

 pituitary, which became a centre of interest in the late eighties. 

 Because of its situation, the opinion of the ancients was that it 

 was the source of the mucus of the nose, an opinion reinforced by 

 the greatest anatomist of the Dark Ages, Galen, and held up to 

 the seventeenth century. In other words, it was considered sim- 

 ply a gland of external secretion. Experimental removal of the 



