64 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY 



can adequately substitute for it. Complete expiration means 

 death, in two or three days, with a peculiar lethargy, unsteadiness 

 of gait and loss of appetite, emaciation, and a fall of temperature, 

 so that the animal becomes cold-blooded, its temperature the 

 same as that of the atmosphere it occupies. If only part of the 

 anterior lobe is taken away, there occurs a remarkable degenera- 

 tion of the individual. The degeneration is not a mucinous infil- 

 tration of the skin and the internal organs which occurs with 

 thyroid deprivation, but a fatty degeneration, with a tendency to 

 inversion of sex. A singular somnolence, a dry skin, loss of 

 hair, a dull mentality, sometimes epilepsy, and a noticeable crav- 

 ing for and tolerance of sweets appear. These are but a few of 

 the observations obtained in experimental sub-pituitarism, that is, 

 underaction or insufficient secretion of the pituitary, produced by 

 removing part of the anterior gland. 



If such an experimental sub-pituitarism is started in infancy, 

 for instance in puppies, there is a cessation, or marked hindering 

 and slowing of growth. That is, dwarfs are artificially created. 

 Apropos, pathologists have shown that in several true human 

 dwarfs the gland is rudimentary or inadequate. All of which 

 goes hand in hand with the evidence that the skeleton stands 

 -directly under the domination of the pituitary. 



Regulator of Organic Rhythms 



There are certain other singular by-effects of the gland in its 

 relation to the periodic phenomena of the organism like hiberna- 

 tion, sleep, and the critical sex epochs of both sexes. In hiberna- 

 tion, or winter sleep, the animal in cold weather passes into a 

 cataleptic state in which it continues to breathe, more deeply' 

 but more slowly than when awake, but shows no other signs of 

 consciousness or life. A lowered blood pressure and a marked 

 insensitivity to painful and emotional stimuli go with it. There 

 is a preliminary storage of starch in the liver, and of fat through- 

 out the fat depots of the body. These are so like what happens 

 after part of the pituitary is removed, that a comparison of the 

 two becomes inevitable. Common to both conditions is a drop 

 in the rate of tissue combustion or metabolism, which can be 

 relieved by injection of an extract of the pituitary, a rise of 

 temperature occuring simultaneously. Moreover, examination of 

 the glands of internal secretion of hibernating species, like the 

 ffoodchuck, during the period of hibernation, shows changes in 

 till of them, but most marked in the pituitary, the shrunken cells 



