THE GLANDS: THYROID AND PITUITARY 65 



staining as if they too were asleep, or in a resting stage. The 

 characteristic alive qualities of these cells return, without relation 

 to food or climate, when the animal comes to in the spring, at 

 the vernal equinox. Hibernation may, perhaps, be put down 

 to a seasonal wave of inactivity of the pituitary gland. 



Now winter sleep may be looked upon as an exaggeration of 

 ordinary night sleep, the latter differing from the former only in 

 its brevity. In the natural sleep of non-hibernating species there 

 occurs, too, a fall in temperature. Moreover, they all, even man, 

 have a certain capacity for winter sleep, as the experiences of 

 travellers and explorers in the arctic regions indicate. In certain 

 parts of Russia, where there is a scarcity of food during the 

 winter months, the peasants pass weeks at a time in a somnolent 

 state, arousing once a day for a scant meal. Just as the sex 

 glands influence the body and mind profoundly with a certain 

 cyclic periodicity of activity and inactivity (rut, heat, menstrual 

 period and so on), which has been demonstrated to have a very 

 close functional relationship with the pituitary, so sleep and 

 hibernation will bear interpretation as products of a temporary 

 dormancy of the same gland. We have, then, to set up in the 

 place of Morpheus and Apollo, the new gods of the internal secre- 

 tion of a chemical-making bit of the brain, as an explanation of 

 the rhythms of sleep and wakefulness. 



There are individuals who go about outside of hospital walls, 

 quasi-normally, who are semi-hiberaators or partial hibernators, 

 and who are really in a state of subpituitarism. They are people 

 who may have something wrong or inferior with their pituitary, 

 but not to the extent of interference with their daily life. They 

 go about with their type stamped upon them for the seeing eye. 

 The classical type is obese, with fat distributed everywhere, but 

 more so in the lower abdomen and the lower extremities. They 

 are slow and dull, and sexually inactive, often impotent. They 

 are sometimes tall, but most often dwarfish, and may be subject 

 to epileptic seizures. They recall the picture of what happens 

 to young dogs partially deprived of the pituitary. Dickens 

 delivered a perfect likeness of an extreme degree of the condition 

 in the Fat Boy of the "Pickwick Papers," whose employment 

 with Mr. Wardle consisted in alternate sleeping and eating. 



When the Pituitary Overacts 



All grades of overaction of the pituitary exist. Then its pecu- 

 liar power to act as a stimulant to the growth of bone and the 



