76 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY 



or never. So the blood is drafted from the non-essential indus- 

 tries — f r om the skin where it serves normally to regulate the heat 

 of the body — from the digestive organs, the stomach and intes- 

 tine, which must forsooth stop now, since if the organism will 

 die, their last effort of digestion has been done — from the liver 

 and spleen, great chemical factories in normal times, but now 

 of no moment. Besides, should they be wounded, it is better 

 they should be bloodless, and so run the least chance of bleeding 

 to death, or getting infected, for the more tissue there is around, 

 the greater the danger of infection. So, like the skin, the liver 

 which usually holds in its great lakes and vessels about a quarter 

 of all the blood in the body, is almost drained and blanched. 

 At the same time, its great storehouses of sugar open their 

 sluices and pour into the blood, increasing its sugar content by 

 about a third -because the combustion of sugar is the easiest way 

 of getting energy free in the cells, sugar being the most quickly 

 burned up of all the foods, and so the great food of the muscles 

 and the heart. The poisons of fatigue, acid products of the con- 

 traction of muscles, are antagonized and neutralized by sub- 

 stances formed in the course of the oxidation of the sugar. Adre- 

 nalin, too, is directly fatigue antagonist. It causes the blood to 

 clot faster than under ordinary circumstances. It erects the hair 

 of the animal, and dilates the pupils of the eyes. There is an 

 increase of the apparent size, all of which are to intimidate the 

 enemy, like an Indian's painting of his face blue and green. It 

 also — but what else does it not do? 



The story of adrenalin would have delighted the heart of 

 Samuel Butler. His "Note Books," opulent as they are, would 

 have been the richer in pages and pages with his comments on it. 

 Contending as he did with the pompous, dogmatic mechanism 

 worship of the new scientific clique of his time on the one hand, 

 and the superstitions of the old theological caste on the other, 

 he had to fight the hardest kind of guerrilla warfare in defense 

 of the Purpose of Life. Adrenalin, that weapon of a gland 

 tracing its ancestry back to the begetter of the brain itself, for 

 brain and adrenal gland both have evolved from the small nerve 

 •i of the invertebrates, would have backed up to the hilt 

 his argument, which he had to elaborate on the indirect grounds 

 of analogy and induction. Essential for defense, and for protec- 

 tion,— an organ in which everything necessary for the stratagems 

 of retreat, or the offensives of attack, are supplied ad libitum, 



