90 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY 



adrenal cortex, it is premature masculinity that is stimulated. 

 The adrenal cortex must be classed as a gland of masculinity. 

 The pineal possibly acts as a brake upon the adrenal cortex. 



Very soon after the report of Von Hochwart's prodigy ap- 

 peared, an experimental research on the pineal was begun in New 

 York. The pineal glands of a number of young bullocks were 

 obtained and used for feeding, to see whether an overaction of 

 the internal secretion could be produced. Guinea pigs, kittens 

 and rabbits were used. The experiments covered about two 

 years in time. Of a dozen small kittens, the subjects outgrew 

 the controls rapidly in activity, size, intelligence, and resistance 

 to intercurrent disease. Of ten small rabbits, the controls weighed 

 about a third less than the subjects, which were strikingly clean, 

 active, fat and salacious. 



Feeding of the gland was then extended to a particular class of 

 defective children, children with well-shaped heads, normal eyes, 

 symmetrically functioning limbs, excellent digestion, strong 

 muscles and generally^ normal, sometimes rapid growth. It is to 

 them, particularly when mental normality has progressed up to 

 the eighth, tenth or twelfth year and stopped, that the term 

 "moron" has been applied. They have been a hopeless lot, be- 

 longing to the limbo of the incurables. Moreover, they, em- 

 phatically the physically normal ones, differ from one another 

 enormously in the extent to which mental operations are possible. 

 As all transitions and degrees exist, no definite classification and 

 subdivision of them has been made. Yet ever since the cretin, 

 once looked upon as an eternally damned defective, was trans- 

 formed by thyroid feeding into an apparently normal being, there 

 has been no dearth of effort to find the '•ight kind of internal 

 secretion to fit their desperate situations, but in vain. In defec- 

 tives with definitely, organically damaged brains, no result of 

 course was to be expected. In those of any class over fifteen, 

 no response has been elicited by feeding pineal gland. In the 

 others the results have been contradictory. 



A set of observations have related the pineal to muscle func- 

 tion, inviting comparison of it with the thymus. There is a 

 singular muscle shrinking and deforming disease, known as 

 progressive muscular dystrophy, hitherto a complete and unsolved 

 mystery. Newer studies of the pineal in this disease during life 

 by means of the X-ray have shown it calcified, that is, buried in 

 lime salts, which signifies put out of business. Recently thus 

 another hint as to its function has been ferreted out. 



