THE ADRENAL GLANDS 93 



pression, nervousness and restlessness, an inability to sleep or 

 sit still, and a tremulous handwriting. Such reports round out 

 the evidence for the importance of the parathyroids in an 

 understanding of the factors which control growth, especially as 

 regards lime utilization, for without lime properly handled no 

 building of cells is possible. Also the parathyroids are necessary 

 to a steadiness of muscle and nerve. 



The Pancreas 



The business of the parathyroids concerns the keeping of lime 

 in the body. Another gland, the pancreas or sweetbreads, this 

 time within the abdomen, a close neighbor of the solar plexus, 

 alias the abdominal brain, is occupied with holding and hoard'ng 

 sugar in the body, particularly in the liver, the great sugar ware- 

 house. This matter of retaining sugar and controlling its output 

 is one of the utmost significance for growth and metabolism, the 

 resistance to infections, the response to emergency situations, and 

 in general to the mobilization of energy for physical and mental 

 purposes. For without sugar sufficiently at hand for the cells, 

 no muscle work or nerve work, the essentials of the struggle for 

 existence,, are possible. 



The pancreas is an organ with both an internal and external 

 secretion. The external secretion, long known, evolved by the 

 major portion of the gland, is poured into $ie small intestine 

 to play the star in digestion. Scattered here and there among 

 the definitely glandular cell groups creating the external secre- 

 tion are smaller collections of cells, called the islets of Langer- 

 hans, which have been demonstrated to elaborate the internal 

 secretion. There are about a million of these islands in each 

 gland. The hormone has been called insuline. Unlike most of 

 the glands with a double secretion in which the internal is abso- 

 lutely independent, and so to speak, unconscious of the external, 

 these two of the pancreas are often disturbed together, perhaps 

 because trouble easily hits them both together. 



Quite the most well-known disease due to disturbed internal 

 secretory function of the pancreas is diabetes. An enormous 

 amount of work has been spent upon the various aspects of it 

 as a mystery. Hundreds of papers in a dozen languages upon 

 the subject are in existence. In a nutshell, they have established 

 pretty well that diabetes is a disease in which there is an excess 

 of sugar in the blood and urine because of an insufficient amount 



