

HOW GLANDS INFLUENCE THE NORMAL BODY 117 



ize. The thyroid, for instance, is concerned specially with the 

 regulation of the shape, form and finish of an organ. The pitui- 

 tary shines at the periods of developmental crises, determining 

 them and modifying them. It exerts the greatest influence upon 

 the time of eruption of the teeth, both the temporary and the 

 permanent, the onset of puberty, the recurrence of menstruation 

 in women, and the time of occurrence of labor. The interstitial 

 glands distribute the basis of the powers and limitations of mas- 

 culinity and femininity. Abnormalities of these glands also 

 affect the individual all along the line, in all of his aspects. So 

 affected he may apparently change into a wholly different being. 

 He may change in size, in the shape of his head, feet and hands, 

 as well as in his habits, aptitudes and dispositions. So he may 

 find it necessary to purchase an entirely different size of hat, 

 more commodious clothes, and newly fitting gloves and shoes. 

 At the same time, his family, relatives and friends, discover that 

 the erstwhile generous, frank, neat and punctual and liked, has 

 become stingy and suspicious and slovenly and hated. And all 

 because a gland has begun to undersecrete or to oversecrete. 

 The transformation will be slight or marked, depending entirely 

 upon the extent of impairment, positive or negative, of the gland 

 involved. 



But it is not only in the shaping of the normal individual's 

 architecture that the internal secretions dominate. Over that 

 subtle something known in all languages as vitality, expressive 

 of the intensity of feeling, thought and reactions in cells, they 

 rule supreme. Gay vivacity and grim determination, the tem- 

 perament of a Louis XIV, and the soul of a Cromwell, are the 

 crystallizations of these chemical substances acting upon the 

 brain. 



Internal Secretion Varieties 



There is no better way of illustrating the influence of the 

 internal secretions upon the normal than the analysis of the 

 variation of traits with variations in glandular predominances. 

 The general build of an individual, his skeletal type, the pro- 

 portion between the size of his arms and that of his legs, as well 

 as that between his trunk and his lower extremities, whether he 

 is to be tall, lanky and loutish, or short, squat and dumpy, are 

 to be considered. Different facial types are the expressions of 

 underlying endocrine differences. The head and skull offer a 



