SOME HISTORIC PERSONAGES 239 



An examination of the frontispiece picture, which shows him in 

 profile (profile views are the best for physiognomy), as well as 

 of the bust of Nietzsche by Donndorf, exhibit the most striking 

 traits of the head. To the student of internal secretions, the 

 most prominent feature of the face, emphasized by both the 

 camera and the artist, is the remarkable prominence of the supra- 

 orbital arches, the bony protuberances from which the eyebrows 

 spring. This is a definite pituitary character. The eyebrows 

 themselves are luxurious and slope to meet, the bony development 

 of the face as a whole is sharp and clean-cut, the skull tends to be 

 long and narrow and the chin is square. All these point to a 

 pituitary-centered personality. It is to be regretted that we have 

 no picture or record of Nietzsche caught smiling, which would 

 have preserved the state of his teeth for us. At any rate, con- 

 sidered as checks to my interpretation, his physiognomy and 

 physique, the nature of his genius and the attacks which finally 

 ruined his life, all fit into the conception of him as one whose life 

 centered, like Napoleon's, around what was happening in his 

 sella turcica. 



The attacks of sick-headache, diagnosable symptomatic ally as 

 migraine, were so devastating that in 1883, after the printing of 

 his masterpiece, "Also Sprach Zarathustra," he wrote "My life 

 has been a complete failure." Extracts from his letters, collected 

 by Gould, provide some idea of his suffering. In 1888, just be- 

 fore his stroke, he said, "I have in my eyes a dynamometer of my 

 entire condition." 



The history of Nietzsche's eye trouble makes it probable that 

 not simply a defect in his eyes themselves, but a deeper condition 

 behind them was responsible. Up to the age of 15 he was a model 

 scholar. Essential eye defects of refraction should make them- 

 selves felt during childhood. Then, with adolescence, he changed. 

 Adolescence is one of the red-letter epochs for the pituitary, when 

 its growth and enlargement precedes and stimulates the ripening 

 of the sex cells in the reproductive organs. Until adolescence 

 ended and physical development ceased, his intellectual interests 

 were nil, and he was particularly backward in mathematics. Colds 

 and coughs, and recurring pains in the head and eyes bothered 

 him (colds and coughs are frequent in those whose pituitary 

 expansion is limited by the bony sella turcica to any extent). 

 After his puberty, migraine definitely became his demon compan- 

 ion. Following the diphtheria in the army (which must have 

 damaged his adrenals), the attacks grew much worse, and com- 



