SOME HISTORIC PERSONAGES 251 



rather than addition seems to have occurred. The result was a 

 persistent thymus superiority, with an instability of the other 

 two main glands involved. 



How do we know that Oscar Wilde was a thymocentric? Be- 

 cause in his fullest development he exhibited all the earmarks 

 of the thymus pattern. We possess a number of good pictures 

 and descriptions of him, as he was really a contemporary, and 

 would probably be alive today if he had been put in a hospital 

 for proper treatment instead of in prison. An excellent descrip- 

 tion is that of Henri de Regnier's: "This foreigner (Wilde) was 

 tall, and of great corpulence. A high complexion seemed to give 

 still greater width to his clean shaven face. It was the unbearded 

 (glabre) face that one sees on coins. The hands . . . were rather 

 fleshy and plump" The points of immediate interest are the 

 height, the complexion and the beardlessness. One classic variety 

 of the thymocentric is tall, has a baby's skin, and has little or no 

 hair on the face. A passage from a narrative written by one of 

 his warders confirms the last condition decidedly. "Before leav- 

 ing his cell to see a visitor, he was alway careful to conceal, as 

 far as possible, his unshaven chin by means of his red handker- 

 chief." Bristles on the chin, with little or none on the cheeks, is 

 the inference. It is important to stress the thymocentric sig- 

 nificance of this glabrosity of the face. Another sign to be put 

 in italics was the quality of his voice. It has been described as 

 a beautiful tenor, when he had it under perfect control, and 

 high pitched and strident when under the influence of passion or 

 temper. Such a voice would be the product of a larynx remain- 

 ing partly or completely in the infantile state, as in a woman's. 

 That, and the large breasts he is said to have had, point again 

 to the thymus-centered constitution. All in all, there can be no 

 doubt that Oscar Wilde was a case of status lymphaticus, the 

 technical name for the thymus-centered personality. 



As happens in a number of thymocentrics, his pituitary must 

 have attempted to compensate for the endocrine deficiencies al- 

 ways present in them. The exceptional size of his head was a 

 pituitary trait. Finding, possibly making, plenty of room for 

 itself to grow, for some unknown reason, in an extraordinary 

 fashion, it reinforced the love of the beautiful that is part of the 

 feminine post-pituitary nature, with an intellectual ability and 

 maturity that was at first all-conquering. In the face of a 

 society organized for pure masculine and pure feminine types, 

 disgrace and disaster at last overtook him. with almost the ruth- 



