270 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY 



controlled, will decimate the great assassins of middle age: heart 

 disease and kidney disease, with accompanying degenerations of 

 the blood vessels and circulation. The adrenocentric tends to get 

 up a hyperacidity of the stomach and a high blood pressure, 

 besides certain forms of diseases of the lungs. The thyro- 

 ccntric is predisposed to heart disease, as well as intestinal dis- 

 turbances. The pituitocentric is liable to periodic and cyclic 

 upsets in his health. 



Narcotism, the craving for narcotic or stimulant drugs, and its 

 subvariety, alcoholism, has been found most often among the 

 thymocentrics. Any type of endocrine inferiority, interfering 

 with success in life, may lead to the habit of drug addiction as 

 one way out. But the blood and tissues of the thymocentric ap- 

 pear to become habituated to the narcotic stimulant more easily 

 than the other types, and so to demand it with a physical impera- 

 tive comparable to the food or sex urge. Among artists, philoso- 

 phers and statesmen, on the other hand, actively productive and 

 so contrasted with criminals and degenerates drug addiction has 

 frequently been a mode of endocrine compensation. That is, the 

 drug produced temporarily the effects of the internal secretion 

 lacking or insufficient. Thus the effects of cocaine may be com- 

 pared with the effects of thyroid. But while there is a normal 

 mechanism for thyroid detoxication, the cocaine or heroin deriva- 

 tives mark the tissues permanently with their scars and deform 

 the personality. 



The Hygiene of the Internal Secretions 



All these protean expressions of endocrine determination may 

 now begin to be looked upon with the hopeful and optiu 

 attitude of him who understand I and can control. 



The advances made in the last ten yean in the ; I manipu- 



lation of the ductless glands from without, the introduction of 

 glandular extracts by feeding or injection, and the modific 



ir structure and function by surgery, the X-ray and radium, 

 and other procedures, enable us to ntidently the 



problems hitherto accepted as tin insoluble and in ndi- 



of Fate. Fate may have wo of our being. 



1 we con 'o probe the machinery and to examine the 



looms more carefully, in to Dfl I why t 1 



creak, and why thi nds and odd lots in the product as 



well as th 



