48 GLANDS IN HEALTH AND DISEASE 



and is situated in a depression of a wedge-shaped 

 bone lying at the base of the skull. It was an organ 

 not unknown even to such ancients as Galen and 

 Vesalius, who thought that it was involved in the 

 formation of nasal secretions (hence the name 

 "pituitary" from the Latin "pituita," meaning 

 "phlegm") . Yet, as Professor Gushing has pointed 

 out, Lower, as far back as 1672, in a paper entitled 

 "Dissertatio de Origine Catarrhi" says, "For 

 whatever serum is separated in the ventricles of 

 the brain and tissues, out of them through the in- 

 fundibulum to the glandula pituitaria distils not 

 upon the palate, but is poured again into the blood 

 and is mixed with it" which is a very modern way 

 of defining a ductless gland. 



The vagueness attaching to the function of the 

 pituitary remained such that the French were fond 

 of calling it "Porgane enigmatique." A distinct 

 advance was made in 1886 when Marie, a French 

 scientist, associated a peculiar disease character- 

 ized by the enlargement of certain bones of the 

 body, and which he called "acromegaly," with a 

 tumor of the pituitary. The next step was a per- 

 fectly natural one; the tumor had to be removed. 

 When this was done other strange symptoms made 

 themselves manifest, due in most part, as we know 

 to-day, to glandular insufficiency, and also, to some 

 extent, to imperfect operations. Marie formed the 

 opinion that "acromegaly" was a disease due to a 



