THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 181 



fact and hypothesis are habitually confounded, 

 and 'nothing is but what is not.' ? 



Such criticisms, coming from a critic whose aim 

 is to create rather than to destroy, are of the utmost 

 value to the progress of the science. It deserves 

 prominent place in a book such as this, where the 

 attempt is made never to confound fact with 

 fancy. 1 



The sexual glands and the nervous system. That 

 the sexual glands and the nervous system are 

 closely related is only too obvious from the many 

 studies on the sex problem, and by the more direct 

 method of castration in animals and men. Much 

 of all this has already been discussed in another 

 chapter (page 94). Less pronounced connections 

 between the glands and the nervous mechanism are 

 noticeable in diseases of the pituitary and the para- 

 thyroids. 



*I have just (December, 1921) returned from the annual meet- 

 ing of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental 

 Biology, held this year at Yale University. These meetings were 

 much enlivened by papers by Stewart and Cannon. Both are not 

 only first-class scholars but excellent debaters, and their annual 

 tilts are eagerly looked forward to. This eagerness on the part 

 of the onlookers to enjoy the fun brought forward this remark 

 from Dr. Stewart: "We are not waiting for Dr. Cannon to say 

 something and then to jump at him; we merely seek the truth, 

 just as I know he does." This but brought laughter and knowing 

 looks. Dr. Carlson, the Chicago physiologist, whose sympathies 

 are evidently more with Stewart than with Cannon, brought 

 down the house with this remark: "I am glad to find that 

 Cannon no longer pins his faith to the adrenals alone; for that 

 he and the Society are to be congratulated on a return to 

 'normalcy.' " 



