152 THE DUCTLESS GLANDS 



not, however, perform any total extirpations, since he was only 

 interested in noticing a compensatory hypertrophy of one 

 gland after removal of the other. This, he says, indicates a 

 secreting function for the adrenal of the eel. Pettit looks upon 

 this organ in the eel as the fundamental type of the suprarenal 

 capsule, but he was apparently unaware that it consisted only 

 of cortical substance. 



Since the corpuscles of Stannius contained no chromaphil 

 tissue, the Teleostean fishes appeared to offer an admirable 

 opportunity of testing how far the cortical adrenal glands were 

 essential to the life of the animal. Accordingly a series of 

 experiments were performed by the present writer in 1898 

 upon eels. The results showed that an eel will survive the 

 operation for a long time. The conclusion drawn was that the 

 cortex of the adrenal is not essential to the life of the animal, 

 but the discovery by Giacomini of the cranial cortical adrenal 

 in Teleosts renders such a conclusion unwarrantable (see p. 103). 



Biedl's experiments upon Elasmobranch fishes will be referred 

 to in the following section. 



H. The Question as to the Relative Importance to Life of 

 Cortex and Medulla 



We have seen that the extirpation experiments upon 

 mammals have not definitely determined the question as to 

 which constituent of the adrenal is essential to life, or whether, 

 indeed, it is to the suppression of the compound organ in its 

 entirety that we must attribute death after extirpation. Sonic 

 authors believe that there is no special part of the organ which 

 is of supreme importance in the pathology of Addison's disease, 

 and consider that the adrenal bodies are single organs clearly 

 itial to life, interference with which causes definite ill- 

 results. Some, on the other hand, have concluded from 

 experiments upon mammals that the medulla is the vitally 

 essential constituent, although Wiesel came to the conclusion 

 that the cortex is the part essential to life. 



Biedl states that in mammals he has succeeded in removing 

 the cortex, leaving the medulla behind intact, and that the 

 operation was followed by the death of the animals. So he 

 concludes that it is the cortex which is essential to life. 



Biedl says that he has succeeded in determining for the 





