EXTRACT FROM THE PREFACE TO THE 

 FIRST EDITION 



This small monograph is based on the subject matter 

 of several previous communications — the Arris and 

 Gale Lectures, delivered before the Royal College of 

 Surgeons, England, in 1913 ; the paper with which a 

 discussion was opened at the Royal Society of Medicine 

 in the same year, and other contributions bearing on this 

 subject, including, by the kind permission of the Editors 

 and Messrs. Macmillan & Co., a small portion of the 

 articles on * The Disorders of Function ' written for the 

 New System of Gynecology, 



In the Arris and Gale Lectures probably the first 

 definite attempt was made to demonstrate that the 

 reproductive functions are directed and controlled by all 

 the organs of internal secretion acting in conjunction, 

 rather than by the gonads alone, as formerly thought. 

 Earlier investigators had adduced evidence, it is true, 

 of a connexion between the genital organs and some of 

 the distant hormonopoietic glands ; but the observations 

 made do not appear to have led to the conclusion that 

 the association is not incidental, but, rather, that it 

 indicates the existence of a definite genital system, in 

 which probably all the internal secretions play a part. 



This correlation of the internal secretions in regard to 

 the sex-functions — the ' sex complex ', as we may call 

 it — appears already to be accepted by all physio- 

 logists and clinicians, except, perhaps, those few who 

 still deny the interrelationship of the internal secretions. 



There are, of course, still differences of opinion con- 

 cerning the details ; and it is for this reason, as well as 

 because of the intense importance of the subject to 



