170 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLII. No. 1075 



The only fairly complete chemical work 

 yet done on any of these organs is that on 

 the suprarenal glands. These organs are 

 two flattened, ductless, yellow-brown glands, 

 each of which is loosely attached to the 

 anterior and inner part of the summit of 

 the corresponding kidney. The normal 

 gland of a healthy man weighs, according 

 to Elliott,^" between four and five grams, 

 and contains four or five milligrams of the 

 characteristic principle concerning which 

 I shall speak in a moment. These organs 

 are essential to life; their destruction in 

 man by tubercular and more rarely by other 

 processes leads to a chronic condition char- 

 acterized by gastro-intestinal symptoms, 

 great muscular weakness and a bronzing of 

 the skin and mucous membranes, this whole 

 syraptom complex being known as Addi- 

 son's disease (1855). In man and the 

 higher animals generally this organ is a 

 double structure in which two parts which 

 are quite separate and totally different in 

 lower fornos, as in the elasmobraneh and 

 teleostean fishes, are united in such a man- 

 ner that one constitutes the medulla and 

 the other the cortex of the gland, the latter 

 completely enclosing the former. 



The cortical part of the gland is called 

 by histologists the inter-renal tissue. Biedl 

 has shown that when this tissue is removed 

 from selachians (where, as just stated, it 

 constitutes a separate organ) the animal 

 gradually weakens, no longer takes food 

 and dies in fourteen to eighteen days. Still 

 other experiments demonstrate that this 

 cortical part of the gland exerts great influ- 

 ence on bodily growth and sexual develop- 

 ment. Numerous researches of a chemical 

 character have been carried out on this 



30 "Death and the Adrenal Gland," Quar. Jour. 

 of Medicine, Vol. 8, p. 47, 1914. An interesting 

 paper by E. R. Weidlein, a feUow of the Mellon 

 Institute, on the adrenal glands of the whale will 

 be found in the Jour, of Industrial and Engineer- 

 ing Chemistry, Vol. 4, No. 9, September, 1912. 



part of the gland, especially in respect to 

 its lipoid content. Last year Voegtlin and 

 Macht^^ isolated from it and also from 

 blood serum a new crystalline substance 

 which has a vaso-constricting action on the 

 blood vessels and a digitalis-like action on 

 the heart. This has been decided to be a 

 lipoid closely related to cholesterin. As 

 we are entirely ignorant of the means by 

 which the adrenal cortex exerts its pro- 

 found influence on the body, the isolation 

 of this substance is of especial interest. 

 For the present we can not state whether 

 it represents one or all of the products of 

 the internal secretion of the cortex, or 

 whether, indeed, it has any connection at 

 all with the function of the gland. 



The medullary portion consists of cell 

 groups which assume a brown color when 

 treated with chromic acid or dichromates, 

 in consequence of the reduction of these 

 compounds to brownish or reddish-brown 

 basic chromates. For this reason it has 

 been designated the chromaphil tissue. 

 Now such chromaphilie cell groups are not 

 confined to the medulla of the suprarenal 

 gland, but are also found lying alongside 

 the abdominal aorta, in the carotid gland 

 and in the sympathetic system. 



It was known to earlier experimenters 

 that aqueous extracts of the entire capsules 

 were highly toxic to animals when injected 

 directly into the circulation, but it re- 

 mained for Oliver and Schafer in 1894 to 

 demonstrate that extracts of the medullary 

 part, in the most minute quantity, cause a 

 marked rise in blood pressure and greatly 

 stimulate the heart. In 1897 I showed that 

 the substance responsible for these actions 

 could be isolated from the glands in the 

 form of a benzoyl compound. ^^ Salts of a 



31 "Isolation of a New Vasoconstrictor Sub- 

 stance from the Blood and the Adrenal Cortex, ' ' 

 Jour. Amer. Med. Assoc, Vol. 61, p. 2,136, 1913. 



3- For literature see Abel and Macht, Jour, of 



