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Updated: June 21, 2025
The adrenal glands, we noted in a preceding chapter, are concerned with the maintenance of muscle and nerve tone in emergencies. They are the glands which, during crises especially, control the production and supply of energy to the various organs and tissues called upon to function to the utmost in emergencies.
Whether one will do one or the other may depend upon the relative predominance of the thyroid or of adrenal in the individual. In the distribution of fat beneath and throughout the skin all of the endocrine glands appear to have a voice.
Cannon of Harvard has built up an entire theory of the adrenal as the gland of emergencies upon the basis of these effects. In the facing of crises the adrenal functions as the gland of combat. And indeed, as I have mentioned, the more combative and pugnacious an animal, the more adrenal it has, while the timid and meek and weak have less.
With the general diffuse pigmentation or darkening there are often the black spots, the pigmented birth marks, or the lighter ones of freckles. The latter signify some permanent or transitory adrenal inadequacy in the past, ante-natal or post-natal, of the individual, and presage the same in his future. These spots have been frequently observed to appear after an attack of diphtheria or influenza.
All these details I have given in the attempt to analyze the internal secretion constitution of this great man of genius, to establish that he really suffered from inadequate function of his adrenal glands, for the symptoms of chronic though benign adrenal insufficiency coincide in their mass effect with the story of his life.
The cause of such a transformation in a previously entirely normal woman has been found to be a tumor of the adrenal cortex. But not only is sexuality, and the conduct of the secondary sex characters, connected with the adventures of the adrenal cortex. The development of the master tissues of the body, the brain, the pride and darling of evolution, is in some subtle way correlated with it.
They regard the condition of the ovary as insufficient to explain the development of the male characters, and suggest that such birds are really hermaphrodite, a male element being possibly concealed in a neighbouring organ such as the adrenal or kidney.
It is also significant that after the application of each of the adequate stimuli which increased the H-ion concentration of the blood in other parts of the body the blood from the adrenal vein showed a slight diminution in acidity, as, in most instances, did the blood from the hepatic vein also.
Upon the basis of these structural, functional and mental differences, the qualitative and quantitative evolution of which in the race as in the individual is guided by the glands of internal secretion, Keith presents a very good case for the view that the white man is an example of relative excess of the pituitary, thyroid, adrenal and gonad endocrines.
When both adrenal glands are excised and no other factor is introduced, the Nissl substance progressively disappears from the brain-cells until death. Here our purpose is to discuss the cause of the brain-cell changes.
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