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Updated: June 12, 2025
Then, too, stimulated by these impressions, certain secretions are instantly emptied from the ductless glands into the blood which, acting like fuel in an engine, generate more power in the machine, fill it with anger or fear and prepare it to respond to the directions to fight or flee, or to any type of action incident to the machine.
This conception, we find, is now receiving an admirable and beautifully adequate physical basis in the researches of distinguished physiologists in various lands concerning the parts played by the ductless glands of the body, in sensitive equilibrium with each other, pouring out into the system stimulating and inhibiting hormones, which not only confer on the man's or woman's body those specific sexual characters which we admire but at the same time impart the special tone and fibre and polarity of masculinity or femininity to the psychic disposition.
Thus the adrenal glands, among the most influential of all the ductless glands, are specially and intimately associated alike with the brain and the sex organs. As we rise in the animal series, brain and adrenal glands march side by side in developmental increase of size, and at the same time, sexual activity and adrenal activity equally correspond.
The extreme claim is that all instincts, in fact all thoughts and operations, are in the last analysis chemical or chemico-physical. Let us examine this claim for a moment. The adrenals are two inconspicuous ductless bodies situated immediately above the kidneys.
When animals are castrated there is enlargement of the ductless glands in the body, notably the thyroid and the suprarenal capsules. It is evident, therefore, that the secretions of these ductless glands are in some degree compensatory to those of the testes. But this compensatory action is inadequate to produce any sexual development in the absence of the testes.
This may become active and dominant in its turn, under certain conditions of stimulation, abnormality, or disease, dependent upon a rearrangement of status and influence among the ductless glands. Bisexuality preceded monosexuality in the animal pedigree, and co-exists with it even at the highest points of the genealogical tree.
Obviously, in view of all the influences exerted by the ductless glands upon every organ and function of the body and mind, and their intermediary, the vegetative nervous system, a relation must exist. Observations accumulated, some of which have been referred to in the preceding chapters, prove the complete, though complex, reality of such a deduction.
The Spleen and Other Ductless Glands. With the lymphatics may be classified, for convenience, a number of organs called ductless or blood glands. Although they apparently prepare materials for use in the body, they have no ducts or canals along which may be carried the result of their work.
It appears to take some part in the formation of blood corpuscles. In certain diseases, like malarial fever, it may become remarkably enlarged. It may be wholly removed from an animal without apparent injury. During digestion it seems to act as a muscular pump, drawing the blood onwards with increased vigor along its large vein to the liver. The thyroid is another ductless gland.
There are certain instruments used by scientists so delicate that they have to be wrapped in cotton wool and kept in ductless places, and so sensitive that the slightest shock will derange them. And there are certain souls which cannot stand the jars of life souls created to register thoughts and sentiments too fine for those of coarser construction.
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