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This was the commencement of organotherapy. Since that time investigation of the more important organs of internal secretion namely, the gonads, thyroid, thymus, suprarenals, pituitary, and pineal bodies has been carried on both by clinical observation and experiment by a great number of physiologists with very striking results, and new hormones have been discovered in the walls of the intestine and other organs.
This really arose from the primitive beliefs, to which I have already referred as leading to the use of eyebright in diseases of the eye, and cyclamen in diseases of the ear because of its resemblance to that part; and the Egyptian organotherapy had the same basis, spleen would cure spleen, heart, heart, etc.
These Chinese views reached Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and there is a very elaborate description of them in Floyer's well-known book. And the idea of harmony in the pulse is met with into the eighteenth century. Sir John Floyer: The Physician's Pulse Watch, etc., London, 1707. Organotherapy was as extensively practiced in China as in Egypt.
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