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Updated: June 14, 2025
There is a series of organs in the body which has long puzzled physiologists, organs of glandular aspect, but having no ducts, the spleen, the thyroid and thymus bodies, and the suprarenal capsules.
The tendency for hypertension and arteriosclerosis to occur early in life in patients who have suffered some serious acute infection, whether blood poisoning, typhoid fever, or other, shows that in all probability in these acute illnesses the internal secretions are so disturbed that the suprarenal activity is greater than normal, while the thyroid activity may be less than normal, and hypertension is the consequence.
Then he talks about the "curious facts" he had "stumbled upon" and refers to an "ill-defined impression" that these suprarenal bodies, in common with the spleen and other organs, "in some way or other minister to the elaboration of the blood."
Experimental work has also demonstrated the functions of the suprarenal glands and explained the symptoms of Addison's disease, and chemists have even succeeded in making synthetically the active principle adrenalin. There is perhaps no more fascinating story in the history of science than that of the discovery of these so-called ductless glands.
While ptosis of organs in the abdomen and a flaccid condition of the musculature of the abdomen are frequent causes of this splanchlnic stasis, and therefore hypotension, especially in women, it is quite possible that suprarenal insufficiency will allow this condition of the splanchnic vessels to occur frequently.
Suprarenal extract, when administered, has a vaso-constricting influence, and thyroid extract a vasodilating influence; it may be surmised that within the body these glands perform similar functions. The important part played by the thyroid gland is indicated by its marked activity at the very beginning of pregnancy.
The next group of nervous diseases may be roughly described as due to the failure of some part of the digestive system, like the stomach and intestines, properly to elaborate its food; or of one of the great glands, like the liver, thyroid, or suprarenal, properly to supply its secretion, which is needed to neutralize the poisons normally produced in the body.
The most important of the ductless glands are the thyroid gland, located in the neck; the suprarenal bodies, situated one just over each kidney; and the thymus gland, a temporary gland in the upper part of the chest. They perform in this way a function like that of the ductless glands. The work of glands in preparing substances that enter the blood is known as internal secretion.
Rossiter himself was too intent on the stars, the gases of decomposition, the hidden processes of life, miscegenation in star-fish, microbic diseases in man, beasts, birds and bees, the glands of the throat, the suprarenal capsules and the chemical origin of life to care much for æsthetics, for furniture and house decoration.
He hastened to Paris, was appointed, and lived, in spite of the most erratic of existences, to the ripe old age of 78, working up to the last minute. Addison's monograph stimulated Brown-Séquard, in the year after its printing, to reproduce the fatal disease experimentally by excising the suprarenal capsules in animals. Addison was very modest in his monograph.
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