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They witnessed, not only the publication of Claude Bernard's "Lectures on Experimental Physiology," but also the appearance of a monograph by Thomas Addison, an English physician, entitled "On the constitutional and local effects of disease of the suprarenal bodies."
Not long ago these glands were a complete enigma, owing to the fact that they are not provided with excretory ducts. It has just recently been shown that these organs, such as the thyroid, the pituitary, the suprarenal, the parathyroid and the reproductive glands, exercise an all-powerful influence upon the course of individual development or deficiency.
The ureter of the left side was very short. The left renal artery came from the bifurcation of the aorta and the primitive iliacs. The right kidney was situated normally, and received from the aorta two arteries, whose volume did not surpass the two arteries supplying the left suprarenal capsule, which was in its ordinary place. Displacements of the kidney anteriorly are very rare.
Many observers have noticed that negroes become several degrees lighter after syphilization; but no definite relation between syphilis and leukoderma has yet been demonstrated in this race. Postmortem examinations of leukodermic persons show no change in the suprarenal capsule, a supposed organ of pigmentation. Climate has no influence.
About the same time that Bernard was developing the laboratory side of the problem, Addison, a physician to Guy's Hospital, in 1855, pointed out the relation of a remarkable group of symptoms to disease of the suprarenal glands, small bodies situated above the kidneys, the importance of which had not been previously recognized.
"I do not think you would comprehend it," he replied; "it is an affection of the suprarenal capsules." I dimly remembered that there were such organs, and that nobody knew what they were meant for. It seemed that doctors had found a use for them at last. "Is it a dangerous disease?" I said. "I fear so," he answered. "Don't you really know," I asked, "what's the truth about it?"
Lionville found a deposit of silver in the kidneys, suprarenal gland, and plexus choroideus of a woman who had gone through a cure with lunar caustic five years before death. Med., 1868.
It has been shown that the pancreas, the spleen, the thyroid gland, the suprarenal capsules are absolutely essential, each in its own way, to the health of the organism, through metabolic changes which they alone seem capable of performing; and it is suspected that various other tissues, including even the muscles themselves, have somewhat similar metabolic capacities in addition to their recognized functions.
One of the latest, but by no means the only one, is that it can be done by use of the extracts of various glands administered to the mother. I do not know with what scientific authority it was stated, but I do know that some one has recently said that adrenalin, derived from the suprarenal glands, induces boys to develop cholin, from the bile of the liver, girls.
Although the evidence does not positively exclude any possibility of infection, it speaks distinctly against this view. A possible explanation is that the low fever is a secondary symptom. The suprarenal glands may function insufficiently as a consequence of the emotional poverty, since all emotions which have been experimentally studied seem to stimulate the production of adrenalin.
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