The Oregon daily journal., May 17, 1908, Page 28, Image 28

' . VMS! e m . X
"VrfA N vfC yT -v'H M K AP-A
TheMysteriousGland
That Ha
Science to a
iscovery
HERE is one great
question now agi
fating the medical
profession: Has
the seat of life
b e e n found at
last? li the whole
science of medi
cine to be revolt'
lionized by the
discovery of the
functions of a
body in the hu
man organism about uhich as little has
been known in (lie past as about the per
plexing appendix, that has caused so much
trouble?
An impossibility a ludicrous impossi
bility of course, many will assert prompt
ly. Galen and Hippocrates have been too
long dead, Metschntkoff and Koch too long
alive, to make the idea anything less than
laughable.
Yet, denuded of its scientific phraseol.
ogy, it was precisely that which brought
together, in Philadelphia, a short time ago,
the two great national bodies, the American
(Therapeutic Society and the A merican Phar
maceutical Association.
They joined to hear, from the lips of
Dr. Charles E. de.M. Saoust a discourse
on "The Auto-Protective Resources of the
Body: a New Foundation for Scientific
Therapeutics."
For the first time, although heralded
with the most earnest indorsements by the
most authoritative medical journals of this
country and of Europe; although advocated
by some of the most distinguished medical
authorities known to science, the epoch
making discoveries of Sajous have impinged
upon the attention of the profession in a
manner which compels recognition of their
magnitude.
And this article is the first that brings
before the world at large any knowledge of
the wonderful promise, for health and iife,
which exists in this outcome of twenty years
of the most patient investigation and the
most arduous labor.
JUST here the' head restsupon the coltrtnn
of the spine, directly under the human
brain, is located small gland towhich
. science succeeded in giving a name, and .
nothing more. : '
Science called it the pituitary body. "' Sci-;
ence supposed it secreted something or other; -but
what it secreted! how it secreted, and why
it -secreted, science did not know, and, until
Sajout took up his stupendous labors, science
did not care. . "
Science cares now. Sajous' work has dem
onstrated that it is the last, .secret stronghold
of the life of man; and the fluids which the
pituitary body produces are those which gov
ern, the products of the adrenal system, whose
functions, Sajous had to demonstrate, likewise,
in their .truealue.-v'V: 'i ;";;.. v :
- V Fort the adrenals, withi - other ' ductless
glands are really the things that dominate the
human body, and control the "noble organs"
th heart, the lungs, the liver on which science;-
uio.iwsnroiung
- JUocated on the very-: ton. of. tlw tniml
column, ImmloUately below, the- brair protected
1 V - y PORTLAND, OREGON SUNDAY HORNING, - HAY'. 17, ; 1903 ' . ':
fv: jl 41 -1
Startling ,Mf5yl H i:
v.' ' .JJsaj-,-- V
. . .- ... I' I 11' I mini II 'Hi 11 11 'HI! I ' fj
on ; all sides . with. , the Outmost j -care, " lies taeV
pituitary body.' ? To its; role in- theeconoiny of
the human, bod
a recently published 'text-book
oi ' pnysioiogy. devotes seven . lines,
tes seven. lines. Indeed, be-
yoad .the fact that it was suDnoscd to nrovids ,
""w oracuuiF-uiB purpose oi wnica :
had never beei" ioundT-notWhg Was' kliown' as to"
the" actual 'role, of ite fo'rwlrd ' lobe'; .whiie its -
' posterior lobe had been" relegated,' to-'tho! rahk'of
Saious- demonstrates ; not onLvthat : this
foncention is false; but that the nituitarv bodv. .
in lis reiftiiom to tne iuncuous 01 mo duuj at
;large;is
itself. Xone of these functions is impaired
when the cerebral hemispheres of the brain are
removed; all cease, however, when the pituitary
body is submitted to the sume removal.
The brain, as the organ of mind, can utilize
the epinal system, with ;,hich it is connected,
to execute its mandates; but the spinal system
is also supplied with its own brain, the pituitary
body, which Sajous terms the somatic brain, the
poverning organ of all vegetative functions. He
shows, moreover, that this somatic brain con
tains a delicate organ whose mission is to pro
tect the body against disease.
Sajous studied this organ in the animal
scale, and found it in all animals down to such
low forms as moll us ks, where it bears a sugges
tive name given to it by zoologists, the test
organ, or osphradium, and is known by them to
have the function of testing the water for these
lowly beings as they pass through it and take
it in.
In the higher vertebrates, including man,
this test-organ protects against disease.
. Thus it is asserted that in the "somatio
brain," in the pituitary, body in that new and
tiny brain of the human being whose functions
Sajous has at last discovered lies the ultimate
seat of human life, lies the citadel which is the
very center of the agents that guard against the
destruction of life. ....
Sajous found that the adrenals two small
capsules above the kidneys, first comprehended
in their importance by Brown-Sequard were
provided with a center situated at the base of
the brain. This, he subsequently . ascertained,
was a nucleus of cells in the posterior lobe of
the pituitary body. That nucleus received nerve
fibers from the sensitive test-organ.
HOW THE BODY IS PROTECTED
The manner in which any" poison or toxin
can increase general oxygenation? became ap
parent: it excites the test-organ, and this struct
ure, in turn, through nerve-paths, increases the
activity of the adrenals. Thus the bipod is
provided with an excess of adrenoxidase, one of
the constituents .of the body's protective sub
stance, auto-antitoxin. But the metabolism, or
chemical changes by all organs, being rendered
unusually active by the excess f adrenoxidase
in the circulating blood,- the formation of leu
c6cytes, or white cells !ini the . blood, is stimu
lated, and "the . proportion ''of their product in
the blood is correspondingly increased. '
The secretions of the :pancreas, an im
portant gland near the stomach, being also stim
ulated by the ; excess pf - adrenoxidase, more
trypsin is produced; and we thus have the.three
components of 'the body's protective fluid auto
antitoxin, theoxygen-la4en adrenoxidase ; and
the phpsphoTus":!aden '-products pf " the blood's-;
white cells to; supply the increased heat-energy .
required Jto senable-the trypsin to destroy bac-;
teria, their toxins, or any other poisonous agent ";
which the blood may contain. :- ?
: A comprehension Vof the ' essence of , 'Dr.
Sajous' discoveries' can, however, come best from
the words of DrT J. Madison Tayjor, for five -years
his associate in . the editorship of ' The
ilonthlv Cyclonedia of Practical Medicine. Dr.
.Taylor,- remarking that.'Dr. Sajous', wbrkv-was.
conceived- after - a unique medical- editorial ex
perience, said that all current literature from
all countries has been utilized, .as well as thou
sands of direct manuscripts and treatises, in
various languages, from high authorities. v
"The chief among the working principles
which he has welded into a concrete whole and
has made available," 'said Dr. Taylor, "is that,
in understanding the natural history and phe
nomena of disease, we must bear in mind that
the great organs hitherto .regarded as dominant
and known as the 'noble organs euch as the
heart, tho lungs and the liver are really sub
sidiary to the true .dominant organs,' that is, to
the ductless glandf which are the--adrenals, .the
thyroid and the pituitary bodies.
"These constitute a controlling system
which exercises a regulative' action upon the
subsidiary orgaii3, . constitutingAtho- keyi3yitaJ
processes. ,;' - "
MANY MYSTERIEStSOLVED
Tni-estimating not nlythesigmficanceol '.
phenomena, but the action of . remedies, it 4sr '
necessary to bear in mind that, whatever ap.' ,
parent actions- areevolved, theoessentiwVagenciea -are
those n?Mchnharu:)ryiepre59KthaNiadrenal
system. '
"A numberfKbserver3aveadeijplaii ,
that the secretion of the adrenals is the chief r
factor in regulating tho caliber f the blood
vessels, the ebb and flow of body fluids. Dr.
- Sajous has shown that hepivotal gent,istthia ,
adrenal secretion, which sustainsthe-chieferol9 -'
in the distribution of oxygen. ' . '
"It is to this analytic work that'Sajousowevi
the discovery that the underlying, cause of the 1
existing confusion in medicine was due to the
prevailing lack of knowledge concerning , the
functions of the ductless glands; it was his i
Bynthetio work which led him to the discover
of the true Tole of these organs in the body. -
"As soon as these functions had oeen ea-
tablished by him, hundreds of problems, ninety-... ,
six of which he enumerates in the introduction ,
to his second volume, found a ready solution,
the experimental results of a multitude of in- ,
vestigators thus falling into line, as it were, of
their own accord.
"Pulmonary and tissue .respifation, ab
. sorption and nutrition, tho circulation of the
nervous system, the nature of organic function
and the manner in which it is awakened, the
composition 'of ' ferments, the production of
sleep, are . but a few of: the - many problems
r which physiologists had admittedly failed to
SOlve. ' , ''? ":S'v"v-.-'-".'-:-'. . .-
"TTheil once all these problems were solved,
and the- solutions proved correct by the pre
cision with which they all harmonized, a su
perb mechanism .revealed itself to Sajous; that
pf the human organism complete, the function '
of the ductless glandss andthe presence of their
, ; products in. all organs having filled many da- .
plorable gaps those identical 1 functions which
physicians and ' histologists, notwithstanding
- their painstaking laborst bad failed to explain.
'i , "Sajous found ,that the adrenals supplie 1
; ''a secretion which passed to the lungs and took
up therein the oxygen of , the, air. This solved
the cardinal problem of human. functions: that
lof pulmonary respiration. He discovered an
vother important fact in this conue-tion, thaS
V- . (CONTINUED ON XXSIt)IJ TAGK.)
v-..
V,
Vv
ir: