7. Parathyroids Unknown a. Controllers of lime
metabolism
b. Excitability of
muscle and nerve
8. Pancreas Insuline Controller of sugar metabolism
CHAPTER IV
THE GLANDS AS AN INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATE
Now in considering each gland of internal secretion as a separate entity, and labelling it with certain properties and actions, we of course commit the usual sin of the intellect: the sin of abstraction and isolation of its material. This crime of analysis the intellect commits every day in the search for truth. Before its dissection, it seems to have to dip the elusive article in a fixative, and bottle it in a vacuum.
Yet nothing in reality is more of a changing flux than the body in all of its parts and tissues and organs. And of all these, the glands of internal secretion stand out as the most susceptible to change. Made to react to stimuli of offense and defense, instantaneously responsive to situations involving energy exchanges and protective reflexes, they are never for any minute the same or alone. They never function separately. Each influences the other in a communicating chain. Let one be disturbed, and all the others will feel the impact of the disturbance and vibrate with it.
Any break in the somatic or psychic equilibrium, a blow or an infection, or a startling thing seen, or a worrisome thought felt, will start a process going. This will only wind up when every gland has been somehow touched, and a final equilibrium reestablished. The thyroid, maybe, was first excited, and then in turn the adrenals, with a boomerang reinforcing effect upon the thyroid, and at the same time a stimulating effect upon the pituitary. Each gland is thus influenced and influencing, agent and reagent in the complex adjustments of the organism.
ENDOCRINE CO-OPERATIONS
The body-mind is a perfect corporation. Not quite perfect, for continually there arise little insurgencies, inadequacies and frictions to which in time it will succumb. Yet, in the efficiency of its co-operations, and in the co-ordination of the needs and supplies of producer, middle man, and consumer, there is no one of the great organizations of the captains of industry which can for a moment approach it.
Of this corporation the glands of internal secretion are the directors. But the huge corporation, not to topple over with its own unwieldy size, must be composed of smaller units, each within itself a corporation, and governed by a directorate. There are, in the corporation-organism, different departments and bureaus, subdivisions of function, which constitute the smaller corporations within the larger corporation. These subsidiary companies have their own glands of internal secretion as their directors.