In the average feminine pituitary type of personality, post-pituitary dominates. In a woman and to a lesser degree in a man, the general build is slight and rather delicate. The skin is soft, moist, and hairless, the face is the doll or Dresden China sort, with a roseate or creamy complexion, flushing easily, eyes large and prominent. The mouth shows a high arched palate and crowded teeth rather long. The voice is high-pitched. One recognizes the traditional womanly woman, petite and chic, who always marries the hero in stories. She is usually fond of children, easily moved, has a good libido, and the traditional feminine traits. When unstable, the post-pituitary type is restless and hyperactive, craves excitement, and continual change of interest and scene, a new pleasure every moment. A good many of the women of today, who fifty years ago would have been nice sedate girls because of their excellent post-pituitary constitution, have been irritated by the atmosphere of post-1914 into the excess post-pituitary state, the adventurous never-satiated avid pleasure hunter, in whom the craving for stimulation will stop at nothing. F. Scott Fitzgerald portrayed an exquisite specimen of the kind in his short story "The Jellybean," with a quasi-heroine of a good Southern family, built to be a high standard wife and mother, who drinks, swears, gambles, and finally marries on a dare. Modern post-pituitary woman is excitement mad and thrill chasing. The worst of it is that the resultant personal tragedies cannot be dismissed as transient inevitables. The heredity of the internal secretions determines that the offspring of these women are bound to be pituitary unstable, the least desirable of endocrine instabilities because of the concomitant mental effects. Even from the purely selfish point of view, the standpoint of enlightened selfishness, the post-pituitary type must beware of excesses. For disturbances of menstruation, psychic fears, anxieties, states of suspicion and obsession, various pains are among the penalties.
A period of post-pituitary excess as an effect of disease, pregnancy, or the rapid life, may be followed by post-pituitary deficiency as a result of exhaustion of the gland. The girl or woman then becomes fat and suffers from headaches (the fair, fat and forty type) yet retains a certain capacity for enjoyment which enables her to continue gay, happy and gentle, kind, interested. So she contrasts with the thyroid deficient who gets fat, but also dull, stupid, even morose.
The masculine pituitary personality, the man with a dominant anterior pituitary gland in a roomy sella turcica with plenty of space to grow in, is the ideal virile type. They are generally tall (unless the growth of the long bones was checked too early by a social precocity of the testes) with a well-developed strong frame, large firm muscles, and proportionately sized hands and feet. The head is of the marked dolichocephalic type, flattened at the sides, face is oval more or less, with thick eyebrows, eyes rather prominent, nose broadish and long, lower jaw prominent and firm. Prominent bony points like the cheek bones, the elbows and the knees, the knuckle joints of the hands and feet. The teeth are large, especially the upper middle incisors, and they are usually spaced. The arms and legs are hairy. High grade brains, the ability to learn, and the ability to control, self-mastery in the sense of domination of the lower instincts and the automatic reactions of the vegetative nervous system, the rule by the individual of himself and his environment are at their maximum in him. The ante-pituitary personality is educable for intelligence, and even intellect, provided the proper educational stimulus is supplied. Men of brains, practical and theoretical, philosophers, thinkers, creators of new thoughts and new goods, belong to this group. The distinction between men of theoretical genius, whose minds which could embrace a universe, and yet fail to manage successfully their own personal everyday lives, and the men of practical genius, who can achieve and execute, the great engineers, and industrial men lies in the balance between the ante-pituitary and the adrenal cortex primarily. Men like Abraham Lincoln and George Bernard Shaw belong to this ante-pituitary group.
The feminine pituitary personality, in whom there is predominance of the post-pituitary over the ante-pituitary, occurs in men. The type is short, rounded and stout. They have heads that seem too large for their bodies, the general hair distribution on the trunk and extremities is poor, although that of the scalp and face is plentiful, and they acquire an abdominal paunch early. They exhibit the feminine tendency to periodicity of function, their moods, activities, efficiency are cyclic, reminding one of the menstrual variations of the female. This rhythmicity saturates their personalities, so that poetry and music almost morbidly appeal to them. A number of the great poets and musicians are to be classified as of the feminine pituitary species. Last, but not least, they are the hen-pecked lovers and husbands. Sex difficulties are frequent in their history.
The determination of endocrine type and tendencies, the prediction of the future personality, during childhood is one of the developments confidently to be looked for, as our knowledge of the internal secretions will grow. The possibilities of control loom as one of the most magnificent promises of science. Yet the high expectations for tomorrow should not depress our respect for the achievements of today. In the case of the pituitary, for instance, a hint as to the method of approach is furnished by the tabulation of the traits of pituitary dominance and pituitary inferiority in children.
Pituitary sufficient and dominant:
Large, spare, bony frame
Eyes wide apart
Broad face
Teeth, broad, large, unspaced
Square, protruding chin and jaws
Large feet and hands
Early hair growth on body
Thick skin, large sex organs
Aggressive, precocious, calculating, self-contained
Pituitary inferior:
Small, sometimes delicate skeleton
Rather adipose, weak muscles
Upper jaw prognathous
Dry, flabby skin
Small hands and feet
Abnormal desire for sweets
Subnormal temperature, blood pressure and pulse
Poor control of lower vegetative functions
Mentally sluggish, dull, apathetic, backward
Loses self-control quickly, cries easily, discouraged promptly,
psychic stamina insufficient
The pituitary personality in childhood produced by limitation of the size of the gland, because its bony box is completely or partially closed, presents typical hall-marks. He supplies the second and third offenders in the juvenile courts, the delinquents and pathological liars of childhood, the incorrigibles, the precocious hoboes, mental and moral deficients and defectives, the prey of the sentimental complexes of elderly virgins and helpful futility all around. Not utilitarianism or futilitarianism is needed, but pituitarianism. The feeding of pituitary gland in large enough quantities to these unfortunates may do more than ten charity organizations, with the most patrician board of directors complete.
THE THYROID PERSONALITIES
The accessibility of the thyroid gland in the neck, the ease of surgical approach, the definite effects following its removal, and then the miraculous marvels of the feeding of thyroid have rendered it the centre of attack by the largest army of endocrine investigators. As a result we know more about the thyroid in childhood, adolescence, adult life and old age than about the other glands.