Second Character. Remission of the Glandular Life.
The second character of the glandular life, is that of being subject to habitual alternations of increase and diminution. Sleep extends especially to the animal functions; they alone are completely suspended in the ordinary state, and it is this which constitutes sleep. But the glands sleep also to a certain extent, though there is never a complete suspension except in diseases. I would compare the sleep of animal life to the intermissions of intermittent fevers in which the apyrexia is complete, and the sleep of the glands to those of remitting fevers in which the paroxysm is only moderated, though it always continues.
The saliva is copiously poured out when aliments enter the mouth, at other times it only moistens this cavity. Whilst the chyme is passing through the duodenum, the pancreas and liver moisten it abundantly; they are also in action during hunger, but in an infinitely less degree. I have convinced myself of this by many experiments upon the comparative state of digestion and hunger; the substance of these experiments I have given elsewhere. We know that it is some time after eating before the kidneys commence their action. The intermissions of the action of the mammæ are almost as real as those of the organs of animal life. Each mucous gland has its time of secretion; it is that in which the surfaces, to which the excretories go, are in contact with any substance that is remaining there, or that is only passing.
The glands then must be considered as continually separating a fluid from the blood, and as being at certain periods in greater activity, and consequently as furnishing more fluids.
This remission of the glands appears to be owing to a cause nearly analogous to that of sleep, which, in animal life, is produced by the weariness the sensitive and locomotive organs experience, after long continued action. The kind of weariness which the glands are capable of experiencing, is not in general attended with a painful sensation, as in animal life; its nature appears to be wholly different. Yet women, after nursing too long, feel a pain in the breast that warns them to leave off. The testicles become the seat of a painful sensation, when the emission of semen has been many times forced.
Third Character. The Glandular Life is never simultaneously raised in the whole system.
The vital properties of the glands are never simultaneously excited in all. When one is in action, the others are in remission. We might say, that there is but a determinate quantity of life for all, and that one cannot live more without the others living less. To this law is the digestive order accommodated. In the first period the salivary glands furnish at first a great quantity of fluid; in the second, the parietes of the stomach; in the third, in which the chyme passes into the small intestines, the liver and the pancreas are principally in action; in the fourth, it is the mucous glands of the great intestines which especially act; and finally the kidneys enter into a particular action in order to evacuate the residue of the fluids. All the glands cannot act at the same time; it is as in the external motions in which certain muscles always rest whilst the others contract. The most improper time for coition is that of digestion, because we then make the mucous, hepatic, pancreatic secretions, &c. coincide with that of the testicles. In diseases one gland increases its secretion only at the expense of the others. Observation proves this every day.
We might, as I have said, make use of this remark, by producing in various glandular and other affections, artificial catarrhs, a disease which we can always produce on the mucous surfaces by the introduction of a foreign body. I have for some time past made much use of ammonia respired by the nose. Pinel prescribes it before the paroxysms of epilepsy. There are an infinite number of other cases in which it is very efficacious, as in some kinds of cephalalgia, in ataxic fevers, in certain apoplexies, in various comatose affections, &c. A blister does not act till the expiration of some time; it requires four, five, six hours even for it to produce an irritation. Who does not know that oftentimes in diseases in which the forces are much prostrated, it has no action on the cutaneous system? On the contrary, the excitement of the pituitary membrane by ammonia is always sudden on the one hand and always efficacious on the other. Its effect, it is true, is only instantaneous, but this is precisely its advantage; for in many cases a blister is only useful the moment it irritates the skin; hence the use of drying it immediately and reapplying it. The employment of ammonia or of any other strong stimulant upon the pituitary membrane, can be repeated every quarter of an hour, every five or six minutes or even every minute. If habit renders the patient less sensible to its excitement, we can replace it by another irritating substance, whereas we cannot thus change the cutaneous excitement by a blister. What I have said of the pituitary surface is applicable to those of the rectum, the urethra and stomach, on which we can in many cases apply in diseases excitements in a more advantageous manner than is done upon the skin by means of blisters.
Moreover, the character of the glandular life of which we are treating, is only an insulated modification of a character general to all the vital properties, a character which consists in this, that they are weakened in one place when they are raised in another. Hence why the great collections of pus, large tumours and dropsies are always attended with a weakness in the glandular action. It is upon this character that rests the use of vesicatories, setons, moxa, cauteries, &c. which do not act, as has been said, by evacuating the morbific matter, but by making the irritation of the diseased part cease by that which is produced elsewhere.