Internal secretion and the ductless glands / by Swale Vincent ; with a preface by E. A. Schäfer.

  • Swale Vincent
Date:
1912
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Internal secretion and the ductless glands / by Swale Vincent ; with a preface by E. A. Schäfer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    upon ; indeed, normal blood gives both the octahedral crystals and the depressor effect on the blood-pressure. This result has been recently confirmed by Webster (390). Gautrelet (117, 118) adopts the naive attitude that les differentes glandes hypotensives [c/. Livon, supra (216, 217)] have a common active principle, and that this is choline. Now, it has been abundantly proved that the chief active principle in brain extracts is not—indeed, can- not be—choline, for it possesses different physiological properties (Osborne and Vincent, Vincent and Cramer, Vincent and Sheen, loc. cit.). It has further been shown (Vincent and Cramer, loc. cit.) that there are powerful active principles insoluble in absolute alcohol, and others soluble in both ether and alcohol. Gautrelet says : Le role de la choline nous semble done capital dans I'organisme ; elle repond a la definition de I'hormone telle que la congoivent Bayliss et Starling nous considerons volontiers le systeme des glandes a choline (cholinogene) comme antagoniste du systeme des glandes adrenaline (chromaffine) : de la mise en jeu des deux systemes depend la regulation de la pression sanguine. La presence commune de la choline dans un cer- tain nombre de glandes explique aussi les synergies qu'ont observes les auteurs entre elles. Even if the action of tissue extracts were in reality due to choline, there would be no grounds for such an assump- tion as is here put forward. The theory that the normal blood-pressure is maintained by a series of antagonistic chemical messages arriving from the different glands and tissues of the body has been put forward previously in different forms, but there is no experimental evidence to support it. The question as to what part in the main- taining of the normal blood-pressure is sustained by the chromaphil tissues and by the nervous (posterior) lobe of the pituitary will be discussed in detail at a later stage. Popielski (301) has misunderstood the views of Osborne and Vincent, and has named their depressor substance vasodilatine (see Dale, Joiirn. Physiol., xli. and xliii.). Schwartz and Lederer (337), who worked with extracts of thymus and lymph glands, arrived at the same con- clusions as Vincent and Cramer, but do not mention their paper. They state that before them nobody had attempted
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