Hormones and structural development / by Charles R. Stockard.

  • Charles Rupert Stockard
Date:
[1927]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Hormones and structural development / by Charles R. Stockard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    secretion present in the developing individual is an enor¬ mously important element in determining the rate of its growth. This, the thyroid does by primarily determining or affecting the rate of metabolism. The significance of this we have pointed out above by showing that the rate of development is the most profound factor in determining the quality and amount of structural production. The cretin is an abnormal or pathological individual. Its conditions wTould preclude the breeding of a race of such specimens. It is not in itself a type, it is an ar¬ rested child stage, but the cretin furnishes an extreme growth condition which is most helpful in fully appreciat¬ ing the influence of the thyroid gland on the growth of the so-called normal types of men. If time permitted we might review other peculiar de¬ velopmental and structural specimens that could in some manner be attributed to the unusual action of several other glands of the body which modify growth. Many striking pathological growths are familiar to all; let us, therefore, proceed to consider certain strange and unusual individuals constituting real types, which cannot properly be classed as pathological. The various dwarf types of man are very instructive in a study of growth reactions and structure. In this regard it is passing strange that all biological analyses of these people are not made from the points of view of inheritance and the factors modifying growth and envelopment. Many of the dwarfs are in most respects normal, and they simply differ from the common type as the small breeds of several domestic animals differ from the large. The cause of such types we can determine by considering both the genetic and developmental modifications possibly concerned in their production. The statement that this may be the same large problem as the origin of any species or type should not be discouraging since certain peculiar
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