Volume 1

The endocrine organs : an introduction to the study of internal secretion / by E. Sharpey-Schafer.

  • Edward Albert Sharpey-Schäfer
Date:
1924-1926
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The endocrine organs : an introduction to the study of internal secretion / by E. Sharpey-Schafer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    it. Other tissues and organs which can be subjected to the action of extracts are skeletal muscle and nerve, cardiac muscle, the white corpuscles of the blood, ciliated cells and pigment cells (both within the body and in excised portions of tissue). Tadpole Test A test which is frequently employed to detect the presence of certain autacoids formed by the endocrine organs—especially those of the thyroid and pituitary—is the feeding of tadpoles with the glands or their extracts. It is found that certain of these organs promote metamorphosis and check growth, whilst others check metamorphosis and promote growth in the larvae to which they are administered.1 The terms substitution therapy, organotherapy, opotherapy, hormonotherapy, and autotherapy have been employed to denote the effects produced by administra¬ tion of organs and their extracts—especially of the endocrine organs—either with the view of combating symptoms which are believed to be caused by a deficiency in the blood of the autacoids which are produced by these organs, or for the purpose of obtaining a particular pharmaco-dynamic effect. The fact that such extracts have come into extensive therapeutic use emphasises the essentially drug-like action of the active substances they contain.2 THE INFLUENCE OF ENDOCRINE ORGANS UPON ONE ANOTHER By no means the least important part of the subject of endocrinology is that which relates to the influence exerted by the secretion of the endocrine organs upon one another. Our knowledge regarding this is still in many respects confused : although the fact that there is such influence is well established for some of the more important of those organs. This influence may take the form either of increasing or of diminishing activity, i.e. it may be either hormonic or chalonic : and it mav act bv the secretion of one endo- »■ */ crine gland either influencing the growth and development of another or causing an increase of its secretion, or rendering the tissues upon which it exercises its action more or less sensitive. Special reference will be made in the case of each endocrine organ to such possible correlation with other internally secreting structures.3 GROUPINGS OF THE CHIEF ENDOCRINE GLANDS Most of the purely endocrine glands can be grouped under the three main heads of thyro-parathyroid apparatus, suprarenals, and pituitary. It is note¬ worthy with regard to these groups that each of the organs forming the group 1 Gudernatscli, Zentrlbl. f. Physiol., xxvi., 1912. 2 This subject is dealt with at some length by J. T. Halsey in Endocrinology and Metabolism, 1922. 3 For a summary of the literature of this subject up to that date, see R. G. Hoskins in Amer. Journ. Med. Sci., cxli., 1911.
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