The action of extracts of the pituitary body / by H.H. Dale.

  • Henry Hallett Dale
Date:
[1909?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The action of extracts of the pituitary body / by H.H. Dale. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    3/26 (page 427)
    By H. H. DALE, M.A., M.D. From the Wellcome Physiological Research Laboratories, Herne Hill, London, S.E. (Received October 1st, 1909) T. INTRODUCTORY Though the activity of pituitary extracts was discovered by Oliver and Schafer (1) almost simultaneously with that of suprarenal extracts, the conceptions of the nature of the action of the former are as yet far less precise. A comparison of the two was inevitable, and it lias more than once been suggested that their action, at least as regards vaso-constriction, is of the same kind and produced by stimulation of the same structures. Herring* (2) advanced this view as regards the arteries: a more recent observation by Cramer (3), of the action of pituitary extract on the pupil of the frog’s eye (enucleated), lends support to the same idea : still more recently an account given by Bell and Hick (4) of the action on the uterus emphasised the similarity between the action of extracts from the two organs. I thought it worth while, therefore, to bring together a number of observations, made at different times and in different connexions, which appear to me to indicate that such correspondence as exists is wholly superficial and illusory. In the first place it must be admitted that the actions of pituitary and suprarenal extracts have superficially several points of suggestive similarity. Both raise the blood-pressure, peripheral vaso-constriction being a principal factor in the effect (3 diver and Schafer): in both cases the active principle is limited to a small, morphologically independent portion of the gland, developmentally related to the central nervous system in tire one case, as to the sympathetic system in the other. Attention is drawn to these points of similarity by Schafer and Herring (5), who state that ‘ here the parallelism ends ’: but the divergence of which they make specific mention is that the pituitary extract has an additional effect on the kidnev. Since thev attribute this to a separate active principle, no true divergence is indicated between the pressor principles of the two organs. It has been shown (Langley (6), Brodie and Dixon (7), Elliott (8) ) that the action of adrenaline reproduces with striking accuracy the effects of stimulating nerves of the true