The Glands Regulating Personality Part 11

Yellow 9% White 33%

The composition of the skin of a very black negro may be:

Black 68% Red 26%

Yellow 2% White 7%

Now the fact that in Addison's disease in which the adrenals are destroyed there occurs a coincident increase in the black in the skin, and other evidence pointing to adrenal implication in dark complexioned white people, as well as in those possessing pigmented spots, seems to indicate the adrenals as controllers of the black and white factors. Davenport has concluded that there are two double factors for black pigmentation in the full-blooded negro which are separately inheritable. The determinants of the red and yellow have still to be worked out.

The moistness of the skin, as perspiration, depends upon the number and activity of the sweat glands. It varies with the water content of the body, the state of the vegetative nervous system, and the body temperature. Thus the skin of the hyperthyroid and the subadrenal is soft and moist, because of their antagonistic effects upon the sympathetic system. The subthyroid and the hyperadrenal have dry and harsh skins for the same reason, if no other glands intervene.

However, in both of the latter, if there is a persistent thymus, the skin will retain the bland quality of adolescence.

There is a curious variation among the different internal secretion types in the reaction of the skin to stroking. When the skin, especially the skin over the shoulders, the b.r.e.a.s.t.s and the abdomen, is stroked with some blunt object, the blood vessels react either by a greater filling up or emptying of themselves. The latter occurs most regularly in the subadrenal types, the former in the hyperthyroid.

Both forms of reaction run parallel to the different check or drive effects of the vegetative apparatus. With too much drive, that is, too much thyroid, there is the flus.h.i.+ng reaction; with too little check, that is, with too little adrenal, there is the whitening. These differences probably explain the emotional reactions of the face. In anger, for example, some people become a dead white, others a fiery red. Whether one will do one or the other may depend upon the relative predominance of the thyroid or of adrenal in the individual.

In the distribution of fat beneath and throughout the skin all of the endocrine glands appear to have a voice. The typically hyperthyroid and hyperpituitary individuals tend to be thin, as well also as those who have well-functioning or excessively functional interst.i.tial cells. In all of these the administration of the respective internal secretions increases the burning up of material in the body, and all of them have a higher rate of tissue combustion than their confreres, with a subthyroid or subpituitary keynote in their cell chemistry, or with insufficient interst.i.tial cell action. Generally the latter have a very dry skin, the former a moist skin. With delayed involution of the pineal, obesity results.

The elasticity of the skin is another quality that varies with the concentration in the blood of the internal secretions. Elasticity of the skin, its recoil upon being stretched like a rubber band, may be taken as a measure of the activity of all the endocrine glands. For, as can be noticed especially upon the back of the hand, the older a man grows, the less elastic becomes the skin. In older people, raising the skin upon the back of the hand will cause it to stand up as a ridge for a few seconds and then slowly to return to the level of the surrounding skin. Whereas in a youthful person it will quickly snap back into place. This quality of elasticity of the skin is due to the presence in it of the so-called yellow elastic fibres, cell products, with a resilience greater than anything devised by man. The preservation of the resilience is a function of the internal secretions. Thus, after loss of the thyroid, the ridging effect characteristic of senility can be produced in one young as measured by his years. It has been said that a man is as old as his arteries, and also that as he is as old as his skin. It might better be said that he is as old as his elastic tissue, young when he is rich in it, old when poor and losing it. And as elastic tissue and internal secretions stand in the relation of created and creators, or at least preserved and preservers, a man may be said to be as old, that is as young, fresh and active as his ductless glands.

THE HAIR

There is no characteristic of the human body, except perhaps the teeth, more influenced in its quality, texture, amount and distribution than the hair. And again, each of the glands of internal secretion plays a part, but most importantly the thyroid, the suprarenal cortex and the interst.i.tial s.e.x glands. All contribute their specific effect, and the blend, the sum of the additions and subtractions const.i.tuting their influences, appears as a specific trait of the individual, a trait so significant as to be used by the professionals absorbed in the study of man, the anthropologists, as a criterion of racial cla.s.sifications.

Some acquaintance with the history of the normal growth of hair is necessary to its understanding. There develops during the life of the fetus within the womb a curious sort of wooly hair everywhere over the entire body (excepting the palms and soles which remain hairless throughout life), remarkably soft and fluttery--the lanugo. At about the eighth month of intra-uterine existence, a good deal of this lanugo is lost, to be replaced on the head and eyebrows by a crop of thick, coa.r.s.e, pigmented real hair. So it happens that at birth the infant's hair is a queerly irregular growth, a mixture of what is left of the general lanugo development, and the localized patches of the more human hair. Until p.u.b.erty this children's hair remains the same, although at times, particularly after dent.i.tion, and after infectious diseases which undoubtedly alter the relations of the internal secretions, changes of color and texture occur. Then, with s.e.xual ripening, there appear in males the so-called terminal hairs, over the cheeks and lips and chin, and, in both s.e.xes, in the folds under the shoulders and over the lower abdomen, the hair which might be distinguished as the s.e.x hair in contradistinction to the juvenile hair of the head, the extremities and the back.

Now the smoothness of the face in children is connected with the activity of the thymus and pineal glands. Among individuals in whom the juvenile thymus persists after p.u.b.erty, no growth of hair occurs on the face, and in precocious involution or destruction of the pineal, hair appears on the face and in other terminal regions in children of six or less, a symptom cla.s.sical in the child who suffered from a tumor of the pineal, and discussed immortality with his physicians. It is probable that these thymus and pineal effects are indirect through their action upon the s.e.x glands. For in the types with persistent juvenile thymus there occurs a maldevelopment of the s.e.x glands, while in those with early pineal recession the s.e.x glands bloom simultanously with the appearance of adolescent hair and mental traits. The hastening of s.e.xual hair by tumors of the adrenal gland may also be put down to a release from restraint of the interst.i.tial s.e.x cells.

There are certain spheres in the hair geography of the body, over which particular glands may be said to rule or to possess a mandate.

The hair of the head seems to be primarily under the control of the thyroid. Thus in cretins reconstructed by thyroid feeding, the straight, rather animal hair becomes l.u.s.trous and fine, silken and curly. In the thyroid deficiency of adults, a prominent phenomenon often is the falling out of the hair in handfuls. Baldness is frequently a.s.sociated with a progressive decrease of the concentration of thyroid in the blood. At the same time, there tends to be a thinning of the eyebrows, especially of the outer third.

The hair of the face in males, and the other terminal hairs in both males and females, is regulated by the s.e.x glands primarily. In the female, the ovary, that is to say, the interst.i.tial cells of the ovary, inhibit the growth of hair upon the face. In destructive disease of the ovaries, as well as in other affections of it, hair in the form of moustache, beard and whiskers may appear in female. That is why in women after the grand s.e.x change of life, the menopause, hair often grows in the typically male regions because of loss of the inhibiting influence of the ovarian internal secretion upon them.

After castration of the ovaries, the same may result. Removal of the male s.e.x glands, or disturbances of them, will interfere with the proper development of the normal facial hair. Of the hair of the chest, the abdomen and the back, the adrenals seem to be the controllers. Adrenal types have hairy chests in males, and hair on the back in females. They have also a good deal of hair upon the abdomen.

The hair on the extremities varies a good deal with the pituitary.

People with hair upon hands, arms and legs, alone, are generally pituitary, or have a striking pituitary streak in their make-up.

When the adrenals increase in size in childhood, a remarkable triad follows--general hairiness, adiposity and s.e.xual precocity. One fact should be noted. When the adrenals evoke precocity, and an early awakening of the secondary s.e.x characteristics, it is a masculine precocity, and an approximation to the masculine even in females.

There is a definite trend toward an increase of the male in the individual's composition at the expense of the female. We shall have to consider this in greater detail when we a.n.a.lyze the internal secretion basis of masculinity and femininity. In general, the degree of general hairiness is an index to the amount of adrenal influence upon the organism. All the endocrines which affect the hair growth also act upon the sebaceous glands which oil the skin.

THE EYES

Eyes present clues to internal secretion const.i.tutions dependent upon influences of architecture and function. The thyroid eye is typical.

It is large, brilliant and protruding. The individual is "pop-eyed."

On the other hand, subthyroidized eyes tend to be sunken and l.u.s.treless. The eyes of a pituitary type are either set markedly apart, or close together, with the hair at the root of the nose so prominent as to const.i.tute a separate bridge known as the nasal brow.

The size of the pupil, and its humidity, which have so much to do with the expression of the eye, vary directly with the activities of the driving and checking divisions of the vegetative system, and are a pretty good index as to which, at the time of observation, is predominant. When the check system is in control, the pupils are large and dilated. When its antagonist and rival, the drive system, is on top, the pupils are small and contracted. The reactions of the pupils when charged by strong emotion, like fear or anger, likewise turn upon the status of check or drive internal secretions in the economy of the organism at the time the exciting agent presents itself.

MUSCLES

It would seem, at first sight, that organs like muscles, mechanical instruments for the manipulation of the organism in s.p.a.ce, would be more or less independent of the subtler processes of internal chemistry of the blood and tissues. But no a.s.sumption would be more beside the mark. Just as much as the bones and viscera, the teeth and the hair, they show grossly how they are being influenced by all the endocrine glands. So thyroid types generally have a skeleton spa.r.s.ely covered with a muscular mantle. Pituitary types have large well-developed muscles. The pineal gland has some definite relation to muscle chemistry not yet probed. Thus, it has been shown that when the pineal has been completely destroyed prematurely by lime deposits in it, there is concomitant a wasting of muscles in places. This waste is sometimes replaced by fat. Pictures and images in wood and stone of these muscle freaks dating from the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth century are in existence. Then there is the extraordinary fatigability of the muscles which occurs in the thymus types, who nevertheless have large well-rounded muscles, a paradox of contradiction between anatomy and physiology. Such a type, for instance, may be picked out by a football coach for an important position in a line-up, simply on the tremendous impressiveness of the muscle make-up, only to see him bowled over and out in the first scrimmage. The tone of muscles, the quality of resisting firmness or yielding softness, is essentially determined by the adrenal glands, especially in time of stress and strain.

Brown-Sequard was the first to show that extracts of s.e.x glands could increase the capacity for muscular work. Whether this was a direct effect upon the muscles, or indirect through the nerves or other endocrines, no one can say. Certainly the carriage of an individual, outer symptom of the inner tonus among his muscles and tendons, may be said to be as distinctively an endocrine affair as the color of his skin. And like its variations, variations of their tone, development, reactivity, fatigability, and endurance may be traced to corresponding states of overaction, or underaction, and odd combinations of the different hormones. Much remains to be learned about them and the manner of their control. Such an affliction as flatfoot, dependent upon a laxity of the ligaments in one who seems perfectly healthy and strong, may lead the a.n.a.lyst back to a thymus-centered personality.

That is but one example.

Since, too, muscle att.i.tudes, muscle tensions and muscle relaxations play so large a part in the production of fundamental mental states: the att.i.tudes, moods, memories and will reactions, the vegetative apparatus enters, to play its part as a determinant.

s.e.x

Over no domain of the body have the endocrines a more absolute mandatory than over that of the whole complex of s.e.x. Both as regards the primary reproductive organs, their size and shape, and the character of their implantation, malformations and anomalies, as well as the physical and mental traits lumped as the secondary s.e.xual, p.u.b.erty, maturity, and senility, voice changes and erotic trends, virility and femininity, the internal secretions are dictators at every step. So significant are these, that even a rough summary of the discoveries and the outlook in the field involves some consideration of the details.

CHAPTER VI

THE MECHANICS OF THE MASCULINE AND THE FEMININE

It needs a poet to chant the epic of s.e.x. The mystery of it puzzled the minds of the earliest Sumerian thinkers. As a source of deepest excitement, it generated the most revolting ceremonies, bizarre customs, astounding cruelties and incomprehensible stupidities of the race. Men and women, as soon as they have done with their usual business of keeping themselves free of disagreeable sensations, hunger, cold, fear of enemies, betake themselves to it as a primary interest all over the world. The most advanced psychologists of the day link the s.e.x impulse with the windings and twistings of all human activity.

Yet the Homer of s.e.x through the ages is still to come. But at all times the mystery evoked speculation and attempt at explanation.

Acting upon their theories as to the nature and function of s.e.x, men have, ever since the pa.s.sing of the primeval matriarchates, segregated women, equalized them, wors.h.i.+pped them, or enslaved them. Opinions have varied from ancient national aphorisms to the effect that women have no souls to the most ultramodern utterances of biologist-publicists that the differences between men and women are the differences between two species. There are other epigrams, vast sweeping generalities, extant concerning the nature of s.e.x, and women particularly. All partake of the complexity of truth and therefore own a certain validity. Still, since as a matter of fact, these items have been based upon superficial observations colored by the tradition and verbiage of the milieu, they are valuable more as human doc.u.ments, as material for the psychologist, than as scientifically obtained data, able to stand unblinking before the rays of the critical searchlights.

SCIENCE VS. ART

Not that all the vast acc.u.mulation needs to be thrown pell-mell, higgledy-piggledy into the discard. The love lyrics of the poet, the magic of the emotions of Sh.e.l.ley and Poe, for instance, with their marvelous music and exquisite intonings of feeling, furnish us with important information. They are the facts of the s.e.x life, as much as the song of the nightingale, or the mocking laughter of the cuckoo pursued by its mate. So Sappho and Elizabeth Browning, to take only two samples, have contributed some of the feminine reaction. The erotic motive in literature has but paralleled the erotic motive in life, with all of its vagaries, delusions, confusions, ecstasies and suffering.

We have had concerning s.e.x not knowledge, but a series of att.i.tudes, the att.i.tude of virtue, the att.i.tude of pruriency, the att.i.tude of good taste, the att.i.tude of the theoretic libertine, the att.i.tude of the satyr's vulgarity. All these poses, of course, have supplied not an iota to an understanding of the foundations of the problems of s.e.x, biologically considered. Thus, a masculine master has coined that immortal phrase, the Eternal Feminine. And in a matriarchate we should undoubtedly hear of the Eternal Masculine. Each leaves one as unenlightened as the other. A rough and ready code of life attributes certain grossly characteristic qualities of mind and body to each s.e.x. This is supposed to be enough for common sense. Beyond that the mystery has been wrapped in cotton wool. That perhaps explains the enormous popularity of contemporary p.o.r.nographic and so-called s.e.x literature.

There are bound up with s.e.x feeling and s.e.x knowledge many customs, beliefs and habits, many legal statutes and social inst.i.tutions, in the complex that is called sentiment, to which science looms as the sacrilegious ogre who devours romance. Without spending s.p.a.ce upon the ravages of the sentimental idealist, certainly responsible for as much human disaster as the brutal realist, it is manifest that a revolution in s.e.x standards and relations is inevitable as soon as the new doctrines filter down as matters of fact to the levels of the common intelligence. And surely, nothing else could be wished for in the world desired by all of us, the world ruled by intelligence, and intelligent good will.

s.e.x CHEMISTRY

A few general statements may be put down outright as material to go upon before we proceed to details.

1. Femininity and masculinity have a definite chemical basis in the reactions of the internal secretions of which they are the expression.

That is to say, that just as a precipitate of chalk is formed when one throws some carbonate of soda into lime water, so the masculine and the feminine are to be looked upon as precipitates and crystallizations of a long series of linked chemical reactions in the fluids of the body, in which the internal secretions play a determining part.

2. Femininity and masculinity are expressions of the interplay of all the internal secretions. It used to be said by smart cats and accepted by the tabby cats, that a woman was a woman because of her ovaries alone. It is being said by some great discoverers of the day that man is a man because of his testes alone. Neither of these dogmas is true.

There are individuals with ovaries who show every deviation from the feminine and there are individuals with testes who exhibit every variation from the masculine. The other endocrine glands are of equal importance.

3. There is no absolute masculine or absolute feminine. The ideals of the Manly Man and the Womanly Woman were erected by the blind ignorance of the nineteenth century illusionists, and a line drawn to cleave them. But indeed biologically there exists every transition between the masculine and the feminine. The explanation of these different s.e.x types consists in the different admixtures of the internal secretions possible and actual. When we speak of the feminine we really mean the predominantly feminine. And when we speak of the masculine, we mean the mainly masculine. Between, all sorts of transitions are possible and occur.

Man in relation to the internal secretions we have considered in reviewing the interst.i.tial cells. To him, we shall return later. Let us turn now to that fascinating subject of the ages, Woman. What produces and maintains the Feminine?

THE CAUSE OF s.e.x

To all appearances, that inscrutable simplest of living things, the fertilized ovum, beginning of the human, starts bis.e.xual, double s.e.xed, both masculine and feminine, or perhaps neither masculine nor feminine. Then a form develops. Then within that form a patch of cells arise which the microscopist recognizes as the forerunners of the male or the female reproductive cells. Then some more development. And at birth, s.e.x is definitely settled, as far as the reproductive organs are concerned.

Our knowledge here, as everywhere, is still fragmentary. Statistical reviews seem to show that in times of stress, war, famine, pestilence, more boys are born than girls. But that is neither here nor there. It sheds no further light on the subject. Monos.e.xuality is a distinction of the human species: the s.e.xes are pretty clearly differentiated.

In some animals, such as some worms, there is a bis.e.xuality of the individual. There are present the reproductive organs of both s.e.xes, capable of impregnating other individuals as well as of being impregnated. In some of these, even self-impregnation may occur. This is the condition of hermaphroditism.