EMOTIONAL STATES AND THE SUPRARENAL SECRETION

Abstract

There has been a tendency in the past few years to assign functions of unexpected or unanticipated importance to the suprarenal glands. Through the medium of the epinephrin that they secrete, these structures are assumed to reinforce the action of the sympathetic nervous system. Introduction of epinephrin into the body has long been known to produce hyperglycemia, which is nearly always accompanied by glycosuria. In connection with this fact, the opinion has been ventured that some or perhaps most of the familiar forms of experimental hyperglycemia are dependent primarily on excitation of the suprarenal glands to increased secretion of epinephrin, which then causes an accelerated mobilization of sugar in the same way that epinephrin does when artificially introduced. As evidence that the suprarenals intervene in the production of such phenomena as the glycosurias following asphyxia, anesthesia, etc., it is contended that they cannot be obtained after removal of the glands.