THE HYPOPHYSIS CEREBRI CLINICAL ASPECTS OF HYPERPITUITARISM AND OF HYPOPITUITARISM

Abstract

Few chapters in the history of medicine tell a more creditable story than that which relates our progress toward a better understanding of the thyroid and parathyroid glands. A combination of clinical, experimental and surgical experiences during the past twenty years has served to unveil many of the mysteries which formerly surrounded the function of these structures, whose normal activities prove to be so essential to the maintenance of physiologic equilibrium. Myxedema, cretinisn, exophthalmic goiter, surgical myxedema (cachexia strumipriva) and tetany have come to be understandable maladies, definitely amenable to rational methods of treatment—and organotherapy, when glandular activity is subnormal, or partial surgical removal to correct functional over-activity, is a triumph of the experimental method in medicine, at the hands of Horsley, Kocher, Halsted, Gley, Vassale and Generale, MacCallum and a host of others. Not the least memorable incident of the entire story was the recognition, first by the Italian