of the antagonizing gland extracts has helped others.
An Italian, Bossi, in 1907, used adrenal gland curatively. More
recently, a British student of the subject, Blair Bell, was given the
direction of the treatment, at long range, of a number of cases in
India, the land of chronic pregnancy with insufficient food, and
consequent oversecretion of the ovaries, with the typical softening of
the bones. At his suggestion pituitary was used successfully.

Some of the glands of internal secretion act as accelerators to the
sex glands. Others act as retarding antagonists. Among the most
important of the latter is

THE THYMUS

The thymus is the gland which dominates childhood. It appears to do so
by inhibiting the activity of the testes or ovaries. Castration causes
a persistent growth and retarded atrophy of the thymus. Removal of the
thymus hastens the development of the gonads.

Situated in the chest, astride the windpipe, it descends and covers
over the upper portion of the heart, overlapping the great vessels
at the base of the heart. It is a brownish red mass, which when cut
presents the spongy effect of a sweetbread. The more intimate view
of detail revealed by the higher powers of the microscope shows
conglomerations of the white cells of the blood known as lymphocytes.
But scattered through the substance of the gland, between these
lymphocytes, like the interstitial cells of the sex glands placed
between the sex cells, are peculiarly staining cells in whorls.
Of which there are many more in the thymus of embryonic and early
postnatal life, known after their discoverer as Hassal's Corpuscles.
They are believed by some to elaborate the specific internal secretion
of the thymus. Present in all vertebrates, there seems to be more of
it in the carnivora than in the herbivora, like the thyroid.

Concerning the exact function of the thymus, we are a good deal at
sea. The latest opinion about the results of extirpation even in young
and growing animals is that they are nil. Yet there is a certain
justification for proclaiming the thymus the gland of childhood, the
gland which keeps children childish and sometimes makes children out
of grown-ups. There is a quantity of data for that proposition. In
the first place, the curve of rise of growth of the gland seems to
coincide with the period of childhood, the curve of its decline with
the period of adolescence and the rise of the sex glands. In the
past, it was accepted, that