us.

Feeding of the gland was then extended to a particular class of
defective children, children with well-shaped heads, normal eyes,
symmetrically functioning limbs, excellent digestion, strong muscles
and generally, normal, sometimes rapid growth. It is to them,
particularly when mental normality has progressed up to the eighth,
tenth or twelfth year and stopped, that the term "moron" has been
applied. They have been a hopeless lot, belonging to the limbo of the
incurables. Moreover, they, emphatically the physically normal ones,
differ from one another enormously in the extent to which mental
operations are possible. As all transitions and degrees exist, no
definite classification and subdivision of them has been made. Yet
ever since the cretin, once looked upon as an eternally damned
defective, was transformed by thyroid feeding into an apparently
normal being, there has been no dearth of effort to find the right
kind of internal secretion to fit their desperate situations, but in
vain. In defectives with definitely, organically damaged brains,
no result of course was to be expected. In those of any class over
fifteen, no response has been elicited by feeding pineal gland. In the
others the results have been contradictory.

A set of observations have related the pineal to muscle function,
inviting comparison of it with the thymus. There is a singular muscle
shrinking and deforming disease, known as progressive muscular
dystrophy, hitherto a complete and unsolved mystery. Newer studies
of the pineal in this disease during life by means of the X-ray have
shown it calcified, that is, buried in lime salts, which signifies put
out of business. Recently thus another hint as to its function has
been ferreted out.

The tadpole as a reagent to test out the growth effects of different
glands of internal secretion has also been employed for the pineal.
Ten-day-old tadpoles fed on pineal present a marked translucency of
the skin due to a retraction of the skin pigment cells. Now without a
doubt a number of as yet unknown growth and metabolic effects follow
exposure of the body to the complete gamut of light rays. The
interesting suggestion follows that the pineal influences the body by
varying the degree of light ray reaction.

The pineal, the ghost of a once important third eye at the back of
our heads, still harks back in its function to a regulation of our
susceptibility to light, and its effect upon sex and brain. So