Volume 1

The Internal secretions and the principles of medicine / by Charles E. de M. Sajous.

  • Sajous, Charles E. de M. (Charles Eucharist de Medicis), 1852-1929.
Date:
1903-1907
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The Internal secretions and the principles of medicine / by Charles E. de M. Sajous. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    854/872 (page 788)
    Jf. }Yhen a favorable reaction does not follow the use of saline solution, it is because the adrenal system also requires direct stim- ulation, such as that afforded by strychnine, digitalis, etc., admin- istered subcutaneously. 5. The use of saline solutions is also indicated in general or local chronic diseases due to, or associated with, insufficiency of the adrenal system. The pre-eminent part we ascribe to salt solution in the preservation of the functional integrity of the cellular elements and of the fluids by which they are surrounded becomes a nor- mal consequence when, as suggested by modern cosmogony and palaeontology, sustained by the teachings of comparative anat- omy and embryology, the origin of cellular life is traced back to the primitive seas. The many vestigial structures which the human frame exhibits as relics of its evolutional past not only include evidences of a primitive aquatic existence, the embryonic branchial or gill- clefts and the pituitary bodies, for instance; but the plasma in which all the cells of the organism bathe may be said to also typify the original medium, and to assert by its composition, its claim to recognition as a factor of a problem which is destined to revolutionize every depart- ment of human thought: i.e., the origin of species. At the Thirteenth International Medical Congress, Rene Quinton maintained that all aggregates of cells, such as those repre- sented by our organs, were essentially colonies of marine cells, which required as a sine qua non of their existence their original environment. Sea-water, he also contended, differs little, if at all, from the blood-plasma in composition. Our own labors confirm this interpretation. Whether immersed in its primor- dial fluid, as is the elementary marine cell, or traversed by its prototype, the blood-i^lasma, as are the cellular colonics of which all organs are built, matters little: All find in the saline medium's constituents the agencies necessary to their continued existence. Even the governing center of the adrenal system, the anterior pituitary body, which differs from all other cellu- lar aggregates and the elementary cell itself in that its func- tional activity is upheld by a special agency, is dependent for the latter upon a constituent of marine plants and sea-water: i.e., iodine.