THE THEORY OF GLANDS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5305, 27 July 1928, Page 4

THE THEORY OF GLANDS.

INTERVIEW WITH Dll. VOHONOFF. HIS VIEWS EXPLAINED. To the lay mind there is, in the accounts of the experiments and operations of Dr. Serge Voronoff, a suggestion of something revolutionary and far-removed from ordinary medical practice ; but expoundin g in an interf view with tdie “Observer” the theories on which he has built, Dr. Voronoff maintained that there was nothing that was revolutionary an;d little that was new. His operations are, he say£, only an application of principles long ago established and theories widely held. Tlie monkey-gland operation is, he says, only a new form of what is known as opotherapy. The part the gianidsi play in the physical system has, for a long time been universally understood. As Dr. Voronoff puts it, “Outside the organs which preside over the intellectual, tlie circulatory, the respiratory, and othep, functions, there are other organs which act upon them from a distance by means of substances which they pourl into the circulatory system. In this way they ar© able to influence' far-lying territories of the tody, and even the whole organism.” These organs are the glands, it has long; been recognised that they, by means of their internal secretions, act on the evolution of the cells, and are responsible for the health of the body.

GLANDS AND LIFE. As long ago as 1889 Biiown-JSequard, who has been called “the; father of opotherapy,” discovered 1 that these secretions are the same in animals as ini meir, and he conceived the idea of treating such dfiseaseS, as had been discovered to be .due to the atrtophy of ome or other of the. glands by giving the patient an extract fnom the same gland of a healthy animal. Thus pepsine has been used for many years as a remedy in dyspepsia to supplement the deficiency of digestiv juice in the stomach ; fcone-marrow has been used for persistent anaemia. The; most strikiiijg results were obtained with the disease known as? myxoedema, which is caused 1 by the atrophy of the thyroid gland'. “The thyroid gland,” said DU Voronoff, “is like a sparking-plug for the brain.” Children who are sometimes born without the gland' are id’otq. The sufferers from myxoedema are little betten Their faces' are puffy and expressionless, their speech slow, their hands shapetess and spade-like, their circulation slow. With such people thyroid extract has proved a valuable, medicine. “But,” said Dr. Voronoff, “to imitate the processes of nature this substance would have to be taken inj minute doses constantly repeated for the rte s t of one’s life I” It is for this reason, he. suggests, that the “almost universal application of the methods of Brown-Sequard has not realised the hopes which it, originally aroused. It was the introduction later of grafting into SjUrgery that made possible Dr. Voronbff’s discovery, by which, instead of taking the gland extract in the forim of tablets —a clumsy and not. very s;uecefssful device —a healthy gland cap be grafted on the body to replace the atrophied one. WHAT OLD AGE MEANS. • So far the work of Di\ Voronoff has only been an extension in practice of a principle universally recognised, but from this point he began to develop a theory of the cau s e of senility which is, perhaps, not quite so 'Universally recognised. It would seem probable, he says, that one of the glands was made to elaborate some substance which wouldl stimulate the vitality of. the cells of the body ; and if that were s o the advah.ee of old age, and especially of senility, would seem to indicate that its; function had cfeased; that, in fact, the gland’s function was limited to a certain period of life. If, for example, that had been the -misfeio.il of the thyroid gland, all men of advanced age would become idiots ; if the para-thyroid gland were to’cease to function in ithe senile, cleat# would always follow tetanic convulsions!; if the pituitary gland dicl- not fulfil its function after a certain age death would rapidly follow, ow'ng to a retardation of the respiration rate and a lowering of the; t©mpeiiature—and) so on.

“During advancing age,” he said, “the function bf all these glanls conr tinues, doubtlessly weakened, but still present, anfi the organs; do not stop pouring into the circulation the secretions which are essential to life. One gland only-.-whicli is, of coulee, the sexual gland l —forms an ’exception to this rule. Are we to take it that this is a coincidence ?” ■ REJUVENATION.

From; this,position the whole of his praet'.ce follows. His famous juvenating”; operation consists,, as wc all know, in grafting the sexual gland of a healthy monkey on to the patient. He maintains strenuously that -his object is not to re-awaken the sexual desire in mep. That, he says, does, not always follow ; but what always does follow i.s'a physical and psychological change which is always for; the better. It is seen that from his theory the vitality of the cells of the body and bi'ain depends on the internal secretions of this gland l .

After his operation he maintains that his patients are; always mentally and physically improved; that they are in fact “rejuvenated.” Tihe operation, he says, should take plade as soon as possible after! a man has passed middle-life. “Middle-life” for every man occurs at a different time; it may be comparatively early ; it may be comparatively late. He- says also that iiT many castes a gfiaft has; been, made successfully on one patient a,, second time. A third graft has not yet been tried except on a ram. He said that, having treated 1300' patients, ihe could point to a high percentage of successes. With some, but not many, he had kept in touch for a long “period after _ the operation. Others had' apparently felt better and gone their ways without communicating with him further. NO FEAR OF ANIMAL INSTINCTS. It is clear, once the theory undeit'r stood, that there is no £spger, as

many people fear, that the result of an animal-graft might be the transference of animal instincts to the patient. It is the function of the glands simply to encourage the other organs to act, each according to its own function. If the thyroid gland of a healthy man were grafted on to a decayed horse thte horse would' not think like a man, but it would b,e enabled to us;e its own brain after its own fashion; the cells would be, revitalised; the horse would be more healthy, but it would still only live and act through the organs of a horse.