During the 1890s, animal development became associated with glandular activity, with profound implications for pediatric nosology and treatment. The significance of this endocrinological turn of developmental physiology and pathophysiology in part hinges on an often-overlooked continuity with ubiquitous early modern medical thought concerning semen as a recrementitious (reabsorbed) nutrient or stimulant. Mid-19th-century interests in adult sexual physiology were increasingly nerve-centered and antihumoral. Scattered empirical, particularly veterinarian, interests in gonadal developmental functions failed to moderate these explanatory trends. While Brown-Séquard’s rejuvenation experiments still offered no clear starting point for a developmental endocrinology, in 1892 Gaston Variot and Paul Bezançon more explicitly deduced a testicular developmental endocrinological function from various observations on testicular ectopy and a local form of animal “demi-castration.” Ensuing interest in the thyroid, the thymus and in the testicles led to various working conceptions of their respective and putatively reciprocal developmental properties, including the idea of a thyroid–testis axis. From 1896, the pubertal affliction of chlorosis became the subject of multiple opotherapeutic approaches, providing an experimental basis for theories of ovarian internal secretion. Polyglandular therapy, piloted for divergent developmental conditions, remained routine until the 1930s despite the biological inefficacy of many endocrine products.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Sengoopta, Chandak;
(2006)
The Most Secret Quintessence of Life: Sex, Glands, and Hormones, 1850--1950
(/isis/citation/CBB000641869/)
Article
Borell, Merriley;
(1976)
Brown-Séquard's organo-therapy and its appearance in America at the end of the 19th century
(/isis/citation/CBB000021877/)
Article
Borell, Merriley;
(1976)
Organotherapy, British physiology, and discovery of the internal secretions
(/isis/citation/CBB000015611/)
Article
Vienne, Florence;
(2009)
Vom Samentier zur Samenzelle: Die Neudeutung der Zeugung im 19. Jahrhundert
(/isis/citation/CBB000932099/)
Article
Logan, Cheryl A.;
(2007)
Overheated Rats, Race, and the Double Gland: Paul Kammerer, Endocrinology and the Problem of Somatic Induction
(/isis/citation/CBB000773240/)
Article
Patrick M. Walsh;
(2021)
Making a French Connection: Darwin, Brown-Séquard and the Epilepsy Studies
(/isis/citation/CBB412080330/)
Article
Krementsov, Nikolai;
(2008)
Hormones and the Bolsheviks: From Organotherapy to Experimental Endocrinology, 1918--1929
(/isis/citation/CBB000850413/)
Chapter
Stoff, Heiko;
(2008)
Verjüngungsrummel. Der Kampf um Wissenschaftlichkeit in den 1920er Jahren
(/isis/citation/CBB001023677/)
Article
Schmidgen, Henning;
(2013)
Between the Laboratory and the Museum: Claude Bernard and the Problem of Time
(/isis/citation/CBB001252926/)
Book
Randi Hutter Epstein;
(2018)
Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything
(/isis/citation/CBB966154025/)
Article
Liborio Dibattista;
(2019)
The young Nicola Pende and the ambiguous adrenal gland: at the origins of Italian endocrinology
(/isis/citation/CBB864995852/)
Book
Curth, Louise Hill;
(2010)
The Care of Brute Beasts: A Social and Cultural Study of Veterinary Medicine in Early Modern England
(/isis/citation/CBB001020712/)
Article
Stone, G. M.;
Wales, R. G.;
(2004)
Clifford Walter Emmens, 1913--1999
(/isis/citation/CBB000502359/)
Article
Tucker, Richard P.;
(2013)
Elisabeth H. Winterhalter (1856--1952): The Pioneer and Her Eponymous Ovarian Ganglion
(/isis/citation/CBB001320363/)
Chapter
Guido Cimino;
(2016)
Il problema della sensazione nell'opera di Alessandro Pascoli tra Cartesio e Haller
(/isis/citation/CBB950423941/)
Article
Etchegaray, Claire;
(2013)
Whytt and the Idea of Power: Physiological Evidence as a Challenge to the Eighteenth-Century Criticism of the Notion of Power
(/isis/citation/CBB001213582/)
Article
Gregoric, Pavel;
Kuhar, Martin;
(2014)
Aristotle's Physiology of Animal Motion: On Neura and Muscles
(/isis/citation/CBB001321034/)
Book
Williams, B. Innes;
(2000)
The Matter of Motion and Galvani's Frogs.
(/isis/citation/CBB000110057/)
Book
Rebecca M. Jordan-Young;
Katrina Karkazis;
(2019)
Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography
(/isis/citation/CBB120687996/)
Article
Tommaso Ghezzani;
(2023)
Medicamenti della memoria e medicamenti dell’anima: ferita amorosa e carnalità tra Ficino e Patrizi
(/isis/citation/CBB935553455/)
Apeiron: Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science
Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte
Bruniana & Campanelliana: Ricerche Filosofiche e Materiali Storico-testuali
Bulletin of the History of Medicine
Early Science and Medicine: A Journal for the Study of Science, Technology and Medicine in the Pre-modern Period
Be the first to comment!