The Press Wednesday, April 21, 1926. Voronoff and Gland Grafting.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18671, 21 April 1926, Page 8

The Press Wednesday, April 21, 1926. Voronoff and Gland Grafting.

Man, know thyself, was the advice of an old Greek philosopher; and man, midst many perplexities, has endeavoured to carry out that advice; though the more he learns of himself, the more infinitely complex he finds both liia bodily and mental make-up to be. He builds up new knowledge, and with it new theories; but our little systems I:ave their day and cease to be, and man continues —if not in the same state of muddledom as of yore—so little advanced in knowledge and in wisdom that it is seriously argued by acute rninds that he has made no real progress during the centuries. Be this as it may, it seems clear that he has found certain rocks beneath his feet in the sea of delusions in which ..he usually lives, though having found such a rock, he is apt to proclaim it as the eternal foundation of all things, and then after all see jt slip from under him, until he finds himself once more wallowing in the ooean of ignorance. At the present moment there are some who tell us that man may know himself if only he will study his endocrine glands, the glands of internal secretion—the thyroid, pituitary glands, adrenal glands, and thymus. These bodies had long been looked upon as mere accessory or vestigial organs; but now it is known that they are the most potent physiological controls of the body, and the behaviourists further tell us thaj; you have only to know the condition of a man's endoerine glands, and you will be able to foretell his character and diseases. Although there may be a good deal of truth in .this statement, it is not the whole' truth as they would proclaim it to be, and would be sharply opposed by psychologists, metaphysicians, and theologians. Bo when Voronoff states that man may live to 140 years- if only he will allow certain endocrine glands from monkeys to be engrafted into his own body, we are prepared to treat the statement with only conditional respect. JNow the. cables tell us that he declares that by grafting the pancreas of a monkey into a man he has found A method of treating diabetes superior to the insulin treatment. Our San Francisco correspondent in our same issue tells of similar experiments in the States. A short explanation may be necessary. In the pancreas there are scattered about small groups of glandular cells—perhaps a million in nprnfyer-rknown as the islands of Langerhan*. They secrete the hormone, insuiin, which controls the sugar supply.' of the body. I£ the secretion is disturbed, diabetes ensues, sugar is excreted from the body, passes in excess into the blood, and the supply stored in the liver becomes unavailable. The situation has been compared to that of a locomotive with its coal bins leaking and the. coal itself behaving as if turned to slate. Now the injection of insulin into the body enables it once more to control its sugar supply, and the patient is again able to lead a normal life. Of course if his case is a bad one, he has to have repeated and continued injections, and this is a nuisance to Jiim, and may interfere very largely with his usual activities. However, the discovery of insulin and the method of using it. is one of the greatest triumphs of modern medical science, and has given to thousands who would otherwise speedily have descended to the grave lengthened live# of usefulness. Voronoff now suggests that the grafting into the human body of the pancreas of the ape is an improvement updn the insulin treatment. It is possible that it may be; hut the method at present is only in the experimental stage. lt«wiil involve a major operation, and will be attended with many risks, and users of insulin will no doubt hesitate long before they subject themselves to such a violent form of treatment. The methods of Voronoff and Steinach will no doubt have their upholders; and undoubtedly their rejuvenation processes have given some wonderful results, whether lasting or not time alone can show; but to say that men are mere Bobots, little better than intelligent automata, whose health, lives, characters, 'and souls—as sorao would have us believe —are controlled by their glands of internal secretion, is asking too much even of this materialist generation. Yet certain writers go even further, and one, Dr. Bemoan, tells us that "the chemical condition of "man's being, including the internal " secretions, are the steps of the ladder "by which one day he will climb to "those dizzy heights where he will "stretch out his hands, and find him- " self a god." A clay god we are sadly afraid, a cunning cast of no importance to himself or. to anyone else. The splendid purpose that shines in man's eyes cannot thus be resolved into mere chemical secretions. It has its significance apart from matted.