KEY TO CONDUCT

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 147, 19 December 1933, Page 3

KEY TO CONDUCT

AND TO PORTRAIT

BAD MEN'S BAD GLANDS <j

Dr. Ivo Gerkie Cobb'has b,cen "stuflj-* ing portraits of the extraordinary; Henry VIII, and concludes that at this age of, fifty-one the king was suffering from deficiency of the thyroid gland.

Thus a now importance is attached to portraits, anil (since the camera) to photographs. They may be adduced four or five centuries later. to prtfvfl that the original was a diseased person.

Diagnosis is not always deadly accurate when the patient himself -is-in fh« doctor's hands, but when' the patient is a photograph or a portrait, it seems that a doctor might have as much licence as a poet.

, This kind of diagnosis can go back bfcyond graphic, evidence. If some old archive threw up a story that Julius Ceasar always leaned his head on Ma right hand instead of on his left, it might bo decluced either that he was glandularly deficient or that hewrotu with his pen in his left hiind. . '

Dr. Cobb says his general conclusion is that "at the ago"of fifty-one the king was suffering from deficiency of the thyroid gland. It is an interesting speculation as to what changes in his mentality occurred as a result. It is fair to assume that some of the alertness and most of the ruthlessness departed; that he was no longer capable of quick decision and speedy action. His. last wife probably found her husband easier to handle than did her predecessors."

Other exports, fully conscious that tha thyroid gland is one of the most important of all the glands, say that if Henry had been a victim.of deficiency earlier in life he would certainly rothave married six times. But while ha would have' been a better husband ha would have been a worse ruler. Nor was the much-wedded Henry tho only outstanding man whose destiny was governed by the eccentricity of. a gland. It is confidently believed that if .Napoleon's pituitary gland had been functioning properly he would have won the battle of Waterloo. x The theory, deftly exploited, may yet. provide many of the world leaders of today with a way out of tjieir difficulties. Should the truculent Hitler fall by the wayside, /or example, he might easily plead that, his pituitary .had gone ainyrong. Even Mr. Roosevelt might be> tempted to blame an untrustworthy thyroid gland for the confusion arising OUt of his N.8.A.. And- how many chancellors and treasurers, faced with heavy deficits, will be able to -resist attributing the fault to their own deficient glandular secretions? As- ail excuse it would at least be as good a» any other, amT much better than most