The control of sugar mobilization from the liver, where it is stored as glycogen or animal starch, is divided between the pancreas and the adrenals, the pancreas acting as the brake, the adrenals as the accelerator of the mechanism.  Adrenal and pancreas are therefore direct antagonists, the pans of the scale which represents sugar equilibrium in the organism.  Diabetes may be regarded as a disturbance of the adrenal-pancreas balance, assisted by events which produce adrenal overwork like great or prolonged emotion, or by strain of the pancreas, effected by over-eating for example.

There are other minor glands of internal secretions.  But those considered are by far the most important and the most recently explored.  In a summary, one would classify them as follows: 

Name Secretion Function
1.  Thyroid Thyroxin Gland of energy production
Controller of growth
of specialized organs
and tissues—­brain
and sex

2.  Pituitary—­ Gland of energy consumption
and utilization—­continued
effort
anterior Unknown Growth of skeleton and
supporting tissues
posterior Pituitrin Nerve cell and involuntary
muscle cell, brain and sex tone

3.  Adrenals The Gland of Combat
cortex Unknown a.  Brain growth—­tone
development of
sex glands
medulla Adrenalin b.  Energy for emergency
situations

4.  Pineal Unknown a.  Brain and sex development
b.  Adolescence and puberty
c.  Light and maturity

5.  Thymus Unknown Gland of Childhood

6.  Interstitial  Testes in male     Glands of secondary
glands of   Ovaries in female   Sex traits

7.  Parathyroids Unknown a.  Controllers of lime
metabolism
b.  Excitability of
muscle and nerve

8.  Pancreas Insuline Controller of sugar
metabolism

CHAPTER IV

THE GLANDS AS AN INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATE

Now in considering each gland of internal secretion as a separate entity, and labelling it with certain properties and actions, we of course commit the usual sin of the intellect:  the sin of abstraction and isolation of its material.  This crime of analysis the intellect commits every day in the search for truth.  Before its dissection, it seems to have to dip the elusive article in a fixative, and bottle it in a vacuum.

Yet nothing in reality is more of a changing flux than the body in all of its parts and tissues and organs.  And of all these, the glands of internal secretion stand out as the most susceptible to change.  Made to react to stimuli of offense and defense, instantaneously responsive to situations involving energy exchanges and protective reflexes, they are never for any minute the same or alone.  They never function separately.  Each influences the other in a communicating chain.  Let one be disturbed, and all the others will feel the impact of the disturbance and vibrate with it.