Any break in the somatic or psychic equilibrium, a blow or an infection, or a startling thing seen, or a worrisome thought felt, will start a process going.  This will only wind up when every gland has been somehow touched, and a final equilibrium reestablished.  The thyroid, maybe, was first excited, and then in turn the adrenals, with a boomerang reinforcing effect upon the thyroid, and at the same time a stimulating effect upon the pituitary.  Each gland is thus influenced and influencing, agent and reagent in the complex adjustments of the organism.

ENDOCRINE CO-OPERATIONS

The body-mind is a perfect corporation.  Not quite perfect, for continually there arise little insurgencies, inadequacies and frictions to which in time it will succumb.  Yet, in the efficiency of its co-operations, and in the co-ordination of the needs and supplies of producer, middle man, and consumer, there is no one of the great organizations of the captains of industry which can for a moment approach it.

Of this corporation the glands of internal secretion are the directors.  But the huge corporation, not to topple over with its own unwieldy size, must be composed of smaller units, each within itself a corporation, and governed by a directorate.  There are, in the corporation-organism, different departments and bureaus, subdivisions of function, which constitute the smaller corporations within the larger corporation.  These subsidiary companies have their own glands of internal secretion as their directors.

Thus, the growth of the brain is presided over by the adrenal cortex, the thyroid, the thymus and the pituitary.  They determine the size of the brain, the number of its cells, the complexity of its convolutions and the speed of its chemistry, which means the speed of thought and memory and imagination.  As its directorate, therefore, they may be entitled.  The disturbance of one of them means the disturbance of all of them, and a consequent deleterious effect upon the brain.  Now take the burning up of sugar in the organism, the great material source of energy, which is controlled by the pancreas, the adrenals and the liver, the thyroid and the pituitary.  Together they form the directorate of sugar metabolism.  But, as is evident from a glance at the membership of the growth directorate, and comparing it with the directorate of sugar metabolism, there are some members who are present on both boards.  An infection, an illness, an ailment, an exaltation or intoxication of such members will produce reverberations in both directorates.  A disturbance of sugar metabolism might then cause a disturbance of growth.  The advantages and disadvantages are before us of having, in the glands of internal secretion, an interlocking directorate, rulers over all the varied and manifold activities of the organism.