GLAND

The term is applied to two distinct groups of bodies—lymphatio glands and secreting glands. The glands in the neck so often enlarged in tuberculous children are the lymphatic glands. Lymphatic glands act as filters to the lymph which pa es ee them by arresting the foreign bodies, including germs, which the lymph contains. Normally the gland destroys any germs it arrests, but abnormally the latter succeed in destroying the gland. Secreting glands, e.g., the liver or kidney, produce some fluid of a characteristic nature like bile, called the secretion, which is made use of elsewhere, or else an excretion, like urine and sweat, which is expelled without being used in the body. Secretions are subdivided into external ones that are poured on to the surface of the skin or mucous membrane, e.g., oil of hair glands, or saliva, and internal ones that are absorbed into the circulation and used to alter the character of the blood, e.g., the thyroid secretion from tho thyroid gland in the neck. It has been shown of recent years that many glands formerly thought to produce an external sec roti on only produce an internal secretion also. Thus the pancreas produces an internal secretion the absence of which causes diabetes. the kidney one that effects nutrition, and tho absence of which causes rapid wasting; and it is po ible that all glands may be Eom to have internal secretions. Profe or Starling orm Reape that the intestinal juice besides consores fab y that digests cane sugar has a second body, enter ok i which is absorbed by the blood and on reaching the pancreas stimulates it to activity. Enterokinase may thus be regarded as the internal secretion of the intestinal glands. The subject has a great practical bearing, partly because the defoctive action of one gland = be aaicety due to the failure of a far distant ono, to which treatment should bo directed, and partly because these internal secretions can be isolated and used in the treatment of those cases in which they are known to bo deficient. [s. 370]