This article is only available in the PDF format. Download the PDF to view the article, as well as its associated figures and tables.
The first to stress the importance of the glands of internal secretion and the physiology of the body were Claude Bernard and Brown Sequard. Raverdin and Roder coined the term myxedema, while Pierre Marie demonstrated the relationship between lesions of the hypophysis and acromegaly. These glands of internal secretion have been invoked widely as playing a salient rôle in the causation of mental disease. In idiocy and dementia paralytica, lesions of the thyroid, ovary and testis have been frequently reported, but the conflicting conclusions of many investigations make the subject still obscure, perhaps, as Witte has said, because of the small number of cases studied. Thickening of the meninges and degenerative changes in the brain cortex have been described but cannot be regarded as pathognomonic. In Brazil, in 1900, Paulo Brillo declared that the thyroid gland was always altered in cases of dementia praecox, a declaration based on the examination