Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/207

 INFLUENCE OF THE PUBERAL DEVELOPMENT UPON THE MORAL CHARACTER OF CHILDREN OF BOTH SEXES.

Every organ of the animal economy exercises upon this, as a whole, a variety of influences. Some of these are of a nature more especially dynamic. In virtue of these influences the life of the organ is maintained in relation, by means of the nervous conductors of sense, with the central nervous system, from which, by reflex action, it may be diffused to the other parts of the body. Exaggerated in certain special pathological and physio- logical conditions, this action is not absent even in the usual conditions of life, although it often escapes observation.

Another kind of action, to which Brown-Sequard and D'Arson- val particularly called attention, is of a biochemical nature, and has recently been brought into greater prominence by the thera- peutic applications advocated by these authors. This consists in the fact that each organ, or rather each part of the organs, through the fact of its own functional activity, as well as from its own organic life, elaborates and secretes on its own account spe- cial products and ferments, of which the blood becomes the col- lector, and by this path they come to influence the other cells and parts, rendered in this way solidary.

We have, then, in the nervous system and in the blood two collectors of the various forms of energy developed by the organic life and functionality of the organs, by means of which each of these comes to influence powerfully the life of the others. How and to what degree this influence is exerted is still obscure for many organs ; for others, on the contrary, as for the thyroid gland, light begins to appear, through repeated observations and experiments, the close relations being now well known which connect the condition and the presence of this gland with cretin- ism and with mycoedema. Equally well known, at least in part, are the relations which connect the development of the genital organs with the physical conditions of the organism.

193