The early history of endocrinology

Abstract

Endocrinology may be defined as the science of the ductless glands, and is thus a branch of physiology. I have not attempted, in this essay, to cover the history of endocrine anatomy, nor have I searched for early references to diseases such as diabetes mellitus or cretinism, diseases which were described long before they were shown to have any association with the endocrine system. Only those clinical observations which have contributed to our knowledge of the physiological role of the ductless glands, have been mentioned.

The work is not intended to be an exhaustive review of the subject, but rather an outline, with comments on a selected number of important pieces of observational and experimental research. It is based upon original articles written in English, French and German. Unfortunately, some early articles are not available in the libraries to which I have had access, so that occasionally I have had to resort to quoting another author's account of the article in question, the source used has been given in each case.

One standard textbook of physiology states "the subject of endocrinology belongs entirely to the twentieth century ". (Lovatt Evans 1947). If this view is correct, most of the following essay is superfluous, but I believe that the foundations of endocrinology were laid during the nineteenth century and that the discovery of secretin by Bayliss and Starling marked the end of the early history of the subject. It is true that the term "endocrinology" was not used until the present century and that the concept of the ductless glands forming a specialised system with complex inter-relationships, is of very recent origin. Nevertheless, it was during the eighty years from 1827 to 1907 that knowledge of the function of the endocrine glands was removed from the realms of speculation and placed upon the surer foundation of experimental evidence.

It is not my purpose to deal with the speculations of the early anatomists, which were really working hypotheses, untested by further experiment or observation I have described the development of our knowledge on each gland separately, because not until the twentieth century were the individual glands recognized as a part of a new system comparable in importance to the older systems such as the cardio- vascular and respiratory systems.

I hope to demonstrate at the end of this essay that progress in endocrine illustrates to some extent an increasing application of the scientific method.