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Drawing of René Descartes by Jan Lievens, 1644-1649. Collection Groninger Museum, on loan from Municipality of Groningen, donated by Hofstede de Groot, Photo © Marten de Leeuw. |
A forgotten paradigm involving the pineal gland.
By Peter J. Koehler
Some time ago, I wrote about brain stones, intracranial calcifications that have been found at autopsies for many centuries. (See World Neurology, January 2017 ⧉) In this context, the pineal gland was in the spotlight after the French philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650) wrote down his ideas about the physical part of the soul supposedly localized in this structure.
In the subsequent 150 years, there were lively discussions between physicians, who were proponents and opponents of this idea. The finding of stones in this organ played an important role. It was only around 1800 — when critical observers began to apply the numerical method, as Pierre-Charles-Alexandre Louis (1787-1872) did for bleeding — that physicians began to realize that discovering a stone in the pineal gland was a normal finding above a certain age. More than 100 years later, there was renewed interest in the pineal gland at a time when extracts from all kinds of organs were used to treat diseases, in particular mental deficiency. The term organotherapy was introduced for this purpose.
Organotherapy
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Figure 2. Portrait of Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard (© Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire Santé). |
French physician and physiologist Charles-Edouard Brown-Séquard (1817-1894) came up with the idea of extracting therapeutic fluid from glands.
He and his predecessor at the Collège de France in Paris, physiologist Claude Bernard (1813-1878), who described glucose as an internal secretion of the liver, are considered founders of endocrinology. Brown-Séquard formulated early ideas of glands with internal secretion and experimented with extracts of all kinds of organs. He had first suggested administering seminal fluid intravenously to old men in order to rejuvenate them in 1869. Following years of experimentation with gland extracts, including the application of testicular gland extracts on himself — claiming that it had led to improvements in his bodily functions and intellectual faculties — he published a kind of review paper in the British Medical Journal (1893).
Brain Extracts
Brown-Séquard provided the methods to produce the extracts and presented the work that he had conducted on several organ extracts, including the pancreas, liver, thyroid, and sexual organs.
In the same year, the New York Therapeutic Review published “Injections of Organic Fluids According to Professor Brown-Séquard’s Method.” It praised the use of organ extracts for the treatment of a range of illnesses — in particular of the nervous system — including chorea, epilepsy, locomotor ataxia, and neurasthenia. It claimed that extract of pancreas could be used to treat diabetes, extract of grey matter could treat neurasthenia, and testicular extracts could be used to treat a range of diseases.
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World Neurology | Oct-Nov 2024, Volume 39, No. 5
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