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The Soul and its Mechanism - Glands and Human Behavior
3. Thyroid - location, throat - secretion, thyroxin. Of the thyroid gland, more is known than of the pineal gland or the pituitary body, and from the standpoint of Eastern wisdom, this was to be expected. This gland is found astride the neck, above the wind-pipe, close to the larynx, and is a very large gland. It was once a sex gland, is frequently called the "third ovary," is always involved in ovarian cases. In the lower vertebrates it is clearly connected with the ducts of the sexual organs, but in the march of evolution upwards, "that relationship is lost, the thyroid migrates more and more to the head region, to become the great link between sex and brain." - Berman, Louis, M.D., The Glands Regulating Personality, p. 46. We are told also that it is the great differentiation of tissues, and has anti-toxic power, preventing poisoning and increasing resistance to poison. Above everything else, however, the thyroid gland is the controller of the metabolism of energy. It has been called the efficient lubricator of energy transformation, and is the great catalyst of energy in the body. It controls the speed of living and is the keystone of the endocrine system. It is indispensable to life. Through the work done with subnormal people, deficients and idiots, investigators have come to the conclusion that, in the words of Dr. Berman: "Without thyroid there can be no complexity of thought, no learning, no education, no habit-formation, [47] no responsive energy for situations, as well as no physical unfolding of faculty and function and no reproduction of kind, with no sign of adolescence at the expected age, and no exhibition of sex tendencies thereafter." - Ibid., p. 55. We are also told that "Sensitivity, the ability to discriminate between grades of sensation or acuteness of perception is another thyroid quality. Just as the thyroid plus is more energetic, so is he more sensitive. He feels things more, he feels pain more readily, because he arrives more quickly at the stage when the stimulus damages his nerve apparatus." - Ibid., p. 180. The thyroid like the pituitary, has also close connection with the memory. "...the pituitary seems to be related to preservation of the memory deposit... The thyroid memory applies particularly to perception and precepts, the pituitary to conception (reading, studying, thinking) and concepts." - Ibid., p. 182.
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