The aim of the work as stated in the preface is to present the basic principles of endocrinology together with their application to practical problems that confront the physician. His theory, he states, is mainly derived from clinical observation and the record of an experience with gland therapy over a period of twenty-two years. The scope of the book is considerable, inasmuch as the author believes that heredity, development, normal function of the nervous system and mind are all intimately dependent on the ductless glands.
At the present moment when facts concerning the endocrines have accumulated to such an extent that but few can be sufficiently acquainted with them to discover their applicability in practice, a working theory that is carefully founded would be acceptable even if it cannot be more than provisional. A. Biedl has done much in the matter of sifting the existing experimental data on animals critically in his careful work on internal secretions. A number of other investigators have added to these efforts. But of clinical studies and observations in the human subject, carried out in a painstaking manner, recorded in detail and accurately tabulated, there is a great dearth. Any contribution in this direction therefore must be worth while. When Bandler says in his book these opinions are offered on the basis of therapy fortified by clinical observations, or again if you have a theory and it works out in practice, the chances are that it is correctly founded, the hope is awakened that a series of therapeutic tests with organic extracts carefully arranged and reviewed, is to be presented by the author, but in this one is greatly disappointed.
Dr. Bandlers book, while it aims to focus attention on gland treatment, if taken literally, gives a very much exaggerated idea of the scope and value of this form of therapy. Probably this is due to the fact that a larger part of the subject matter is taken directly from the lecture room where the personality of the teacher is known and due allowance could be made for attempts to impress certain points or hold the attention of the hearer. The following extracts will serve to elucidate my meaning.
Pages 393-394. She had a fibromyomatous uterus containing five or six separate fibroids, reaching to the umbilicus-reaching way over the pelvic brim so that I could not get my finger between it and the pelvis. *** so we gave her 7 grains of mammary extract, and a grain or two of the anterior lobe of the pituitary, -and after six months there was not a nodule in that uterus as large as my fist. That is not only one experience; I have had many such. *** I am telling you what gland extracts will do, and you can use them in cases where you dont want to operate, *** and if you give these medicines for three or four months you may often have a uterus one-third as large as it was, even in that short time. It need hardly be commented that no one who claims to teach gynecology should make such a statement as this without being in a position to submit the most painstaking clinical records to substantiate it. --Frederick E. Neef, M.D. for the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology [1921].