pituitary, so sleep and hibernation will bear interpretation as
products of a temporary dormancy of the same gland. We have, then,
to set up in the place of Morpheus and Apollo, the new gods of the
internal secretion of a chemical-making bit of the brain, as an
explanation of the rhythms of sleep and wakefulness.

There are individuals who go about outside of hospital walls,
quasi-normally, who are semi-hibernators or partial hibernators, and
who are really in a state of subpituitarism. They are people who may
have something wrong or inferior with their pituitary, but not to the
extent of interference with their daily life. They go about with their
type stamped upon them for the seeing eye. The classical type is
obese, with fat distributed everywhere, but more so in the lower
abdomen and the lower extremities. They are slow and dull, and
sexually inactive, often impotent. They are sometimes tall, but most
often dwarfish, and may be subject to epileptic seizures. They recall
the picture of what happens to young dogs partially deprived of the
pituitary. Dickens delivered a perfect likeness of an extreme degree
of the condition in the Fat Boy of the "Pickwick Papers," whose
employment with Mr. Wardle consisted in alternate sleeping and eating.

WHEN THE PITUITARY OVERACTS

All grades of overaction of the pituitary exist. Then its peculiar
power to act as a stimulant to the growth of bone and the soft
supporting and connecting tissues like tendons and ligaments comes
into play. If the overaction or excess of secretion begins in
childhood or adolescence, that is, before puberty, there results a
great elongation of the bones, so that a giant is the consequence. Now
giants have always appealed to the imagination of the little man, and
have had all kinds of wonderful abilities ascribed to them by him. The
giants and ogres of folk-lore and fairy tales are favored with the
most extraordinary mental advantages. Direct and analytic acquaintance
with the giants of our own day, as well as a probing of their conduct
in the past, has shown that normal giants--persons of exceptional size
free from physical or mental deformities--are rare. There are people
with _hyper_-pituitarism who exhibit the highest mental powers. In
them is an increased activity of the posterior lobe in association
with enlargement and hyperfunction of the anterior, overgrowth is not
so marked, and the individual is lean and mentally acute. But the
ordinary gian