with puberty the thymus atrophied and
was replaced by some sort of fatty tissue. Nowadays, it is held that
secretion cells persist throughout life. When the extent of this
persistence is too great, the gland being from five to ten times as
large as the normal, a number of other features become prominent to
make the extraordinary individual, the status lymphaticus, who amid
the hazards of life will react in an extraordinary way. He will be
taken up in the consideration of internal secretion personalities.

Then there are the varied and remarkable phenomena of thymus
enlargement and hyperactivity in childhood itself. When an enlarged
thymus is present in an infant, the initiation of breathing in the
new-born, the introduction of the newcomer to the oxygen of the air,
may be an exceedingly prolonged, difficult, matter. Such a baby is
said to be born blue, and the breathing may be stridorous for days,
becoming normal for a time, to be followed later by spells of trouble
in breathing, breathlessness or breathlessness with blueness, and
threatened extinction. Sometimes these spells come out of a clear
sky in an apparently healthy child. That some poison, probably an
oversecretion of the thymus, is responsible is shown by the relief
obtainable by X-ray shrinkage of the gland, or the surgical removal of
a part of it.

Moreover, the gland is influenced by and influences the factors
of body weight and growth with an extreme readiness and lability.
Deficient general undernutrition leads to rapid decline in its weight.
Back in 1858, the pioneer student of the thymus, Friedleben, declared
that the size and condition of the thymus is an index to be the state
of nutrition of the body. Underfeeding for four weeks will reduce it
to one thirtieth the normal. It seems to act as a storage and reserve
organ, affording some protection against the limitation of growth by
lack of food material. In exhausting or wasting disease, the weight
of the gland sinks much more quickly than other glands. Scattered
instances have been reported of children growing, putting on inches in
height and expanding mentally, when thymus was fed to them, in whom
every other measure previously tried had failed. A French study of
over four hundred idiotic children with normal thyroids reported that
over three fourths had no thymus at all. Everything points to the most
direct and close relation between the gland and nutrition and growth,
but with nothing tangibly de