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Hermaphroditism. After about five weeks of life in the womb, the human fetus develops a sex gland (gonad) which at first cannot be identified as male or female. Within a week or two, in normal growth, it becomes recognizable as either the female kind that will develop into ovaries, or the male kind that will become testicles. Sometimes, nature gets its wires crossed and the luckless infant develops one ovary and one testicle, or an intermediate type of "ovotestis." and some of the genital organs of both sexes. This is true hermaphroditism,* though Pediatrician Lawson Wilkins of Johns Hopkins...
...Lucas' response to the first injection was unusually dramatic. Now he is getting the drug in tablet form every three hours. But he has another chance for relief, now that the doctors know what ails him: his disease seems to be connected with the working of the thymus gland, and about half the victims of myasthenia gravis get better after removal of the thymus...
Tuataras are not only ancient, but odd. They have three eyes, one in the middle of the forehead. In humans, who may be descended, like the lizards and snakes, from something very like a tuatara, this third "pineal" eye has become the pineal gland deep inside the head. The tuatara still wears his outside, complete with a lens and an optic nerve. It may see a few dim glimmers with its third...
...When the body is not getting enough food, especially sugar, the pituitary gland apparently sees to it that the brain receives the lion's share of the available sugar, because that is the only kind of fuel the brain can use. Dr. Lillian Recant of St. Louis, trying to find out how the pituitary does this job, had one new clue. It is not only the pituitary's growth hormone that serves as a regulator, but some other secretion still undiscovered...
Surefire Cure. In St. Albans, England, Frederick Thompson, shot in the neck by an alert householder whose house he was breaking into, startled police doctors when he suddenly recovered from a severe thyroid gland disorder...