Word: pineal
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Descartes believed the pineal gland was the seat of the soul, and doctors later thought it was man's third or inner eye. The pineal (from the Latin word for pine cone, which it resembles in shape) is a small gland attached to the midbrain...
Doctors, while not certain of what function the organ really performs, have known for years that schizophrenic patients improved after injections of an extract from the pineal glands of cattle. Trouble was that after a few days the patients stopped responding to the treatment and soon relapsed into their former state. Harvard University's Dr. Mark D. Altschule guessed that this was because of big beef protein molecules in the extract. He set himself the job of isolating the potent fraction in the pineal glands from this kind of protein...
...Mark D. Altschule, assistant clinical professor of Medicine, wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine that injection of the pineal gland extract has brought a constant improvement in the behavior pattern of patients and in their blood chemistry...
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...
...quintessence came to be called a hormone. Other glands in the body were soon found to produce secretions of similar potency. Thus born was the modern science of endocrinology.* Since Brown-Séquard's original demonstrations more and more hormones have been discovered. They occur in the pineal gland in the middle of the brain; in the pituitary gland under the forebrain; in the thyroid, parathyroids and thymus in the neck; in the adrenals on top of the kidneys; in the pancreas at the stomach; in the stomach and intestines; in the ovaries and testicles. These hormones always...