Читать книгу Old Age Deferred. The causes of old age and its postponement by hygienic and therapeutic measures онлайн

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Patients with mild diabetes often have a fresh look and a rosy face, and very frequently look much younger than they are. We believe that the healthy working condition of their thyroids has something to do with this fact.

The pancreas is a very important organ for the maintenance of life as it produces certain bodies (enzymes) which are of enormous importance in the assimilation of food. One of these bodies (they are three in number), helps the assimilation of albuminous products and is called trypsin. It also plays an important rôle in the treatment of cancerous growths. Besides this the pancreas produces an enzyme that helps the assimilation of the carbohydrates (amylopsin) and another that is indispensable for the perfect assimilation of fat (steapsin).

As we have shown by experiments made in the laboratory of Professor Minkowski (then in Cologne), the pancreas stands in definite relation to the thyroid. These two glands seem to be antagonistic to one another, for on extirpation of the pancreas of three dogs, thus rendering them diabetic, in every case the thyroid showed a condition of hyperactivity, whereas in one case, after previous extirpation of the thyroid, the pancreas showed an enormous number of islands of Langerhans—(thirty-six to forty in one field).^[133]