the physiologists of the animal laboratory, who will have nothing but
syllogistic deductions and quantitative determinations based upon
animal experiments as the data of their science, will be apt to look
askance upon the preceding paragraphs, and those which will follow. To
them, any man who relates the internal secretions to anything, outside
of the routineer's paths, puts his reputation at stake, if he has
any reputation at all to start in with. They would have us deliver
a Scotch verdict upon all the questions which arise as soon as one
attempts to take in the more general significance of the glands of
internal secretion. This, even though the more general implications
concerning the effects of their products, the relations of them to
growth and development, nutrition and energy, environmental
reactions and resistance to disease, as well as the grand complex of
intelligence, are admittedly well ascertained in some directions.

The method of absolute measurement in science has yielded miracles.
For some thousands of years, an isolated individual, here and there
or an isolated institution have devoted themselves to the task,
struggling not only with their own weaknesses, but with religious and
political dogmas which spoiled and vitiated even the beginnings of
their efforts. When, in the seventeenth century, men associated
themselves in research, for free communication and discussion of their
findings, a great invention came alive. Close on its heels was born
the exact experimental method. Amazing triumphs were born of that
marriage which swept away before it ignorance and superstition and
prejudice. Its children and grandchildren have flourished and grown
strong and mighty. They have transmuted the material conditions of
life. Certainly all the laurels belong to the method of absolute,
measured observations.