Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that answer the question.
Query: Who first identified the endocrine system?
The earliest study of endocrinology began in China. The Chinese were isolating sex and pituitary hormones from human urine and using them for medicinal purposes by 200 BCE. They used many complex methods, such as sublimation of steroid hormones. Another method specified by Chinese texts—the earliest dating to 1110—specified the use of saponin (from the beans of "Gleditsia sinensis") to extract hormones, but gypsum (containing calcium sulfate) was also known to have been used.
Grumbach made many seminal contributions the understanding of pediatric endocrinology including extensive studies on the development and function of the endocrine and neuroendocrine systems from fetal life through puberty, as well as studies of the hormonal and genetic effects on growth, bone maturation, puberty, sex determination and differentiation (and their disorders) and disease-causing pathology. He was a past president of the Endocrine Society, the American Pediatric Society, the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society, the Association of Medical School Pediatric Department Chairmen, and honorary president of the International Endocrine Society. From 1956 to 1990 he supervised the training of 82 fellows from 15 countries on five continents. No single individual trained as many leaders or had a broader impact on Pediatric Endocrinology. He died on October 4, 2016 of a heart attack.
The history of biochemistry can be said to have started with the ancient Greeks who were interested in the composition and processes of life, although biochemistry as a specific scientific discipline has its beginning around the early 19th century. Some argued that the beginning of biochemistry may have been the discovery of the first enzyme, diastase (today called amylase), in 1833 by Anselme Payen, while others considered Eduard Buchner's first demonstration of a complex biochemical process alcoholic fermentation in cell-free extracts to be the birth of biochemistry. Some might also point to the influential work of Justus von Liebig from 1842, "Animal chemistry, or, Organic chemistry in its applications to physiology and pathology", which presented a chemical theory of metabolism, or even earlier to the 18th century studies on fermentation and respiration by Antoine Lavoisier.
The corpuscles of Stannius are special endocrine organs in the kidney in fish and are responsible for maintaining calcium balance. They are found only in bony fishes. They were discovered and described by a German anatomist Hermann Friedrich Stannius in 1839. Stannius considered them as functionally similar to adrenal glands in mammals. But they have later been found to be anatomically different as they are derived from different tissues of the embryo. Structurally the corpuscles are a large number of spherical bodies separated from each other by loose connective tissues. Each body or lobule is in turn composed of several columnar cells, which contain secretory granules and are, thus, secretory in function. Each Secretory granule is spherical in shape and measures 0.5 to 1 μm in diameter. Their possible endocrine nature, i.e. producing hormone, was suspected from the complete anatomical description, and it was believed to be responsible for regulating calcium level in the blood. The hormone was identified as stanniocalcin.
Also known as Hashimoto's disease, Hashimoto's thyroiditis is named after the Japanese physician Hakaru Hashimoto (1881−1934) of the medical school at Kyushu University, who first described the symptoms of persons with "struma lymphomatosa", an intense infiltration of lymphocytes within the thyroid, in 1912 in a German publication. The report gave new insight into a condition (hypothyroidism) more commonly seen in areas of iodine deficiency that was occurring in the developed world, and without evident causation by dietary deficiency.
The term ecosystem was first used in 1935 in a publication by British ecologist Arthur Tansley. Tansley devised the concept to draw attention to the importance of transfers of materials between organisms and their environment. He later refined the term, describing it as "The whole system, ... including not only the organism-complex, but also the whole complex of physical factors forming what we call the environment". Tansley regarded ecosystems not simply as natural units, but as "mental isolates". Tansley later defined the spatial extent of ecosystems using the term ecotope.
The first recorded school of anatomy was in Alexandria from about 300 to the 2nd century BC. Ptolemy I Soter was the first to allow for medical officials to cut open and examine dead bodies for the purposes of learning how human bodies operated. On some occasions King Ptolemy even took part in these dissections. Most of the early dissections were done on executed criminals. The first use of human cadavers for anatomical research occurred later in the 4th century BCE when Herophilos and Erasistratus gained permission to perform live dissections, or vivisection, on condemned criminals in Alexandria under the auspices of the Ptolemaic dynasty. Herophilos in particular developed a body of anatomical knowledge much more informed by the actual structure of the human body than previous works had been. Herophilos was the first physician to dissect human bodies and is considered to be the founder of Anatomy. He reversed the longstanding notion made by Aristotle that the heart was the "seat of intelligence". He argued instead that this seat was the brain. He established the brain as the center of intelligence, distinguished between veins and arteries, and made many other accurate observations about the structure of the human body, especially the nervous system. However, Herophilos was eventually accused by his contemporaries of dissecting live criminals. The number of victims is said to be around 600 prisoners.
Prothoracicotropic hormone (PTTH) was the first insect hormone to be discovered. It was originally described simply as "brain hormone" by early workers such as Stefan Kopeć (1922) and Vincent Wigglesworth (1934), who realized that ligation of the head of immature insects could prevent molting or pupation of the body region excluded from the head if the ligation was performed before a critical age in the lifestage was reached. After a certain point the ligation had no effect and both sections of the insect would molt or pupate. However, implantation of a conspecific brain to a sessile ligated abdomen or an abdomen under diapause would induce molting or pupation. Thus, the brain was originally thought to be the source of the hormone that induces molting in insects.
Edward Tyson (20 January 1651 – 1 August 1708) was a British scientist and physician, commonly regarded as the founder of modern comparative anatomy, which compares the anatomy between species.
Autophagy was first observed by Keith R. Porter and his student Thomas Ashford at the Rockefeller Institute. In January 1962 they reported an increased number of lysosomes in rat liver cells after the addition of glucagon, and that some displaced lysosomes towards the centre of the cell contained other cell organelles such as mitochondria. They called this autolysis after Christian de Duve and Alex B. Novikoff. However Porter and Ashford wrongly interpreted their data as lysosome formation (ignoring the pre-existing organelles). Lysosomes could not be cell organelles, but part of cytoplasm such as mitochondria, and that hydrolytic enzymes were produced by microbodies. In 1963 Hruban, Spargo and colleagues published a detailed ultrastructural description of "focal cytoplasmic degradation," which referenced a 1955 German study of injury-induced sequestration. Hruban, Spargo and colleagues recognized three continuous stages of maturation of the sequestered cytoplasm to lysosomes, and that the process was not limited to injury states that functioned under physiological conditions for "reutilization of cellular materials," and the "disposal of organelles" during differentiation. Inspired by this discovery, de Duve christened the phenomena "autophagy". Unlike Porter and Ashford, de Duve conceived the term as a part of lysosomal function while describing the role of glucagon as a major inducer of cell degradation in the liver. With his student Russell Deter, he established that lysosomes are responsible for glucagon-induced autophagy. This was the first time the fact that lysosomes are the sites of intracellular autophagy are established.
Cell, developmental, and reproductive biology have been a central part of the MBL's programs since the 1890s. Important discoveries in these fields at the MBL reach back to 1899, when Jacques Loeb demonstrated artificial parthenogenesis in sea urchin eggs; to 1905, when Edwin Grant Conklin first identified egg cytoplasmic regions that are programmed to form certain tissues or organs; to 1916, when Frank Rattray Lillie identified circulating hormones that influence sexual differentiation (Lillie, 1944). In the MBL's first two decades, cytologists Edmund Beecher Wilson, Nettie Stevens and others made connections between the chromosomes and Mendelian heredity, while Wilson's colleague at both the MBL and Columbia University, Thomas Hunt Morgan, launched the field of experimental genetics (Pauly, 2000:158). Keith R. Porter, considered by many to be a founder of modern cell biology due to his pioneering work on the fine structure of cells, including the discovery of microtubules, carried out research at the MBL starting in 1937 and directed the laboratory from 1975-77 (Barlow et al., 1993: 95-115).
The discovery of insulin at the University of Toronto in 1921 is considered among the most significant events in the history of medicine. The stem cell was discovered at the university in 1963, forming the basis for bone marrow transplantation and all subsequent research on adult and embryonic stem cells. This was the first of many findings at Toronto relating to stem cells, including the identification of pancreatic and retinal stem cells. The cancer stem cell was first identified in 1997 by Toronto researchers, who have since found stem cell associations in leukemia, brain tumors and colorectal cancer. Medical inventions developed at Toronto include the glycaemic index, the infant cereal Pablum, the use of protective hypothermia in open heart surgery and the first artificial cardiac pacemaker. The first successful single-lung transplant was performed at Toronto in 1981, followed by the first nerve transplant in 1988, and the first double-lung transplant in 1989. Researchers identified the maturation promoting factor that regulates cell division, and discovered the T-cell receptor, which triggers responses of the immune system. The university is credited with isolating the genes that cause Fanconi anemia, cystic fibrosis and early-onset Alzheimer's disease, among numerous other diseases. Between 1914 and 1972, the university operated the Connaught Medical Research Laboratories, now part of the pharmaceutical corporation Sanofi-Aventis. Among the research conducted at the laboratory was the development of gel electrophoresis.
Thyroid hormones are two hormones produced and released by the thyroid gland, namely triiodothyronine (T) and thyroxine (T). They are tyrosine-based hormones that are primarily responsible for regulation of metabolism. T and T are partially composed of iodine. A deficiency of iodine leads to decreased production of T and T, enlarges the thyroid tissue and will cause the disease known as simple goitre. The major form of thyroid hormone in the blood is thyroxine (T), which has a longer half-life than T. In humans, the ratio of T to T released into the blood is approximately 14:1. T is converted to the active T (three to four times more potent than T) within cells by deiodinases (5'-iodinase). These are further processed by decarboxylation and deiodination to produce iodothyronamine (Ta) and thyronamine (Ta). All three isoforms of the deiodinases are selenium-containing enzymes, thus dietary selenium is essential for T production. Edward Calvin Kendall was responsible for the isolation of thyroxine in 1915.
The Greek physician Hippocrates, the founder of scientific medicine, was the first to deal with the anatomy and the pathology of human spine. Galen developed an interest in anatomy from his studies of Herophilus and Erasistratus. The concept of studying disease through the methodical dissection and examination of diseased bodies, organs, and tissues may seem obvious today, but there are few if any recorded examples of true autopsies performed prior to the second millennium. Though the pathology of contagion was understood by Muslim physicians since the time of Avicenna (980–1037) who described it in "The Canon of Medicine" (c. 1020), the first physician known to have made postmortem dissections was the Arabian physician Avenzoar (1091–1161) who proved that the skin disease scabies was caused by a parasite, followed by Ibn al-Nafis (b. 1213) who used dissection to discover pulmonary circulation in 1242. In the 15th century, anatomic dissection was repeatedly used by the Italian physician Antonio Benivieni (1443-1502) to determine cause of death. Antonio Benivieni is also credited with having introduced necropsy to the medical field. Perhaps the most famous early gross pathologist was Giovanni Morgagni (1682-1771). His magnum opus, "De Sedibus et Causis Morborum per Anatomem Indagatis", published in 1761, describes the findings of over 600 partial and complete autopsies, organised anatomically and methodically correlated with the symptoms exhibited by the patients prior to their demise. Although the study of normal anatomy was already well advanced at this date, "De Sedibus" was one of the first treatises specifically devoted to the correlation of diseased anatomy with clinical illness. By the late 1800s, an exhaustive body of literature had been produced on the gross anatomical findings characteristic of known diseases. The extent of gross pathology research in this period can be epitomized by the work of the Viennese pathologist (originally from Hradec Kralove in the Czech Rep.) Carl Rokitansky (1804-1878), who is said to have performed 20,000 autopsies, and supervised an additional 60,000, in his lifetime.
An important breakthrough in making sense of the list of known chemical elements (as well as in understanding the internal structure of atoms) was Dmitri Mendeleev's development of the first modern periodic table, or the periodic classification of the elements. Mendeleev, a Russian chemist, felt that there was some type of order to the elements and he spent more than thirteen years of his life collecting data and assembling the concept, initially with the idea of resolving some of the disorder in the field for his students. Mendeleev found that, when all the known chemical elements were arranged in order of increasing atomic weight, the resulting table displayed a recurring pattern, or periodicity, of properties within groups of elements. Mendeleev's law allowed him to build up a systematic periodic table of all the 66 elements then known based on atomic mass, which he published in "Principles of Chemistry" in 1869. His first Periodic Table was compiled on the basis of arranging the elements in ascending order of atomic weight and grouping them by similarity of properties.
It was in the late 1600s that plant anatomy became refined into a modern science. Italian doctor and microscopist, Marcello Malpighi, was one of the two founders of plant anatomy. In 1671 he published his "Anatomia Plantarum", the first major advance in plant physiogamy since Aristotle. The other founder was the British doctor Nehemiah Grew. He published "An Idea of a Philosophical History of Plants" in 1672 and "The Anatomy of Plants" in 1682. Grew is credited with the recognition of plant cells, although he called them 'vesicles' and 'bladders'. He correctly identified and described the sexual organs of plants (flowers) and their parts.
Edward Tyson is regarded as the founder of modern comparative anatomy. He is credited with determining that whales and dolphins are, in fact, mammals. Also, he concluded that chimpanzees are more similar to humans than to monkeys because of their arms. Marco Aurelio Severino also compared various animals, including birds, in his "Zootomia democritaea", one of the first works of comparative anatomy. In the 18th and 19th century, great anatomists like George Cuvier, Richard Owen and Thomas Henry Huxley revolutionized our understanding of the basic build and systematics of vertebrates, laying the foundation for Charles Darwin's work on evolution. An example of a 20th-century comparative anatomist is Victor Negus, who worked on the structure and evolution of the larynx. Until the advent of genetic techniques like DNA sequencing, comparative anatomy together with embryology were the primary tools for understanding phylogeny, as exemplified by the work of Alfred Romer.
The ABO blood group system was discovered in the year 1900 by Karl Landsteiner. Jan Janský is credited with the first classification of blood into the four types (A, B, AB, and O) in 1907, which remains in use today. In 1907 the first blood transfusion was performed that used the ABO system to predict compatibility. The first non-direct transfusion was performed on March 27, 1914. The Rhesus factor was discovered in 1937.
Dopamine was first synthesized in 1910 by George Barger and James Ewens at Wellcome Laboratories in London, England and first identified in the human brain by Kathleen Montagu in 1957. It was named dopamine because it is a monoamine whose precursor in the Barger-Ewens synthesis is 3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (levodopa or L-DOPA). Dopamine's function as a neurotransmitter was first recognized in 1958 by Arvid Carlsson and Nils-Åke Hillarp at the Laboratory for Chemical Pharmacology of the National Heart Institute of Sweden. Carlsson was awarded the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for showing that dopamine is not only a precursor of norepinephrine (noradrenaline) and epinephrine (adrenaline), but is also itself a neurotransmitter.
At first the periodic system did not raise interest among chemists. However, with the discovery of the predicted elements, notably gallium in 1875, scandium in 1879, and germanium in 1886, it began to win wide acceptance. The subsequent proof of many of his predictions within his lifetime brought fame to Mendeleev as the founder of the periodic law. This organization surpassed earlier attempts at classification by Alexandre-Émile Béguyer de Chancourtois, who published the telluric helix, an early, three-dimensional version of the periodic table of the elements in 1862, John Newlands, who proposed the law of octaves (a precursor to the periodic law) in 1864, and Lothar Meyer, who developed an early version of the periodic table with 28 elements organized by valence in 1864. Mendeleev's table did not include any of the noble gases, however, which had not yet been discovered. Gradually the periodic law and table became the framework for a great part of chemical theory. By the time Mendeleev died in 1907, he enjoyed international recognition and had received distinctions and awards from many countries.
The adrenal glands (also known as suprarenal glands) are endocrine glands that produce a variety of hormones including adrenaline and the steroids aldosterone and cortisol. They are found above the kidneys. Each gland has an outer cortex which produces steroid hormones and an inner medulla. The adrenal cortex itself is divided into three zones: the zona glomerulosa, the zona fasciculata and the zona reticularis.
The fetal endocrine system is one of the first systems to develop during prenatal development.
In 1998, the EPA announced the Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program by establishment of a framework for priority setting, screening and testing more than 85,000 chemicals in commerce. While the Food Quality Protection Act only required the EPA to screen pesticides for potential to produce effects similar to estrogens in humans, it also gave the EPA the authority to screen other types of chemicals and endocrine effects. Based recommendations from an advisory panel, the agency expanded the screening program to include male hormones, the thyroid system, and effects on fish and other wildlife. The basic concept behind the program is that prioritization will be based on existing information about chemical uses, production volume, structure-activity and toxicity. Screening is done by use of "in vitro" test systems (by examining, for instance, if an agent interacts with the estrogen receptor or the androgen receptor) and via the use of in animal models, such as development of tadpoles and uterine growth in prepubertal rodents. Full scale testing will examine effects not only in mammals (rats) but also in a number of other species (frogs, fish, birds and invertebrates). Since the theory involves the effects of these substances on a functioning system, animal testing is essential for scientific validity, but has been opposed by animal rights groups. Similarly, proof that these effects occur in humans would require human testing, and such testing also has opposition.
An analysis of the endocrine disrupting chemicals in Old Order Mennonite women in mid-pregnancy determined that they have much lower levels in their systems than the general population. Mennonites eat mostly fresh, unprocessed foods, farm without pesticides, and use few or no cosmetics or personal care products. One woman who had reported using hairspray and perfume had high levels of monoethyl phthalate, while the other women all had levels below detection. Three women who reported being in a car or truck within 48 hours of providing a urine sample had higher levels of diethylhexyl phthalate which is found in polyvinyl chloride, and is used in car interiors.
In 1998, skeletal muscle was identified as an endocrine organ due to its now well-established role in the secretion of myokines. The use of the term myokine to describe cytokines and other peptides produced by muscle as signalling molecules was proposed in 2003.