Your Glands

( Originally Published 1944 )

At break of day against the night prepare;

MUCH and rightly, too has been said on the subject of psychology; but another matter which goes hand-in-hand with psychology has been overlooked.

When a writer writes he brings two tools to the job: his mind, and his body. His body is not important, particularly, in the transaction. I know a man, the most courageous writer of whom I know any-thing, who, though totally paralyzed except for one finger, writes. His name is Pat Murphy; his present (1940 address is Mercy Hospital, loo Sunnyside St., Toronto, Ontario, Canada. His body, as a writing tool, is limited to one finger; nevertheless he does do his own writing (not through dictation) with that one finger.

Most arrived writers dictate not because they particularly want to dictate, but because it is nice to have a gal around, with an unimpeachable excuse that the wife can't deny for having her around.

I know another writer who is without speech, his throat having been pierced by a bullet during the First World War to Make the World Safe Against All Possibility of War. He learned the Morse Code, at my suggestion, and employs a male stenographer to take dictation from him in the Morse Code.

There is nothing that can possibly happen to your body, short of the complete cessation of your heart-beat, that can stop you from being a writer. There-fore your body is not very important, except, possibly, to your stenographer, and occasionally, perhaps, to your wife. One of the few really nice things about writing is that you can't lose the job even if you lose various portions of your body. Within limits, naturally.

The only tool which amounts to anything is your mind. You cannot do much, really, about your mind. We Americans have, along with our religious superstitions, the most amazing superstitions about our minds. We think that if we take a dull one and buff it against Harvard it will become a glittering one. (Have any of you ever run into the boys from Hawvawd Yawd?) We think, that if we have a nicely-filled and regularly-spinning mind it will, if we take a course in something, spin better and faster. Actually it will do nothing of the sort. Long before you came out of your mother's womb your mind was set to tick at a certain rate for life, and there is practically nothing you can do about it. You can spend four years finding out on what date who, won which Peloponnesian war and it will seem to matter; actually it won't matter a damn. Your mind will go right on ticking at the same rate it was ticking the day you were born.

When you were born the quality of your mind derived wholly from your ancestors. That is, according to Mendel's law, which is about the only law in the United States that can't be corrupted, you got your mental qualities from ancestors who, in turn, got theirs from their ancestors; and so on. So, if in this line of progression there were exceptionally smart anthropoid apes or Pithecanthropus erecti (it doesn't mean what you think), you'll be a smart hombre; otherwise not.

You will start out with a certain amount of intelligence, when you are a child, and you will end up with that same amount of intelligence when you drop dead; unless in the interim you have poured so much "knowledge" into the intelligence reservoir that the knowledge inundated the intelligence and damaged it irrevocably.

The American educational system posits that memorizing a lot of useless data increases intelligence. Actually it decreases intelligence, as anyone knows who has ever known a college professor. The college professor, in order to torture people by making them memorize idiotic things, memorizes a hell of a lot of idiotic things himself; whereupon he becomes a sort of intellectual nanny-goat and goes baa, baa, baa about on what date which Caesar did in whom and why. If his wife has money and political drag the professor gets promoted to be president of his college, whereupon he has to have a lot of degrees, and for each degree he must memorize a lot more stuff until he can't even go baa, baa, baa any more without stuttering, and becomes so completely embalmed in knowledge and things he has memorized to annoy people with, that the only possible use left for him —now that all his intelligence is gone from him, buried under knowledge would be on a quiz program where he could be made to seem an even greater idiot by Clifton Fadiman asking him questions about the one thing he forgot to memorize, while Clifton Fadiman (with the answers on a card in his hand) acts very superior about the whole thing, winding up by giving the baa, baa, baa intellectual white sheep an encyclopaedia set to take home and cram with so that the next time he gets on a quiz program he won't be stuck with something he forgot to memorize. (Don't you worry; we'll get around to glands eventually. I hate writing anything in proper form; if I do it sounds like a school book, and everybody hates school books.)

Your intelligence what might be called the potentiality of your mind is in great measure controlled, unfortunately, by your body. If you cut off both a man's legs it does not necessarily affect his mind; if you cut off his arms too, it doesn't necessarily affect his mind. But there is a little gland in his neck which, if cut or otherwise tampered with, may affect his mind terrifically. It is called the thyroid gland. Before going further let us here parenthetically observe the thyroid origin of such patois phrases as "I got it in the neck," "Let's do some necking," etc., etc.

To prove what I mean, go into the bathroom, get into the bathtub so things won't be messed up, and cut your throat. Then note the effect that this has on your mind. (The Christian Scientists claim that the body has nothing at all to do with the mind; I suggest that one of them try this experiment and note what effect the body has upon the mind.)

The thyroid gland, normally functioning, makes an average individual; he is not phrenetic to a noticeable degree, and he is not torpid to a noticeable degree.

If he is hyperthyroid (has an over-active thyroid gland) he will be phrenetic, jumpy, tireless as to energy, and consequently thin. If he is hypothyroid (has an under-active thyroid gland) he will be torpid, apparently lazy, and will put on weight easily. There are various drugs that can control the over-secretion or the under-secretion of the thyroid gland. Speeding up the action of the gland will make a slow-thinking person think faster; and slowing down the functions of the gland' will have the reverse effect. There are pills you can take that will get either of these effects; there are injections and minor operations that will change the ticking of the thyroid gland.

In the years to come medical science will be able to make almost any sort of individual out of almost any sort of individual simply by regulating the rate of secretion of the thyroid gland. Already, through such minor operations, very bad cases of hyperthyroidism or hypothyroidism have been corrected. The psychology of the individual can be vastly affected in that way; by psychology we mean merely the cast of the mind.

However, few physicians would operate upon your thyroid gland except in acute and pathological cases of hyperthyroidism or hypothyroidism, though, if they so desired, they could make you so profoundly different that even your own brother would like you. Endocrinology is comparatively new, and nobody wants to take too long chances with it yet, except in cases where acute difficulties demand robust treatment.

There are many other glands in the body equally interesting as to psychological injection of certain hormones will change a nance into a man (after which he usually screams for his money back). Other hormone injections will remove the whiskers from the upper lip of the Old Bag who is the president of your woman's club, and is the president of your woman's club because she has just enough male characteristics to make her annoying but not enough to make her a Lesbian.

In the present stage of development of endocrinology the one endocrinological aspect with which a writer may safely deal is the thyroid gland. It can make all the difference in the world in his writing.

I can tell always from a letter a writer writes to me whether he is (a) hyperthyroid; (b) hypothyroid; (c) normal thyroid. It is no trick. Any endocrinologist can tell these three things from your photograph. The greatest of the endocrinologists can tell you much more even than that. George Antheil, one of the greatest amateur endocrinologists in the world, can tell you what sort of crime you will inevitably commit, if you commit one, merely by looking at you and noting your glandular structure from the color and thickness of your hair; the sheen or lack of it on your skin; your shape, the tone of your voice. All these things are controlled by glands. He can tell you what sort of girl you can attract, what sort of girl you cannot attract, and a thousand other things that would make any of the crapulous cant any priest, minister, or practitioner can tell you seem silly in comparison. Almost all people who are religious, i.e., superstitious, are of a given glandular structure. Mend their glands and they stop being superstitious and lead a normal life.

I have known the Chicago police and other police to wire George Antheil a round-by-round description of a crime and send him minor clues, such as a bit of the criminal's hair; from which Antheil adduces the nature of the criminal's glands, whereupon he can give so accurate a physical description of the criminal that when the police pick him up from this description it turns out to be almost photographic.

When you sit before your typewriter composing; when you are dictating original composition, your thyroid gland is in on every word of the deal. It predicates your psyche, and your psyche governs your writing.

So what are you going to do about it? What, in-deed? The one important thing you can do about it is to be acutely aware of it. Go get some of the late books on it; studying them will help you tremendously to understand yourself if, after you have read the books, you will go to an endocrinologist and ask him to ascertain and write down for you your glandular cast. With this written glandular description of yourself you can then, by referring to the books, know exactly what type of writing you can do well and what type you cannot do well.

I can tell you at once from any writing (published!) whether the author was a hyperthyroid or a hypothyroid; but what is far more important, I CAN TELL YOU WHETHER OR NOT THE AUTHOR, THOUGH HYPOTHYROID, BITCHED UP HIS WRITING BY TRYING TO WRITE AS A HYPERTHYROID; OR, THOUGH HYPERTHYROID, BITCHED IT UP BY TRYING TO WRITE AS A HYPOTHYROID.

This sort of thing happens constantly. The distinctly hypothyroid writer discovers almost inevitably that the type of writing he likes best is that done by hyperthyroid writers. (We all yearn to be what we are not, will not be, and never could be). The hypo-thyroid writer then uses for a style-model the work of a hyperthyroid writer and tries to imitate it, where-upon he falls flat on his face, becomes intolerably nervous and upset, and sometimes even succeeds in damaging the entire output of his whole prose career by trying to write what he cannot write well; whereas if he knew he was hypothyroid and didn't try to be anything but hypothyroid he would succeed immeasurably better.

If you are miserably hypothyroid, but do not want an operation or can't get any doctor to perform one, you can obtain thyroid pills which you can take during the writing of original composition which will make it infinitely easier for you to write. This, a matter for an endocrinologist, is a contra-indication for any solo monkeying on your part.

Endocrinologists are the very highest type and among the most intelligent of medical doctors you can explain your predicament to them and they will know exactly how and what to prescribe. The effects of it will cause you to send me kisses by mail. For God's sake, don't! Old Bags send me such kisses through the mails by implanting their lips, all gooed up with lip-carmine, upon a piece of paper and enclosing it in a letter, whereupon I vomit.

If you are acutely hyperthyroid you will not need attention nearly so much as you will if you are hypo-thyroid. But the endocrinologist can also damp down some of the hyperthyroidism, if you wish. Under-stand that short of regular injections or surgery no endocrinologist can make any permanent change in the operation of the thyroid gland. The pills he'll give you to raise or lower its rate of ticking will work for only a short time (a matter of hours), after which your thyroid will go back to working as it always did.

Here, for example, is the very real case of a very real writer. I have known him almost since childhood. He has several very fine novels to his credit and has contributed short stories and articles to both slick-paper advertising-catalogues and sincere magazines. He was for five years associate-editor of one of the most brilliant publications in the country.

When he was young he hauled himself around like a crawfish. He sat in corners at parties and looked stunned. When we were together he would confess to me that there were hours at a time when his mind would not work at all. That was many years ago. I had no idea what was wrong. What little he wrote was obviously brilliant; but he was getting precisely nowhere. I used to look at him and wonder how he could write at all. Out with a girl, though he was tremendously lecherous, he would go for a half-hour at a time without saying a word to her; yet he wanted her vastly. In comparison to the girl he would seem an utter moron. The girl, who really was an utter moron, would seem brilliant as compared to him. What, I thought to myself again and again, causes that? (For some reason the problems of writers have always intrigued me more than any other problems on earth,, because it is writers who make the world whatever it is, and to influence them when they are young makes me feel like God.)

Finally I gave up this writer's problems as too mysterious for my fathoming. Our roads separated.

Many years later I met him again here in Holly-wood. I will not say he was a changed man. He wasn't changed at all. He was the same man, but he had curious "moments." That is, he could be as torpid as ever he had been, yet his writing had improved tremendously (far more than could be accounted for by experience); and his social presence, at times, was amazingly different. He was still lecherous as all get-out, but now he got what he wanted.

I knew his problem had been a glandular one, and we discussed it. It turned out that he was as bad a case of hypothyroidism as could possibly be imagined. An endocrinologist in Europe had prescribed for him. He carries the pills thus prescribed with him all the time. When he wants to work he takes a pill and his thyroid gland clicks into smooth efficient action. When he wishes completely to relax he omits taking the pills, his thyroid gland idles, and he settles back into a comfortable torpor.

These pills, understand, have no direct or permanent effect whatever on his mind. His mind stays constant the same brilliant one he was born with. It is just that the pills bring up his thyroidism; his thyroid gland begins to pump Ethyl gas into his mental engine while he is going up a grade. When he has topped the grade he readjusts the - carburetor and coasts. His, because of this, will be a magnificent life: he can be two people. He can be a man in complete repose, or he can be a brilliant man whenever he likes. Because he can be a man in complete repose his heart-beat for most of his life will be very low. The faster the heart-beat the shorter the life. This writer now can live to be a hundred on his hypothyroidism, yet have all the mental and social benefits of a hyper-thyroid.

Many a hyperthyroid looks at a book founded upon research and says to himself: "That is the sort of thing I will write. Non-fiction books are the nuts. I will write a non-fiction book because they are the nuts." He never stops to think that maybe he is nuts for wanting to write a non-fiction book founded upon research. If he is acutely hyperthyroid research will drive him damned near mad, he will do a poor job of it, and his non-fiction book won't sell. On the other hand the hypothyroid dotes on research, does it well, and his nonfiction founded upon research sells.

Jesus Christ, you dope! Why the hell don't you find out about these things that affect your writing instead of sending your crap around to advertising doctors of prose and letting them charge the hell out of you for their silly criticism?