The pathology of this disease is still very obscure, but the connection of myxcedema with disease of the thyroid has suggested that the symptoms may be due to defect in the secretion of the supra-renal bodies, which in the vast majority of cases are found diseased. Extract of the supra-renal bodies produces in animals increased tension in the vascular system, muscular weakness, and certain nervous phenomena, so that the gland produces an energetic agent, whose absence may be presumed to lead to distinct symptoms. On the other hand, the fact that the supra-renal bodies are so intimately related to the semilunar ganglion and neighbouring plexus, and the possibility that they themselves may be largely nervous organs, renders the disentanglement of Addison's disease peculiarly difficult.

The disease is characterized by a peculiar bronze pigmentation of the skin, and, what is more important, by constitutional symptoms, such as loss of appetite, inclination to vomit, and general debility, usually ending fatally in about two years. The disease in the supra-renal bodies is tuberculosis, which attacks both organs, and causes great destruction of their substance, sometimes amounting to its absolute annihilation. On the other hand, there is usually, if not constantly, a matting and contraction around the diseased organs which seriously affects the nervous structures in this neighbourhood.

Literature

Addison, Dis. of supra-renal capsules, 1855; Oliver and Schafer, Jour, of Physiol, 1895; Oliver, Brit. Med. Jour., 1895; Alexander, Ziegler's Beitr., xi., 1891.