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While they did not understand the mechanism of action, they realized the effectiveness of the treatment. The emergence of it as an independent science is a fairly recent occurrence.įor thousands of years Chinese medicine has been effectively treating certain disorders that were endocrine in nature. While certain aspects of endocrinology such as the endocrine disorder diabetes mellitus have been known since antiquity,

The endocrine system in conjunction with the nervous system helps to preserve homeostasis. Walter Cannon (1871-1945) later coined the term homeostasis to describe this phenomenon. He reported that organisms go to great lengths to maintain the consistency of what he called the "milieu interieur" or internal environment. The study of the endocrine system and its functions owes some degree of its development to the gifted French physiologist Claude Bernard (1813-1878). Thus, imbalances in the system can result from too much or too little hormone secretion or from the inability of the body to utilize the hormone effectively. The properly functioning endocrine system includes tissues and glands that secrete chemical mediators directly into the bloodstream, which then produce effects at distant target cells that have the proper receptors to bind the chemical mediator. It further provides treatment methods when hormone levels become unbalanced. BackgroundĮndocrinology is a branch of medicine that studies the role of hormones and other biochemical mediators in regulating bodily functions.

Although there was significant work done in this area prior to the twentieth century, and some of this information dates to antiquity, endocrinology really did not blossom as a science until the turn of the century.

When this information was combined with seemingly unrelated ideas and discoveries it evolved into the branch of medical science called endocrinology. The nineteenth-century "Concept of Internal Secretions" gave way to a more thorough understanding of bodily secretions. The Emergence of Endocrinology as a Medical Science OverviewĪs scientific knowledge increased, our concepts of the human body have gone through a transformation.