Endocrine

We just started the endocrine portion of "Metabolism and Nutrition." The endocrine system (hormones) was always a pretty nebulous topic to me because it's spread throughout the body without any distinct organs. When you mention the circulatory or pulmonary or gastrointestinal systems, you generally have an idea of where the key components are. But endocrine? Not so much. Even though there are discrete structures like the pituitary gland, I honestly didn't know where that was before medical school. (It's found in the "Turkish saddle" or sella turcica, a depression in the sphenoid bone at the base of the skull). And indeed, hormones are secreted by a whole host of random organs, from the thyroid gland to the heart to the adrenals to the placenta.

Furthermore, many of the diseases are "named" diseases like Addison's disease or Cushing's disease or Graves' disease. This means there's an unfortunate amount of memorization. But the endocrine system is incredibly important, regulating functions as diverse as growth, lactation, glucose homeostasis, and blood pressure. It's also fairly interesting because all the different regulatory mechanisms are very logically connected, meaning that the different diagnostic tests make a lot of sense.