Abstract
A communication with the above title, by F. F. Wildebush and J. F. McClendon 1 describes a technic for extracting the female sex hormone (“ovarian hormone”) from the blood and urine by means of which they obtained a minimum yield of 24 M.U. and a maximum yield of 126 M.U. for 20 cc. from the vein blood of normal women. Their method varies from the technic published and employed by us since 1925, mainly in that they add N sodium hydrate to the oxalated blood before extraction with ether.
In our early work we employed oxalated blood, but as routine have long since used anhydrous sodium sulphate to dry the blood and performed a dry extraction. Our work in 1925 had convinced us that the dry is preferable to the wet extraction.
In over 550 women on whom we have performed more than 1000 tests, our readings have never shown a greater yield than I M.U. in 40 cc. of vein blood of normal women except during pregnancy, and then not above 2 M.U. have been found. The lowest readings of Wildebush and McClendon are therefore 50 times as great as ours; their highest 252 times as great. On how many women their figures are based cannot be gathered from their report.
We have attempted to elucidate the cause for this extreme and startling divergence by repeating their work, duplicating their technic with scrupulous exactitude. The amount of the extract given to castrated mice varied when based upon Wildebush and McClendon's minimum maximum results, from a possible 0.6 to 6 M.U. as a minimum, up to 3 to 31.5 MU. as a maximum.
Our results are based upon bloods of 4 patients, the extracts injected into 16 mice. Not a single positive reaction was obtained.
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