Abstract
This report is the first of a series based upon the studies of the effect of theelin, a female sex hormone isolated by one of us from the urine of pregnant human females, upon the genital tract of the female white rat. This report is confined to the histological study of the effect of subcutaneous injections of solutions of this substance upon the ovaries of immature female rats.
A group of 14 controls, usually taken from the same litters as the experimental animals, was killed at different age periods to establish normal developmental changes. One group of 11 animals was injected daily with 3 rat units of theelin for varying periods of time, beginning all animals on the twenty-first day and killing each animal on the last day of theelin administration. A second group of 9 animals was given a single massive dose of 20 rat units on the first day of the experiment, the twenty-first day of life, and then were allowed to recover for varying periods of time.
The animals were killed by ether anesthesia. The genital tracts were immediately removed and fixed in 10% formalin. The ovaries were later dissected away, imbedded in paraffin and serial sections prepared. The size of the various ovaries was determined by preparing camera lucida drawings of each serial section, measuring the outlines by the polar planometer, adding these measurements to obtain the total area, reducing this figure to absolute size and multiplying by the thickness of the section. There is often so great a variation in the size of the ovary on the 2 sides and in the size of ovaries of animals of the same age that a graphic chart, plotting age against size, has been prepared. (Not given in this report.)
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