Abstract
The sex hormones of the anterior pituitary are not sex specific, but stimulate the secretion of the male as well as the female sex glands. However, for the same dose of hormone the effect on the female is far more striking than the effect on the male. In connection with other work in this laboratory, and prompted by the recent work of Funk and Harrow, 1 we carried out experiments to increase the stimulating effect of the anterior pituitary hormone on the male sex glands by simultaneous injections of male hormone.
These experiments were done on our laboratory albino rats. Eight rats of approximately equal age and weight were divided into 4 groups of 2 each; (1) control; (2) injected with anterior pituitary hormone; (3) injected with male hormone; (4) injected with both anterior pituitary and male hormone. All injections were made intramuscularly and twice daily. At autopsy the whole genital tract was exposed and the seminal vesicles and testes inspected macroscopically, and weighed.
The solution of the anterior pituitary was prepared from fresh glands and standardized by the Zondek-Aschheim technic to contain 100 mouse units in each cc. This solution was a mixture of the maturing and the luteinizing fractions as determined by previous assay on female rats.
The solution of the male hormone was prepared from fresh testes and tested on the castrated rooster for its ability to restore secondary sex characteristics. Each cc. contained approximately 1/2 cock unit. A cock unit is the amount of hormone necessary to cause an increase of 20% in the size of the comb and wattles in the course of 10 days. The solution of male hormone was purposely made quite dilute to preclude the possibility of any great amount of activity originating from this solution.
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