Female Sex Hormone

Last week Professor James Bertram Collip, with Dr. A. D. Campbell, of McGill University, reported their crystallization of the very important, pure female sex hormone. This in the Canadian Medical Journal.

Last December Professor A. Butenandt of the University of Goettingen similarly reported his crystallization of the female sex hormone. This in the Deutsche medizinische Wochenschrift.

Last August Professor Edward Adelbert Doisy of St. Louis University and his co-workers C. D. Veler and S. Thayer similarly reported their crystallization of the female sex hormone. This at the Boston meeting of the International Congress of Physiology.

To whom goes the kudos of priority in crystallizing, and therewith isolating, this hormone? Professor Butenandt claims that he was first, that he was merely beaten to publicity. Professors Collip and Campbell might assert the same.

Biochemists, however, will give the Doisy group the first acclaim because they published their work first. There may be injustice in that, for the editors of scientific publications are practically always dilatory in letting a researcher reach print.

For Professor Collip, what? Possibly the Nobel Prize for Medicine. He was one of the co-discoverers, with Professor Frederick Grant Banting of the University of Toronto of insulin, another hormone. And Professor Banting received with his colleague John James Rickard Macleod the 1923 Nobel Prize for Medicine.

Female Sex Hormone. The female procreative apparatus secretes a complex chemical called for want of a special name the female sex hormone. The hormone is carried by the blood throughout the body. It is essential to a woman's health. It gives women their feminine characteristics. Its lack or scant production causes physiological irregularity, often sterility. Women create more of it while they are pregnant than at other times. It becomes available in relatively large quantities in the amniotic fluid and placenta.

Synthesis. Now that the pure substance is available for study, it becomes the chemist's (and manufacturer's) goal to make it artificially. That may not be for a long time, because the molecular structure of any hormone is extremely complicated.

"Mouse Unit" Potency. The potency of female sex hormone substances is measured in "mouse units" or "rat units." One "rat unit" equals four "mouse units." One gram of comparatively crude hormone-containing substance is sufficient, if injected with properly minute doses, to make 30,000 spayed mice rut again. The crystals will stimulate 8,000,000 mice or 2,000,000 rats.

*Professor Butenandt's immediate superior at the University of Goettingen is the 1928 Nobel Prize winner for Chemistry, Professor Adolf Windaus.

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