Pigeons and Women

Last week two Johns Hopkins surgeons told how a bit of bird lore inspired a useful medical discovery. A Boston colleague, two summers ago, told them that when pigeons drain calcium from their bones to make eggshells, their legs and wings grow soft, spongy. But a stiff dose of female sex hormones toughens them up again. Drs. Ralph Gorman Hills and James Arthur Weinberg were so struck with this news that they went right out and tried female hormones on women whose bones were broken and did not knit. Last week, in the Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, they told what luck they had.

As their patients the doctors chose two women (one aged 70) with broken arms, and a young girl with a fractured leg. For many weeks their shattered limbs had hung like broken branches. The doctors gave them injections of the hormone theelin three times a week. Within a short time their bones began to "bud," and the jagged edges finally grew together.

The doctors believe that the hormone will work most effectively on stubborn fractures, is not necessary to aid normal healing of broken bones. Although they have not yet tried their treatment on men, they are sure that small doses of female sex hormone will do them no harm.

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