Chapter IV 



THE ANDROGENIC ADRENAL TISSUE 



Besides the interrenal (or cortical) and the chromaphil (or 

 medullary) tissues described in the preceding chapter, one 

 finds in the adrenals of man and certain other animals a third 

 type of tissue, which has been designated as "embryonic," 

 "boundary zone," "fetal" or "x-zone" but to which we shall 

 refer as the androgenic tissue. This tissue differs from the 

 remainder of the cortical tissue not only in its morphological 

 and histochemical properties but also in the fact that it nor- 

 mally exists only during a certain period of life. The hyper- 

 trophy of this tissue under certain pathological conditions in 

 man (cf. Chapter XXIII) gives rise to a symptom-complex char- 

 acterized by masculinization of the female. Because of this 

 property, the author has designated the tissue as androgenic 

 (from the Greek, avdpoyevos, to masculinize). 



This differentiation of the adrenal cortex into two function- 

 ally distinct moieties has not hitherto been made. Although 

 experimental evidence remains to be adduced to prove defi- 

 nitely the exact relation of the function of the androgenic zone 

 to the reproductive system, the facts at hand suffice to indicate 

 that the cortex comprises two tissues, one of which (the inter- 

 renal tissue) produces the hormone which is essential for life, 

 and the other (the androgenic tissue) which has some as yet 

 incompletely defined function relating to the reproductive 

 system. 



The most characteristic property of the androgenic tissue 

 is its persistence normally for only a relatively short period of 

 time. In man it develops during fetal life and disappears al- 

 most entirely during the first year of life. 182 In the mouse, 

 it develops before puberty and disappears in the male at 



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