368 EPILOGUE 



purchased extract or the arrant claims of his predecessors. 

 He must convince himself of the potency of his preparations, 

 be certain that he is actually administering an adequate 

 amount of the hormone, and refrain from drawing conclusions 

 from results based on inadequately controlled work. 



The fields for the clinical application of the cortical hormone 

 are too obvious to require specific enumeration. With a 

 potent preparation available one should certainly be able to 

 produce worthy therapeutic effects in Addison's disease. The 

 pessimistic reports of recent workers in this field should not be 

 taken too seriously. The use of impotent and impure extracts 

 explains why such poor results have hitherto been obtained. 

 With the administration of potent extracts in sufficiently large 

 doses, there is every reason to believe that the cortical hormone 

 should actually result in the beneficent effects which many 

 writers, rather prematurely and on insufficient grounds, claimed 

 to have obtained. 



The availability of the adrenal cortical hormone permits a 

 more thorough and reliable study of the physiological and 

 pathological results of adrenal insufficiency. The effects of the 

 hormone on isolated tissues and on tissue cultures should also be 

 studied providing one has available a highly purified solution. 

 Adrenal cortical extracts are noteworthy for the ease with 

 which they may be contaminated with highly active phar- 

 macological agents, such as histamine, choline, epinephrine, 

 etc. and the complete removal of these substances is imperative 

 before one can rely on the results of many types of experiments. 



The tripartite nature of the adrenal gland has been sug- 

 gested in the present volume in the hope that it may stimulate 

 experimental studies on the androgenic zone and its relation to 

 the adreno-genital syndrome. Pathological studies of the 

 tumors which give rise to this syndrome and efforts to differen- 

 tiate such tumors histologically from true cortical tumors are 

 important problems for future investigations. The extraction 

 and isolation of the active principle of the androgenic tissue 

 also remain as problems for the future. 



