148 The Biochemistry of Semen 



640 mg. per 100 ml. or 31-6 mg. per ejaculate to be the highest 

 value. It is interesting to recall here that years ago Goldblatt (1935a) 

 noticed a high reducing sugar value in human diabetic semen but 

 attributed this to urinary glucose. 



Effect of malnutrition 



It has long been known that defective nutrition has a deleterious 

 influence upon the male reproductive system. One of the earliest 

 surveys of this problem is found in the monograph by Jackson (1 925); 

 this was followed by the work on degenerative changes in testes and 

 sterility associated with vitamin A and E deficiency and in later 

 years, by many other nutritional studies which helped to accumulate 

 a wealth of information on this subject, fully reviewed on several 

 occasions (Asdell, 1949; Burrows, 1949; Lutwak-Mann, 1951; 

 Mason, 1949; Reid, 1949; Russell, 1948; Samuels, 1948; Walton, 

 1949). Most investigators in this field, however, particularly those 

 concerned with problems of human fertility, were much more in- 

 terested in the spermatogenic activity of the testicular tissue than 

 in the function of the accessory organs of reproduction. It was, 

 therefore, something of a departure when Moore and Samuels 

 (1931) came forward with the demonstration that a few weeks of a 

 diet deficient in vitamin B, or a quantitatively inadequate diet con- 

 taining vitamin B, caused in male rats regressive changes in the 

 accessory organs which, however, could be counteracted by the 

 administration of testicular hormone or anterior pituitary extracts. 

 They concluded that the primary lesion due to inadequate feeding 

 was located in the pituitary gland and that as a result of the di- 

 minished hypophyseal activity the testes received insufficient gona- 

 dotrophic stimulus and were consequently, unable to produce the 

 male sex hormone required for normal functioning of the accessory 

 glands. A similar state of 'pseudo-hypophysectomy' was described 

 by Mulinos and Pomerantz (1941) in rats as the result of a diet 

 which was qualitatively adequate but halved in quantity; further 

 supporting evidence was later provided by several groups of 

 investigators (Pazos and Huggins, 1945; Goldsmith and Nigrelli, 

 1950; Grayhack and Scott, 1952). In certain animal species sperma- 

 togenesis was also shown to be affected by a vitamin B-deficient 



