THE HORMONE OF PREPARATION 



mass, a quantity of sterol looks and feels more like a hard 

 white crystalline wax. Sterols are plentiful in yolk of eggs, 

 brain tissue and many plant tissues. Wool fat (lanolin) is 

 largely composed of sterols mixed with softer, greasier fatty 

 substances. Most of the sterols have no hormone action; in 

 fact they tend to be rather inert substances, but since the 

 identification of estrone it turns out that several particular 

 sterols that are found in the male and female reproductive 

 systems and the adrenal gland, as well as related substances 

 prepared synthetically, have powerful effects in the animal 

 body. Estrone is one of this group. 



Readers who are interested in the chemical structure of 

 estrone and the other sex gland hormones will find in the 

 Appendix of this book a detailed account, written for those 

 who remember a little of their elementary chemistry. What 

 follows here will be intelligible to those who are familiar with 

 organic chemistry ; other readers are advised to read Ap- 

 pendix I before proceeding further. The structural formula 

 of estrone is as follows : 



ESTRONE 



The molecule contains 18 atoms of carbon, 22 of hydrogen, 

 2 of oxygen, arranged as 3-hydroxy, 17-keto estratriene. In 

 1936 Marker, Kamm, Oakwood and Laucius gave us absolute 

 and final proof of this structure, by producing estrone arti- 

 ficially in the laboratory (at Pennsylvania State College) by 

 conversion of one of the sterols obtained from vegetables, of 

 which the formula was already known. This was of course a 

 partial synthesis or rearrangement, the investigators having 

 taken advantage of Nature's work in building up the sub- 

 stance with which they started. Bachmann, Cole and Wilds of 

 the University of Michigan reported in 1939-1940 that they 



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