THE HORMONES IN HUMAN REPRODUCTION 



may be put aside for the moment ; the important thing is that 

 a watery source of the hormone is very much easier to work 

 with than follicle fluid or chopped-up placenta. Starting with 

 human pregnancy urine or stallion's urine, the biochemists 

 did not have to contend at all with fats and proteins, the 

 most troublesome ingredients of their former sources of sup- 

 ply. When the kidney secretes urine it strains out and retains 

 these substances in the body. With the aid of this great sim- 

 plification, Doisy was able to announce in 1929 that he had 

 obtained the active principle in crystalline form, that is to 

 say, absolutely pure; in the same year the great German 

 biochemist Butenandt produced it and in 1930 it was an- 

 nounced at Amsterdam by Dingemanse, de Jongh, Kober and 

 Laqueur and from Denver by d' Amour and Gustavson. All 

 four laboratories had found exactly the same substance. 



The Chemical Nature of Estrone 



It was now up to the organic chemists to tell us the chem- 

 ical nature of this hormone from pregnancy urine, or estrone,^ 

 as it came to be called. What they found, I shall have diffi- 

 culty in stating for my readers, except those who are familiar 

 with the chemistry of hydrocarbons, because estrone belongs 

 to a group of substances not within the ken of the general 

 public, nor even indeed, of many chemists. It is a sterol. To 

 explain this by saying that sterols are complex higher cyclic 

 alcohols is correct but not very helpful. They are colorless 

 solids occurring in crystals ; in bulk they look a good deal like 

 powdered sugar or table salt, but when compressed into a 



1 The term estrogen, or estrogenic hormone, has been adopted to signify 

 any and all of the hormones giving eflFects such as described in this 

 chapter. Estrin, now little used, has the same significance. The terms 

 estrone, estradiol, estriol, stilbestrol, equilenin, etc. refer to individual 

 hormones of the series, each of which has its own particular chemical 

 formula. Allen and Doisy, the discoverers of estrone, called it theelin, 

 and this name, with its derivatives, is by agreement of a committee of 

 American scientists alternatively used in this country. Each drug man- 

 ufacturer making these hormones has his own trade name. 



{ 86 } 



