THE HORMONE OF PREPARATION 



store of standard estrone should ever be lost the hormone can 

 be recreated to the exact formula and as long as the powers 

 of destruction leave us a good organic chemist alive on earth 

 this product and symbol of constructive international effort 

 will survive. 



Administration of the hormone. Most of the pure estrogens 

 must be administered hypodermically, because they are not 

 well absorbed from the digestive system and are therefore not 

 effective when given by mouth. Some of them can be dissolved 

 in water for hypodermic injection, but the effects last longer 

 when they are injected in oil. For this purpose bland vegetable 

 oils such as corn (Mazola) oil and sesame oil are used. The 

 neutral triglycerides are also coming into use as solvents for 

 injection; they dissolve the hormones better than do the oils 

 and are generally better tolerated by the tissues into which 

 they are injected. It has been a great surprise to find that the 

 oil-soluble sterol hormones will enter the body through the 

 skin if made up into ointment and applied by thorough rub- 

 bing (inunction). This is not a very exact way of giving a 

 drug, for we can never be sure how much is lost or not ab- 

 sorbed, but at least it avoids disagreeable hypodermic punc- 

 tures. Some of the new synthetic estrogens of relatively simple 

 form, such as stilbestrol (mentioned above) can be given by 

 mouth. There are also certain new compounds of the higher 

 estrogens (e.g. ethinyl estradiol) which are effective by mouth. 

 We may expect that after a due period of experiment, injec- 

 tions of the hormones will give way, at least to a considerable 

 degree, to medication by mouth and by inunction. 



The English investigators Deanesly and Parkes suggested, 

 a few years ago, a brand new method of administering the 

 estrogenic hormones (and equally well the other sterol hor- 

 mones, whether from corpus luteum, testis, or adrenal gland, 

 or from the chemist's beaker). This is to compress the hor- 

 mone into a little rod-shaped pellet like a short segment of 

 graphite from a lead pencil, and to bury this pellet under the 



{ 91 } 



