APPENDIX I 



MORE ABOUT THE CHEMICAL STRUCTURE 

 OF THE SEX GLAND HORMONES 



WHEN discussing the chemistry of the ovarian 

 and testicular hormones, in Chapters IV, V, and 

 IX, I tried first to make their general nature as 

 clear as possible to readers who have not studied chemistry 

 at all, and then I gave the structural formulas for the benefit 

 of those who are familiar with organic chemistry. Most of my 

 readers, however, probably belong to a middle category. They 

 have studied the elements of chemistry in a college course that 

 included a few weeks on the compounds of carbon, so that 

 they can comprehend an organic formula, at least of the more 

 familiar sort, especially if written out in full and its signifi- 

 cant features are explained. They are on the other hand 

 hardly prepared to grasp at once the full meaning of one of 

 these complex and unfamiliar hormones or to perceive its 

 relation to the simpler substances chiefly dealt with in college 

 chemistry. For the guidance of such readers I propose to 

 write the formulas of the more important sex gland hormones 

 as clearly as possible and to explain their nature exactly as 

 I had to have them explained to me when I found that nowa- 

 days even an anatomist must struggle with chemistry.^ I 

 assume that the reader recalls that the valence of carbon is 

 4, of hydrogen and the hydroxyl group (OH) is 1, and of 

 oxygen 2: 



I 



C — H — OH 0= 



1 In preparing this discussion, I have drawn freely upon the standard 

 textbooks of organic and biological chemistry. See also The Chemistry 

 of Natural Products Related to Phenanthrene, by L. F. Fieser, New 

 York, 1936; Sterols and Related Compounds, by E. Friedmann, Cam- 

 bridge, England, 1937; and The Chemistry of the Sterids, by Harry 

 Sobotka, Baltimore, 1938. 



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