THE MALE HORMONE 



capons, fat, docile, without cocks' combs, wattles and spurs, 

 unable to crow. In the case of two others, Berthold removed 

 both testes but put one of them back, dropping it among the 

 intestines. Anatomical examination months later showed that 

 the reimplanted testes had become attached to the intestines 

 and had acquired a good blood supply, so that the testicular 

 tissue flourished in its new site. Both these cockerels became 

 typical cocks ; they grew combs and wattles, crowed, fought 

 their rivals, and, as Berthold delicately observes, "showed the 

 customary attention to the hens." One of these was later 

 opened surgically, the implanted testis was removed, and the 

 comb and wattles cut off. The head furnishings did not regen- 

 erate, and the bird, now fully castrated, reverted to the status 

 of a capon. The other two each had one testis removed, then 

 Berthold exchanged the remaining testes, giving each bird 

 the other's sex gland, which he implanted on the intestine. 

 These also became typical cocks. This beautiful experiment 

 showed that the testis by no means depends upon specific 

 nerves to maintain its control of the secondary sex characters, 

 but works through the blood. 



A long story could be told of all the efforts that were made 

 to follow up this discovery, and there would be many divaga- 

 tions to relate. There was, for example, the episode of 

 Charles-Edward Brown-Sequard, a brilliant, restless Franco- 

 Irish- American (181T-1894!), who made two incursions into 

 the field of the internal secretions. In 1856 he was the first to 

 remove the adrenal glands from animals and to observe the 

 fatal disorder thus produced, like an exaggerated Addison's 

 disease. In 1889, when he was seventy-two years old, he began 

 to dose himself with extracts of dogs' testicles. He was feeling 

 the debility of age, and hoped to rejuvenate himself. Brown- 

 Sequard had been a good scientist and it is almost incredible 

 that he could have hoped to do critical experiments with him- 

 self as the only guinea pig, prejudiced by all his hopes and 

 fears for his own health. He thought that after the injections 



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