Organotherapy and Hormonotherapy 



JOHN T. HALSEY 



NEW ORLEANS 



Introductory 



While in ancient writings there are numerous references to the ad- 

 ministration, for medical purposes, of various preparations of animal 

 origin, it is evident that for the most part this use was the result solely of 

 religious conceptions and was entirely void of any rational basis. To a 

 relatively slight extent, however, such substances were used by the ancients 

 in what may, considering their almost complete ignorance of physiology 

 and pathology, be considered a rational fashion, as in the administration 

 of cow's udder as a lactagog, of the genitalia, including the testicles, to 

 increase sexual power, and of various organs in the treatment of disease 

 of the same organs, a type of therapy revived in the 16th century by 

 Paracelsus and others, of which we still see traces even at the present time. 



The only connecting links between the organotherapy of those days 

 and that of to-day is to be found in the administration of testicular and 

 mammary products as aphrodisiac and lactagog, respectively. 



Although the greater portion of Brown-Sequard's (b) claims have not, 

 up to the present time, been confirmed, modern organotherapy dates from 

 his report in 1889 of the effects which he had experienced in his own 

 person as a result of taking injections of a testicular extract. Its first real 

 triumph, however, was obtained when Murray in 1891 administered 

 thyroid extract in his historical case of myxedema. In the less than 

 thirty years which have passed since this epoch-making discovery, the 

 study of the therapeutic effects of this and other endocrin products has 

 been industriously pursued, until to-day their use in the treatment of 

 disease has become one of the most important and useful phases of 

 therapeutics. 



At first it was believed that such glandular preparations could act 

 only substitutionally, that is, that the substances administered acted in 

 place of the absent or diminished secretion of the patient's gland, but 

 very soon it became apparent that all the results obtained could not be 

 explained so simply, and that there must be other modes of action. 



Later the demonstration that these glands contained substances possess- 

 ing a wide variety of pharmacodynamic powers, and that some of these 



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