ORGANOTHERAPY 



is done, and until the pure hormones from both 

 parts of the gland are used, it would be premature 

 to draw any conclusions. 



Perhaps the .most plausible suggestion so far ad- 

 vanced is that in the preparation of a glandular 

 extract, involving physical and chemical processes, 

 the chemical configuration of the hormone is pos- 

 sibly altered, and hence its physiological action be- 

 comes lost. To point to the thyroid extract as dis- 

 proving this hypothesis does not hold, for the an- 

 swer may be made that there is no reason to sup- 

 pose that all the hormones have the same degree 

 of resistive power. The antiscorbutic vitamine is 

 more easily destroyed than the antirachitic ; why 

 may this not be true of hormones as well? Why 

 may not one hormone fall a prey to chemical 

 agents more quickly than another? 



Unquestionably the next step in our forward 

 march will be the isolation, in a pure form, of the 

 hormones from the pituitary, the cortex of the adre- 

 nals, the sexual glands, etc. Until this is done we 

 can hope little more from glandular treatment than 

 what has already been accomplished. 1 



At the recent (Dec., 1921) meeting of the Physiological So- 

 ciety, held in New Haven, Professor Macleod, of the University 

 of Toronto, read a paper on the value of pancreatic extracts, in 

 which he pointed out that the blood sugar of a depancreatized 

 dog could be lowered by injecting a pancreatic extract, and that 

 neither an extract of the liver nor one of the spleen had that 

 effect. Though preliminary in character, the investigation i& 

 important and suggestive. 



