The Female Sex Hormone and the Gestational Gland

Puberty in Mice and Rats

“…23 The classic example, of course, is the work of Long and Evans in 1922, whose experiments revealed that the ovaries of immature female rats (of their now famous Long-Evans strain obtained by crossing wild Norwegian grays with Wistar albinos) could be induced to undergo maturation when transplanted into adult females. Using the same assay, in 1925, Frank and Gustavson, and later in the year, Frank, Kingery, and Gustavson, 27,28 while investigating whether the normal waiting period to puberty in Long and Evans' rats was due to "restraining influences…at work" or due to the "absence of the female sex hormone", postulated that lipoid extracts of ovarian follicles, corpora lutea, and the placenta, which presumably all contained the same hormone, were capable of inducing vaginal opening and hastening the first ovulation in immature rats. This discovery became the subsequent basis of the Allen-Doisy test, in which a substance suspected of containing estrogens is injected into an ovariectomized mouse, and vaginal smears examined for the presence 5.…”

Studies on the internal secretions of the ovary

“…Allen, Pratt and Doisy, in a recent paper(2) discuss the significance of the presence of cestrin in the placenta, and tend to suppose that it is elaborated there. Combining this hypothesis with their supposition that cestrin is elaborated by the human corpus luteum, they tend to agree with Frank and Gustavson (9) who maintain that the cestrus producing hormone of the ovary is the dominating factor in all phases of the cestrous cycle, including pregnancy, and is produced firstly by the follicle, then, after the rupture of the follicle, by the corpus luteum, and finally by the placenta. Our own results do not, however, support this view.…”

“…were recorded by Frank and Gustavson (9), and these authors, assuming that the cestrus producing hormone represented the entire mechanism of ovarian secretion, were led to elaborate their theory of the "gestational gland. "…”

Clinical Data Obtained With the Female Sex Hormone Blood Test

“…If absent, as we shall refer to later, some pathologic significance must be ascribed to such a negative finding. 3. Normal Menstrual Bloods.-The menstrual blood shed on the first day usually contains a considerable quantity of female sex hormone, which in some instances, however, is no longer demonstrable in the blood collected after the first few hours of bleeding.…”