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Endocrinologists and the conceptualization of sex, 1920–1940

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Abstract

  1. Londa, Schiebinger, “Skeletons in the Closet: The First Illustrations of the Female Skeleton in 19th-Century Anatomy,” Representations, 14 (1986), 42–83.

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  2. On the different approaches to conceptualizing sex see Linda, Birke, “Cleaving the Mind: On Conceptual Dichotomies,” in Against Biological Determinism, ed. Steven, Rose (London and New York: Allison and Busby, 1982), pp. 60–78.

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  3. This reconstruction is restricted to the 1920s and 1930s because the debate on the sexually specific character of sex hormones was concentrated in these years: the first article that challenged the concept of sexual specificity of sex hormones appeared in 1921, and during the two decades that followed, a new conceptualization of sex was developed. Nevertheless, the topic of sex specificity cannot be considered as a chapter belonging only to the early history of sex endocrinology; the dualistic conceptualization of sex hormones seems to have directed endocrinological research through more recent decades.

  4. Ludwik, Fleck, Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1980).

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  5. This reconstruction is restricted to the history of what were later called estrogens and androgens. In the original conceptualization of sex hormones it was thought that there were two types: one female and one male hormone. Progesterone was not postulated until the late 1920s and the gonadotropic hormones were not postulated until the early 1930s. In this paper the names male and female sex hormones will be used to refer to the steroid hormones that, according to present knowledge, originate from the gonads and adrenals. My analysis is based on articles in biomedical and chemical journals published from 1920 to 1940; historical reviews of this period; reports of the International Conferences on Standardization of Sex Hormones held in London in 1932, 1935, and 1938; the Quarterly Cumulative Index Medicus for 1927 to 1938; and interviews with Prof. Dr. M. Tausk, exdirector of the Dutch pharmaceutical company Organon, and Dr. I. Uyldert, a woman biologist who has worked since the 1920s at the Pharmaco-Therapeutical Laboratory of the University of Amsterdam.

  6. Merriley Borell, “Organotherapy, British Physiology, and Discovery of the Internal Secretions,” J. Hist. Biol., (1976), 235.

  7. Charles-E., Brown-Séquard, “Des effets produits chez l'homme par des injections sous-cutanées d'un liquide retiré des testicules frais de cobaye et de chien,” Comp. Rend. Soc. Biol., Paris, 41 (n.s., vol. 1) (1889), 415–419; idem, “Seconde note sur les effets produits chez l'homme par des injections souscutanées d'un liquide retiré des testicules frais de cobaye et de chien,” ibid., pp. 420–422 (as quoted in George W. Corner, “The Early History of the Oestrogenic Hormones,” Proc. Soc. Endocr., 33 [1965], v).

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  8. Ernest H., Starling, The Croonian Lectures on the Chemical Correlations of the Body (London: Women's Printing Society, 1905), p. 6. For a description of the work of Brown-Sequard and Starling see Merriley Borell, “Brown-Séquard's Organotherapy and Its Appearance in America at the End of the Nineteenth Century,” Bull. Hist. Med., 50 (1976), 309–320; idem, “Organotherapy, British Physiology,” pp. 235–268; Diana Long Hall, “Biology, Sex Hormones, and Sexism in the 1920s,” in Women and Philosophy, ed. Marx Wartofsky and Carol Gould (New York: Putnam, 1975), pp. 81–95.

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  9. Frank R., Lillie, “Biological Introduction,” in Sex and Internal Secretions, ed. Edgar, Allen (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1939), p. 11.

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  10. This hypothesis was suggested by the physiologists Charles Édouard Brown-Séquard and Eugen Steinach. For a description of the rejuvenation studies of these scientists see Corner, “Early History,” pp. 3–18; Borell. “Brown-Séquard's Organotherapy,” pp. 309–320.

  11. Hall, “Biology, Sex Hormones,” pp. 81–95.

  12. Merriley, Borell, “Organotherapy and the Emergence of Reproductive Endocrinology,” J. Hist. Biol., 18 (1985), 1–30.

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  13. Corner, “Early History”, pp. iii-xviii.

  14. Marius, Tausk, Organon. De geschiedenis van een byzondere Nederlands onderneming (Nijmegen: Dekker and Van der Vegt, 1978), pp. 29–32.

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  15. Ernst, Laqueur, P.C., Hart, and Samuel E., de, Jongh, “Over een vrouwelijk geslachthormoon (menformon)”, Ned. Tijdschr. Geneesk., 1 (1927), 2080.

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  16. Robert T., Frank, The Female Sex Hormone (Springfield, Ill., and Baltimore: Charles C. Thomas, 1929), last paragraph of introduction, pages unnumbered.

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  17. Marius, Tausk, Organon. De geschiedenis van een byzondere Nederlands onderneming (Nijmegen: Dekker and Van der Vegt, 1978), p. 116.

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  18. Marius Tausk concluded in an article in honor of the 25th anniversary of Organon that a laboratory working with only grams or even kilograms of testes never could have isolated testosterone, as Laqueur's Pharmaco-Therapeutical Laboratory had done in 1935. M. Tausk, “25 Jaar Endocrinologie, 1923–1948”, Het Hormoon, 8, No. 1 (1948), 5–6. And in a publication in 1979 for the 50th anniversary of the first isolation of female sex hormone the German chemist Adolf Butenandt concluded that his research could not have been successful had it not been promoted by the Schering-Kahlbaum A. G. in Berlin. A., Butenandt, 50 Years Ago: “The Discovery of Oestrone”. TIBS, Vol. 4 (1979), 215–217.

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  19. Corner, “Early History”, pp. iii–xviii.

  20. Miriam, Lewin, “Rather Worse than Folly? Psychology Measures Femininity and Masculinity I”, in In the Shadow of the Past: Psychology Portrays the Sexes, ed. Miriam, Lewin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), pp. 169–170.

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  21. Otfried, Fellner, Pfueger's Arch., 189 (1921), 199. Unfortunately, Fellner's publication could not be traced by the university library system in Amsterdam. Owing to this, I was not able to analyze the original text in order to describe Fellner's motives for and interpretations of these experiments.

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  22. Adele E., Clarke, “Research Materials and Reproductive Science in the United States, 1910–1940”, in Physiology in the American Context 1850–1940, ed. Gerald L., Geison (Baltimore: American Physiological Society, 1987), p. 331.

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  23. Ernst, Laqueur, Elisabeth, Dingemanse, P. C., Hart, and Samuel E., de, Jongh, “Female Sex Hormone in Urine of Men”, Klin. Wochenschr., 6 (1927), 1859.

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  24. The number of reports published on female sex hormones in male organisms, as indexed in the Quarterly Cumulative Index Medicus, increased from 9 in 1928, to 35 in 1935 and 44 in 1936, and declined to 15 in 1937. If we estimate a delay in the intake of publications by the Index Medicus of one year we see a peak in the number of publications in 1934 and 1935. The peak in publications on male sex hormones in female organisms appeared two years later.

  25. Bernhard Zondek, “Mass Excretion of Oestrogenic Hormone in the Urine of the Stallion”, Nature (February 1934), 209–210.

  26. Bernhard Zondek, “Oestrogenic Hormone in the Urine of the Stallion”, Nature (March 1934), 494. In the history of sex endocrinology Zondek is often portrayed as the discoverer of the presence of female sex hormones in males. However, as we have seen, he was certainly not the first scientist to report on this. This is a common phenomenon in the history of science: the scientist named as the discoverer of a certain finding is not necessarily the only one involved in the topic. In this case Zondek cannot be seen in isolation from the context of his colleagues, who were all involved in testing the paradigm of sex hormones. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas S. Kuhn described the development of scientific discoveries. According to Kuhn, discoveries cannot be regarded as isolated acts that can be assigned to individual scientists; instead discoveries should be considered as more extensive episodes in the development of a scientific field in which the adjustment of concepts takes place. It is likely that the attention of historians of science is so exclusively focused on Zondek because he was the first one to publish his observations in a journal for a wider public—namely, Nature.

  27. In the period 1927–39, 53 articles on the presence of female hormones in male organisms and 14 articles on the presence of male hormones in female organisms were indexed in the Quarterly Cumulative Index Medicus. The number of publications on the function and effects of male sex hormones in the female body indexed in the same period is considerably less than the number of publications on the functions and effects of female sex hormones in the male body (79 and 138, respectively). In the period 1927–38 the total number of publications on sex hormones indexed in the Quarterly Cumulative Index Medicus rose from 95 to 826.

  28. H., Siebke, “Presence of Androkinin in Female Organism”, Arch. Gynaek., 146 (1931), 417–462.

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  29. Samuel E., de, Jongh, “De beteekenis van vrouwelijk hormoon, menformon, voor mannelijke individuen”, Ned. Tijdschr. Geneesk., 78 (1934), 1208–1216.

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  30. In order to avoid cumbersome repetition, my discussion of the presence of female sex hormones in males applies also to the reverse phenomenon. I will only make a differentiation when the history of the two phenomena diverges (however, at some points this differentiation cannot be made because the condition of males regarding female sex hormones has been more thoroughly studied than the condition of females).

  31. Alan S., Parkes, “Ambisexual Activity of the Gonads,” Les hormonnes sexuelles (Paris: Colloque International Fondation Singer-Polignac, 1938), pp. 67–87; Frank, Female Sex Hormone (above, n. 16), p. 292; Zondek, “Mass Excretion,” p. 209; de Jongh, “De beteekenis van vrouwelijk hormoon,” p. 1209.

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  32. Robert T., Frank, The Female Sex Hormone (Springfield, Ill., and Baltimore: Charles C. Thomas, 1929), last paragraph of introduction, pages unnumbered.

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  33. Alan S., Parkes, “The Rise of Reproductive Endocrinology 1926–1940,” Proc. Soc. Endocr.34 (1966), 26.

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  34. De Jongh, “De beteekenis van vrouwelijk hormoon,” p. 1209.

  35. Frank, Female Sex Hormone, p. 293. This food hypothesis was confirmed in 1934 by the observations of the Norwegian scientist Eng from the Pharmacological Institute of the University of Oslo, who published the results of food experiments and analyses of the urine and faeces of men: H. Eng, “Resorption und Ausscheidung des Follikulins im menschlichen Organismus II. Mittellung: Zur Kenntnis der Follikelausscheidung in Harn und Fezes normaler Manner,” Biochem. Z., 274 (1934), 208–211. Because his analysis was based on experiments with only one person, Eng concluded that his results should be considered as a preliminary report. In a footnote he added that the relationship between female sex hormones in the food and the excretion of female sex hormones in urine and faeces was more complex than he at first had thought.

  36. Elisabeth, Dingemanse, Ange, Borchardt, and Ernst, Laqueur, “Capon Comb Growth-Promoting Substances (“Male Hormones”) in Human Urine of Males and Females of Varying ages,” Biochem. J., 31 (1937), 500–507.

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  37. In the second edition of the first American textbook on sex hormones, Sex and Internal Secretions, which appeared in 1939, the food hypothesis is advanced without attention to the critical notes of scientists like Eng. Eng's publication is cited as follows: “Following the demonstration of the wide occurrence of estrogens in foods, it became apparent that estrogens in male urine need not necessarily imply their secretion in the male body. Eng (1934) reported that when a young man was placed on a estrogen-free diet, the excretion of estrogen in both urine and faeces dropped to 3 mouse units per day. On a standard diet, between 13 and 44 units per day could be recovered from the urine of the same man” (Edgar Allen, Frederick L. Hisaw, and William U. Gardner, “The Endocrine Function of the Ovaries,” in Allen, Sex and Internal Secretions [above, n.9], p. 561).

  38. Nancy H., Callow and Robert K., Callow, “The Isolation of Androsterone and Transhydroandrosterone from the Urine of Normal Women,” Biochem. J., 32 (1938), 1759–1762; Alan S. Parkes, “Androgenic Activity of Ovarian Extracts,” Nature (June 1937), 965.

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  39. In 1951 Samuel de Jongh, one of the laboratory scientists of the Amsterdam School, evaluated the adrenal hypothesis as follows: “By proposing the hypothesis of an extragonadal source to explain the presence of female sex hormones in male bodies, scientists could avoid the necessity of attributing the secretion of male sex hormones to the ovary” (Samuel E. de Jongh, “In hoeverre verdient testosteron de naam mannelijk hormoon?” in De moderne aspecten der endocrinologie, speciaal der praktische hormonologie [Amsterdam: Scheltema and Holkema's Boekhandel en Uitgeverijmaatschappij, 1951], p. 20).

  40. Zondek, “Oestrogenic Hormone” (above, n. 26), p. 494.

  41. Charles D., Kochakian, “Excretion and Fate of Androgens: Conversion of Androgens to Estrogens,” Endocrinology, 23 (1938), 463–467; Parkes, “Ambisexual Activity” (above, n. 31).

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  42. De Jongh, “De beteekenis van vrouwelijk hormoon,” p. 1213.

  43. Hall, “Biology, Sex Hormones, and Sexism” (above, n. 8).

  44. John, Walsh, The Scientific Work of Guy Marrian (1904–1981) Mainly with Respect to Steroid Hormones. A Library Based Dissertation (Oxford: University College, 1985).

  45. Elisabeth, Dingemanse, Ernst, Laqueur, and O., Mulhbock, “Chemical Identification of Estrone in Human Male Urine,” Nature, 141 (1938), 927.

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  46. Marius, Tausk, “Uitscheiding van hormonen in de urine bij normale menschen”, Hormoon, 7, no. 5 (1938), 89–97.

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  47. Samuel E., de, Jongh, Ernst, Laqueur, and Elisabeth, Dingemanse, “Over vrouwelijk hormoon (menformon) in mannelijke organismen: iets over het begrip specificiteit”, Ned. Tijdschr. Geneesk, 73 (1929), 772.

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  48. The Amsterdam School described this observation as follows: “Menformon (female sex hormone)—also the completely pure preparation—enlarges the seminal vesicles of animals castrated when they were young. Although the vesicles do not reach adult size, their enlargement is beyond dispute. We have observed this enlargement for several years, but we neglected it because we thought that it fell within the margin of error. Freud and de Jongh made this observation in several different experiments. And outside our laboratory [here the authors referred to the German scientist S. Loewe] the same observation was made, but was attributed to the presence of small amounts of male sex hormones in the ovarian extracts. From histological analysis I learned (and I had the pleasure of convincing Professor Loewe during a visit to our laboratory) that this conception is not right. Female sex hormone does enlarge the seminal vesicle, but in its own specific way. Male sex hormones stimulate the growth of epithelial parts, and female sex hormones stimulate the growth of nonepithelial parts of the seminal vesicles” de Jongh, “De beteekenis van vrouwelijk hormoon”, p. 1209.

  49. Among those who reported on female sex hormones causing disease in male bodies were E., Toulouse, P., Schiff, and H., Simmonnet, “Search for Female Sex Hormones in Urine of Men with Psychosexual Disturbances” Ann. Med.-Psych., 93 (1935), 440–446; P. Santgiorgi, “Androstine in Diseases of Women”, Rasseg. Internaz. Clin. Terap., 18 (1937), 871–874; R. Beck and G. Schmitz, “Therapy of Schizophrenia in Males with Progynon (Female Sex Hormone)”, Deutsch. Med. Wochenschr, 62 (1936), 544–545. The basic assumption underlying the hypothesis of hormonal causes of homosexuality was that homosexual men were considered more or less “feminine”, so that a connection with female sex hormones as the chemical agents of femininity seemed likely. An analogous concept was developed for homosexual women, although most studies were performed on men. Many of these studies failed to find any difference in the amount of sex hormones between homo- and heterosexual men and women. However, in the 1930s and 1940s there were numerous attempts to treat male homosexuals with male sex hormones. For a critical evaluation of hormonal studies on homosexuality see Heino F. L. Meyer-Bahlburg, “Psychoendocrine Research on Sexual Orientation. Current Status and Future Options”, Prog. Brain Res., 61 (1984), 375–399; idem, “Sex Hormones and Male Homosexuality in Comparative Perspective”, Arch. Sex. Beh., 6, no. 4 (1977), 297–326.

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  50. W., Heape, Sex Antagonism (London: Constable, 1913).

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  51. J. A. Thomson, review of Heape, Sex Antagonism, in Nature 93 (1914), 346 (as quoted in Hall, “Biology, Sex Hormones, and Sexism”, p. 85).

  52. Diana Long, Hall, “The Social Implications of the Scientific Study of Sex” The Scolar and the Feminist IV (New York: The Women's Center of Barnard College) 1976, 11–21.

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  53. Hall, “Biology, Sex Hormones, and Sexism”, p. 88.

  54. Carl R., Moore and Dorothy, Price, “Gonad Hormone Functions: Reciprocal Influence between Gonads and Hypophysis with Its Bearing on Problem of Sex Hormone Antagonism”, Amer. J. Anat., 50 (1932), 14, Moore and Price, pp. 13–71. Steinach had developed this antagonistic hypothesis to explain his experiences with unsuccessful gonad transplantations. In a series of publications from 1910 to 1920 he reported his observations on antagonism between the ovaries and the testes when young male and female rats and guinea pigs were implanted with gonads of the other sex: gonad grafts survived in hosts of the other sex only when the original gonads were removed. Later in the 1920's Steinach extended this conceptualization and applied it directly to the hormones themselves, not just to interactions between the gonads. In 1926 he reported an antagonistic influence of female sex hormones upon both the gonads and the secondary sexual characteristics of the male. In the same period, similar reports were published on what was called an “antimasculine” activity of sex hormones. See Eugen Steinach, “Antagonische Wirkungen der Keimdrusen Hormone”, Biol. Gen. 2 (1926), 815–834.

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  55. Ernst Laqueur, “Sexualhormone und Prostratahypertrophie” (unpublished lecture, dated November 9, 1935, from Organon's archive on the correspondence between Ernst Laqueur and Organon).

  56. Vladimir, Korenchevsky, Marjorie, Dennison, and Katherine, Hall, “The Action of Testosterone Propionate on Normal Adult Female Rats”, Biochem. J.31 (1937), 780–782.

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  57. Moore and Price, “Gonad Hormone Functions.

  58. Frank R., Lillie, “Biological Introduction”, in Sex and Internal Secretions, ed. Edgar, Allen (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1939), p. 12.

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  59. Although this theory was constructed by Carl Moore and Dorothy Price in close collaboration, it is generally referred to as Moore's theory on endocrine feedback. Actually, according to a personal account by Dorothy Price, it was she who developed the original concept. See Dorothy, Price, “Feedback Control of Gonadal and Hypophyseal Hormones: Evolution of the Concept”, in Pioneers in Neuroendocrinology, ed. J., Meites, B. T., Donovan, and S. M., McCann (New York and London: Plenum Press, 1975), pp. 219–238.

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  60. Vladimir, Korenchevsky and Katherine, Hall, “Manifold Effects of Male and Female Sex Hormones in Both Sexes”, Nature, 142 (1938), 998.

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  61. Korenchevsky, Dennison, and Hall, “Action of Testosterone Propionate”, pp. 783–784. In this classification Korenchevsky attributed a sexual identity to the hormone itself, a practice that was rather common in the 1920s. The literature in this episode is scattered with names like “homosexual hormones” (referring to female sex hormones in female organisms) and “heterosexual hormones” (referring to female sex hormones in male organisms). This type of nomenclature was heavily criticized by Parkes; see Alan S. Parkes, “Terminology of Sex Hormones”, Nature, 141 (1938), 141.

  62. In a 1936 article in the Dutch journal Het Chemisch Weekblad John Freud concluded: “We deliberately avoid a classification into male and female hormones. It may be that our laboratory has contributed the most to overthrowing this classification, because we have shown experimentally that the estrogenic substances of the male and the comb-growth stimulating substances of the female have certain activities and are to be found in the urine of both sexes” (John, Freud, “Over geslachtshormonen”, Chem. Weekbl., 33, no. 43 [1936], 1–14).

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  63. John, Freud, “Over geslachtshormonen”, Chem. Weekbl., 33, no. 43 [1936], pp. 12–14.

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  64. Frank R., Lillie, “Biological Introduction”, in Sex and Internal Secretions, ed. Edgar, Allen (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1939), p. 6.

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  65. It is striking that during the three International Conferences on Standardization of Sex Hormones held in London during the 1930s the very names of male and female sex hormones were not discussed.

  66. The terminological practice in the scientific community in the 1920s and 1930s can be derived from the titles of publications indexed in the Quarterly Cumulative Index Medicus for the period 1927–37. The titles show that the names “male and female sex hormones” began to be questioned from the beginning of the 1930s. In 1931 the first title appeared with the name “ambosexual hormone” (vol. 9), and in 1933 the first title appeared in which the author referred to the hormone as the “so-called female sex hormone” (vol. 13). The nomenclature for male sex hormones changed after 1936. In that year the first publication appeared with the name “male” hormone (vol. 19). In 1937 the terms “androgens” and ”estrogens” were introduced as subject entries; from the moment of their introduction, more publications were indexed under these entries than under the other available subject entries (such as “sex hormones”, “ovarian hormones”, and “internal secretions of testicles”). In a rather short period the names “androgens” and “estrogens” were accepted as general terms for sex hormones.

  67. Herbert M., Evans, “Endocrine Glands: Gonads, Pituitary, and Adrenals”, in Annual Review of Physiology, ed. J. M., Luck and V. E., Hall (California: Stanford University, 1939), P. 578.

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  68. Miriam, Lewin, “Rather Worse than Folly? Psychology Measures Femininity and Masculinity I”, in In the Shadow of the Past: Psychology Portrays the Sexes, ed. Miriam, Lewin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), p. 166.

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  69. Ibid., p. 166.

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    Nelly Oudshoorn

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Oudshoorn, N. Endocrinologists and the conceptualization of sex, 1920–1940. J Hist Biol 23, 163–186 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00141469

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