Under the Skin

Shots of thyroid or pituitary hormones enable a dwarf to fit into a man-sized suit of clothes, a young boy to sing basso profundo. Spectacular as the results of hormone treatment may be, doctors are still in the dark about the exact size of the injection in many unusual cases, have dared to administer only conservative amounts of hormone over long periods of time. Last year Physiologists R. Deanesly and Alan Sterling Parkes of the National Institute for Medical Research at London grew tired of performing innumerable injections in their laboratory, decided that they needed a "laborsaving device." They had a hunch that if man could carry around a substantial, fairly permanent store of extra hormones, his body would absorb as large an amount as was physically possible; just as a camel gradually draws energy from his hump.

Last fortnight in The Lancet, Drs. Deanesly & Parkes reported the results of experiments made on the hunch. They anesthetized five immature male guinea pigs, made slits in their skins, pushed a disc-shaped ovarian hormone tablet, weighing from eight to 16 milligrams, into each slit, and stitched up the incision. There was no local reaction but a tight coat of connective tissue began to grow around the tablets. After six months the guinea pigs' male sex organs had atrophied, their rudimentary male mammary glands had become greatly enlarged. The tablets were then removed, dried, weighed. It was found that each guinea pig had absorbed from three to four milligrams of a tablet into his blood stream.

Two large female guinea pigs were given implantations of a male hormone and in two months they were definitely on their way toward masculinity. "A single administration," said the scientists, ". . . had produced masculinization which would otherwise have required either frequent injection of androgen [male hormone] or the presence of a transplanted testis." It was discovered that the rate at which the tablets were absorbed ranged from 2% a month for the female hormones to 25% for the male hormones. Best way to insure adequate absorption, said Drs. Deanesly and Parkes, was to use a number of smaller, tablets rather than one large one.

The implantation method might easily be used on humans "with minimum inconvenience to the patient," they said. They cited a case of a woman who obtained relief from menopause symptoms after a 14-milligram tablet of estrone (ovarian hormone, known in the U. S. as theelin) was stitched under her skin.

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