THE FEMALE SEX HORMONE

Abstract

In three previous papers 1 we have shown, successively, that the female sex hormone can be extracted from the circulating blood of the sow; that it can be demonstrated in the circulation of the human female, beginning to appear from ten to fifteen days before the onset of menstruation in an amount increasing as the time of menstruation is approached, and that it then appears in the menstrual blood in considerable concentration, disappearing at the same time from the general circulation, and that a positive test can be utilized to determine the sex of malformed or pseudohermaphroditic females. Since these observations have been completed, we have discovered that the hormone can also be demonstrated in the circulating blood of gravid women as early as the sixth to eighth week of pregnancy. We have now standardized our method sufficiently to feel justified in recommending its trial as a clinical test applicable