ESTIMATION OF OVARIAN ACTIVITY BY THE CONSECUTIVEDAY STUDY OF BASAL BODY TEMPERATURE AND BASAL METABOLIC RATE1

Abstract

The need for an estimate of ovarian activity is amply attested by widespread research on the problems of sex hormone assay, recently reviewed in the Cold Spring Harbor Symposium (1). With present methods there is no assurance that all the hormone in the test fluid (blood, urine) has been extracted without destruction, and no assurance that the extract is wholly and uniformly effective in the test animals. The logic of an auto-assay is inescapable. What sensitivity is lost because woman is so much larger than the rabbit or mouse is more than regained by avoiding extraction and injection. It has been established by studies on children (2), surgically castrate women (3, 4), women past the menopause (5), in pregnancy (6), and in the meticulously careful studies of Papanicolaou on normal women (3) that the human vaginal mucosa is an adequate test object for the estimation of follicular hormone (estradiol, estrone, estriol) within certain limits, provided the previous state of the vaginal mucosa (vaginal smear pattern) is known. The method has very definite limitations, i.e., the pattern of the vaginal smear cycle must be known for each subject and pelvic infection must not be present. The smears are modified by erosion, douching, and intercourse. The smearing, fixing and staining technique described by Papanicolaou (3) must be followed carefully.