17-Ketosteroid, Androgen and Oestrogen Excretion in the Urine of Cases of Gonadal or Adrenal Cortical Deficiency

The discovery that material with the activity of the gonadal hormones can be extracted from human urine early led to the plausible and attractive hypothesis that the level of this urinary excretion might give an indication of the level of secretion by the gonads. An obvious line of critical attack on this idea was that of examining subjects whose gonads had been removed and in whom the complete absence of gonadal secretion should entail the absence of either androgenic or oestrogenic activity in the urine. A fair volume of work on this line has already been done, but with contradictory results. McCullagh, Cuyler & Frawley [1932], McCullagh, McCullagh & Hicken [1933], McCullagh & Renshaw [1934], Kochakian [1937] and Feinier & Rothman [1939] were unable to detect androgens in extracts from the urine of eunuchs. Bingel [1935] appears to have been the first to obtain positive results, using the sensitive biological