Cytology of the Human Adenohypophysis as Related to Bioassays for Tropic Hormones*

ONE of the major problems confronting any pathologist is the interpretation of cellular structure in terms of function. Although the microscopic structure of the human hypophysis has been known for nearly a hundred years, such functions as have been assigned to the various cell types have been deduced indirectly by correlating hypophyseal histology with the appearance of other endocrine glands. Recent experiments pointing to the important role of the hypophysis in the induction of malignant tumors in animals (1) and the clinical observation that hormone therapy may produce striking, if temporary, remissions in some human cancers would seem to justify a study of the human hypophysis by methods as precise as have previously been applied to the glands of rats and mice. It occurred to us that it might be helpful to perform bioassays on individual human hypophyses, one half of which could also be studied histologically.