The Internal Secretion of the Testis

The researches of Mantegazza and Brown Séquard in the second half of the last century on the testis in order to determine if that gland produces an internal secretion which gives secondary characters to the male, opened the way for the study of the endocrine glands. Although we know, if only imperfectly, the internal secretion of some of the ductless glands and we are able in certain cases, when the function is disturbed, to give treatment with success, the knowledge of the function of the sexual glands, although the first studied, is not even yet well known. This is due to the fact that though the anatomic and pathologic researches of Ancel and Bouin are arguments for the conception that the testis has an internal secretion, which is elaborated from the interstitial cells, the experiment did not give definite proofs. Ancel and Bouin, after ligature and resection of the ductus deferens in the rabbit, obtained degeneration and atrophy of the seminal epithelium; the Leydig’s cells remained without change. The animal kept the secondary sexual characteristics until the day that it was killed. Gosselin, Fabris and others, on the contrary, did not observe lesion of the testis from ligature and resection of the ductus deferens. Hence the conclusion as regards the internal secretion of the interstitial cells of the testis is not uncertain; the difficulty of solution of the problem is due to the disposition of the interstitial cells, which, as remarked lately by Cushing “is such as to make it impossible to observe the consequences of their ablation apart from the other cells of the organ.”