A.A. Berthold and the first endocrine experiment : some speculation as to its origin / Thomas R. Forbes.
- Thomas Rogers Forbes
- Date:
- 1949
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A.A. Berthold and the first endocrine experiment : some speculation as to its origin / Thomas R. Forbes. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![I OF A [Reprinted from Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Vol. XXIII, No. 3, May-June, 1949. ] A. A. BERTHOLD AND THE FIRST ENDOCRINE EXPERIMENT: SOME SPECULATION Poot oO GTN THOMAS R. FORBES There were thirty-nine contributions in the volume for 1849 of Dr. Johannes Muller’s Archiv fiir Anatomie, Physiologie und wissenschaft- liche Medicin (1). No doubt Dr. Miller, like any editor, permitted himself a few moments of satisfaction and relaxation when the printers had finished their task and the completed volume lay on his desk. As he turned the pages in final inspection, what was his opinion, one wonders, of the third article, by “ Prof. Berthold in Gottingen’? This was a short paper, concise and matter of fact, on the transplantation of testes. That Prof. Berthold’s report received more than brief attention from Dr. Muller or any one else is unlikely; it seems not to have been mentioned in print for the next sixty years (3). But the observations which the German physi- ologist set forth established a new science. Arnold Adolf Berthold (1803-1861), physician and investigator (he also discovered, with Bunsen, the use of a preparation of hydrated oxides of iron as an antidote for arsenic poisoning (4)), relates in his little paper (1) how he caponized six young cockerels, then returned single testes to the body cavities of some of the birds. The grafts, placed among the intestines, became vascularized. Berthold observed that the host birds continued to exhibit the sexual behavior and accessories of normal young roosters. At autopsy he found that the nerve supply of the grafted testes had not been re-established. Berthold concludes: Da nun aber an fremde Stellen transplantirte Hoden mit ihren ursprtinglichen _Nerven nicht mehr in Verbindung stehen konnen, und da es, wie aus dem dritten Satze einleuchtet, keine specifischen, der Secretion vorstehenden Nerven giebt, so folgt, dass der fragliche Consensus durch das productive Verhaltniss der Hoden, d.h. durch deren Einwirkung des Blutes auf den allgemeinen Organismus tber- haupt, wovon allerdings das Nervensystem einen sehr wesentlichen Theil ausmacht, bedingt wird (1, pages 45-46). In other words, since maintenance of sexual behavior and appearance * Read before the Beaumont Club, Yale University, on 13 May 1949. 1D. P. Quiring has made an English translation (2) of the obscure Berthold paper.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b33632662_0001.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
