THE FEMALE SEX HORMONES

Until recently, therapy employing so-called female sex hormones was limited largely to the use of desiccated ovarian products and various extracts without demonstrated value.¹ These were employed empirically with the hope that they might do good. Today the physician has available preparations of demonstrable potency in animals and of possible usefulness in human beings. Two, isolated in crystalline form, have been given the nonproprietary designations theelin and theelol.²

Elsewhere in this issue appears a comprehensive analysis by the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry of the status of female sex endocrine therapy, particularly with estrogenic preparations. In few branches of physiologic research has experimental work progressed as rapidly as in this field, but clinical observations have not kept pace. Unfortunately, many of the products were submitted to uncontrolled clinical observations; inevitably this reacted to the discredit of endocrine therapy in ovarian and related disorders. A recent series of studies,