STABILITY OF TESTIS HORMONE

TOF THE NUMEROUS artificial and natural androgens known, one of the most active is testosterone which was isolated from the testes by Laqueur (1) and his associates. With the exception of the reported isolation of androstanedione by Ogata and Hirano (2) no other hormone has been prepared from testicular tissue but there are indications that testosterone is not the only internal secretion of significance produced by the testes. The question of the duality or possibly the plurality of testes hormones has been studied in this laboratory for some time. The experiments concerning the relative stability of testosterone and testicular extracts which are re-ported in this paper throw additional light on this subject. The effect of boiling testosterone with acid. Three hundred micrograms of testosterone were dissolved in 750 cc. of ethyl alcohol which was mixed with 150 cc. of concentrated sulphuric acid and sufficient water to make the final volume 31.