Effect of X-Rays on Fertility in White Leghorn Male Chickens Treated Before Puberty

Mirskaia and Crew (1931) and Essenberg and Karrasch (1940) reported the effects of x-rays upon the fertility of the adult cock. The latter workers demonstrated that the minimum dosage required to produce sterility, as determined by histologic studies, was 2,176 r. Essenberg and Zikmund (1938) irradiated chicks from one to twenty-one days of age, killed them within twenty-one days after the last treatment, and made histologic studies of the testes. These workers found that dosages of 300 to 600 r resulted in almost complete degeneration of the seminiferous epithelium, with a tremendous increase in interstitial tissue. They described the seminiferous epithelium as comprising only one layer of cells. It was presumed that these males would have been sterile at maturity. Even though sections showed only one layer of cells in the tubules and some of these cells were degenerating (the histologic picture typical also of the testes of irradiated sterile adult males), this does not mean necessarily that the mature ...