The Emergence of Endocrinology

The emergence of a modern endocrinology between 1890 and 1905 was, in Borell's (1985:1) terms, "part of the general pattern of success experienced at that time by investigators attempting to extract potent chemical products from animal tissues." The scientific import of the discoveries of hormones lay in the shift from neurological theories and explanations as triggers of physiological processes (nervous stimuli) to chemical explanations (chemical stimuli) for such processes (Borell 1985:11). While modern

endocrinology began with the study of gonadal extracts, its focus quickly shifted to nonreproductive hormones.^[2] But turn-of-the-century confirmation of reproductive endocrinological processes eventually promoted the broad development of the reproductive sciences.^[3] Modern endocrinology emerged largely in Britain through the efforts of medical and agricultural scientists, with significant contributions also made by French scientists, by German gynecologists, and, later, by American researchers.^[4]

The list below summarizes major turn-of-the-century developments.

Several of these now classic researches demonstrate that the roots of modern endocrinology lay in part in clinical medicine (Borell 1976a,b,c). And clinicians certainly applied the fruits of endocrinological research in clinical practice as quickly as they could. Some biologists and medical researchers later blamed clinicians for moving too quickly, thereby creating clinical and media disasters that had negative consequences for the legitimacy of basic research.

For example, endocrinologist Herbert McLean Evans stated that "endocrinology suffered obstetric deformity in its very birth," referring to Charles Edouard Brown-Séquard's work with animal testicular extracts of ca. 1889 (Borell 1978:283). Brown-Séquard had made highly disputed claims that such extracts had rejuvenating effects when ingested by older adult human males (Borell 1985:1). Years of monkey and goat gland and other male animal testicular transplants into men and other animals (stallions and rams) followed (Hamilton 1986; Rechter 1997). So, too, did accusations of clinical quackery.

Endocrinology was especially vulnerable to controversy at the time because there was virtually no purification of extracts or regulation of their clinical use. Clinical applications—collectively termed organotherapy —were

made of many kinds of unspecified organ extracts, including gonadal extracts. The popular press reported hotly debated claims of the effectiveness of such treatments for a wide variety of problems. According to Borell, the resulting "tension between the clinic and the laboratory became a major feature of the early years of endocrinological research," especially regarding gonadal extracts.^[6] Shortly after Brown-Séquard's work, the discovery that thyroid extracts alleviated myxedema (1891) and the identification of adrenaline (1894) and secretin (1902) fueled the organotherapy debate between clinicians and laboratory scientists. The "use of organ extracts by practitioners ... quickly outstripped study of these same preparations by experimentalists" (Borell 1985:3). This intense use was also related to the rise of serotherapy (immunology) at about the same time (Borell 1976a). Both were viewed as new miracles of scientific medicine.

In 1895 Edward Schafer (later Sir Edward Sharpey-Shafer), a British physiologist and endocrinologist, became a laboratory-based champion of and spokesman for the theory of internal secretion. To counteract the sensationalism of organotherapeutic claims, he "was stern in his demeanor and terse in his accounts of progress" (Borell 1976a:314). Borell also credits him with salvaging endocrinology from morally based scientific exclusion through his editorship of the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Physiology and his own research. Saved from expulsion from physiology, endocrinology became what he termed the "New [Chemical] Physiology." Thyroid extract, adrenaline, and secretin, with their concrete, respectable, and nonsexual applications, helped to legitimate and promote endocrinology. The term hormone was introduced in 1905 by Ernest Starling, another British investigator, to specify blood-borne chemicals serving physiological functions. Starling noted that although chemical substances were as important to physiological regulation as nervous stimuli, their study had been previously overlooked.^[7] Gradually, endocrinology itself became a specialty, segmenting off from general physiology.^[8] In general endocrinology before World War I, the main contributors were British and German scientists. Because of the war itself and the increased prestige and funding of American scientific and medical research after the war, initiative then shifted to the United States, although British, French, Dutch, and German researchers continued to make contributions.^[9]