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THE CLINICAL USE OF PITUITARY GONADOTROPHINS IN WOMEN

INTRODUCTION

On 22nd January 1926, in lectures to the `Gesellschaft für Geburtshilfe und Gynäkologie zu Berlin', Zondek (1926) and Aschheim (1926) first made public the results of experiments on the intact immature mouse which demonstrated that the anterior pituitary contained substances which could stimulate the ovaries. They called the anterior pituitary `Motor der Sexualfunktion'. As with many of the most brilliant advances in medicine, their findings were confirmed by simultaneous but independent experiments on intact animals and hypophysectomized rats by Smith (1926) and Smith & Engle (1927) at Stanford University, California. Zondek and Aschheim ultimately suggested that there were two gonadotrophic substances in the anterior pituitary, one responsible for follicular development and the other for corpus luteum formation after follicular rupture. They called them `Hypophysenvorderlappenhormon A, (HVH-A) and `HVH-B'.

These concepts are very similar to present-day teaching about the mechanisms involved in ovulation. It is now confirmed that there