Saturday, 29 October 2016

A Curious Observation – Pituitary Gland and hCG Diet

HCG Diet

Mulling over this depressing situation, I remembered a rather curious observation made many years ago in India. At that time we knew very little about the function of the diencephalon, and my interest centered round the hypophysis gland. Froehlich had described cases of extreme obesity and sexual underdevelopment in youths suffering from a new growth of the anterior hypophysis lobe, producing what then turn known as Froehlich’s disease. However, it was very soon discovered that the identical syndrome, though running a less fulminating course, was quite usual in patients whose hypophysis gland was perfectly normal. These are the so-called “fat boys” with long usual , slender hands, breasts any flat-chested maiden would be proud to posses, large hips, buttocks and thighs with striation, knock-knees and developing genitals, often with undescended testicles.

It also turn known that in these cases the sex organs could he developed by giving the patients injections of a meaning extracted from the urine of pregnant women, it having been shown that when this meaning was injected into sexually immature rats it made them precociously ripen. The amount of meaning which produced this effect in one rat was called one International Unit, and the purified extract was accordingly called “Human Chorionic Gonadotrophin” whereby chorionic signifies that it is produced in the placenta and gonadotropin that its action is sex gland directed.

The usual way of treating “fat boys” with developing genitals is to inject several hundred International Units twice a week. Human Chorionic Gonadotrophin which we shall henceforth simply call HCG is expensive and as “fat boys” are fairly usual among Indians I tried to establish the smallest effective dose. In the course of this study three interesting things emerged. The first was that when fresh pregnancy-urine from the female ward was given in quantities of about 300 cc. by retention enema, as good results could be obtained as by injecting the pure meaning . The second was that small daily doses appeared to be just as effective as much larger ones given twice a week. Thirdly, and that is the observation that concerns us here, when such patients were given small daily doses they seemed to lose their ravenous appetite though they neither gained nor lost weight. Strangely enough however, their shape did change.