The Institute of Medicine White Paper on Testosterone: Current Perspective

Abstract

Good health and normal sexual function in males require functioning testicles, a fact known since antiquity. It is only more recently that the source of that effect was attributed to testosterone. Several centuries ago, Arnould Berthold castrated a rooster as part of an experiment, which resulted in loss of the physical signs of masculinization. Berthold realized that something manufactured by the testes was responsible for maintenance of virilization; returning the testicles to the intra-abdominal cavity of the rooster led to a restoration of its phenotype. Because Berthold had severed the neurovascular connection of the testis to the body, he correctly surmised that the testicles produced a secretion that must act through the circulatory system. It was Charles Brown-Sequard who confirmed the testes as the source of the secretion of this “hormone.” After he extracted fluid from the testis of dogs and injected himself with this fluid, he experienced improvements in strength, appetite, and mentation and published the results. The exact chemical messenger remained unidentified until 1935, when David et al. published the structure of the steroidal chemical and named the compound “testosterone.” Shortly thereafter, Butenandt and Ruzicka published near simultaneous manuscripts describing the methods for testosterone synthesis, which resulted in them subsequently sharing the Nobel Prize.