Abel's Pituitary Tartrate

Abstract

IN 1919, Abel and Kubota isolated from the pituitary gland a ‘single principle’ which they identified as (a) histamine, (b) the ‘plain muscle-stimulating and depressor constituent.’ This conclusion, which they upheld in 1920 and withdrew in 1921, implied that the pressor constituent was not the plain muscle- stimulating (oxytocic) or the depressor substance. In 1923, Abel, Rouiller, and Geiling prepared a tartrate from pituitary extracts 1250 times as active on the uterus as histamine acid phosphate. This tartrate, they asserted, contains a ‘single principle’ responsible for the pressor, oxytocic, diuretic, and depressor activities. About the same time Hogben and Schlapp, studying the inversion effect, that is, the depression following a second injection of cormmercial extracts in the cat, found that with alcoholic extraction the depressor activity of their own preparations gave a diminishing depressor response, so that, with a powder made from glands put in ice- cold acetone immediately after killing, extraction for forty-eight hours resulted in a preparation which, with undiminished pressor activity, elicited no depressor action when administered in quantities equivalent to one hundred times the threshold for the pressor effect.