Word: oxytocin
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...alcohol to save premature babies was the discovery of Anna-Riitta Fuchs, a physiologist at Rockefeller University, who found that alcohol given intravenously to animals shuts off the production of oxytocin, the hormone that activates labor contractions. Mrs. Fuchs is the wife of Dr. Fritz Fuchs, obstetrician in chief at New York Hospital; during her fourth pregnancy, she began to have premature contractions, and thus became the first human to receive the treatment suggested by her animal research...
...prescription to "feel free to do a little elbow bending." Mrs. Cunningham felt like two bourbon-and-ginger-ale highballs a day. "This," she says, "was the only thing I could keep down." But it did not raise the alcohol level in her blood high enough to keep the oxytocin down. For that, a level close to the intoxication mark is needed. Her contractions began again. So back she went to the hospital. And there she stayed for eight weeks...
...baby's sucking action stimulates the release of the hormone, oxytocin, from her pituitary gland, which causes the womb to contract and hastens recovery from childbirth. Even more important, women who have nursed are less likely to develop breast cancer. Yet for all these advantages, only two out of every five U.S. mothers give their babies the opportunity to breast feed...