Word: relaxin
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Using guines pigs, for example, Professor Frederick L. Hisaw has discovered relaxin, a chemical now known to exist in the human body. His search started several years ago when scientists discovered, much to their chagrin, that pocket gophers were physically incapable of having children. The female pelvis was much too small...
Hisaw explained the seeming inconsistency by finding that relaxin causes widening of the pelvis when a female is pregnant. He is now studying the chemistry and workings of this hormone, and is using other hormones in monkeys to reproduce artificially the conditions of pregnancy...
...Ovary on the Resorption of the Pubic Bones of the Pocket Gopher," nobody paid much attention. But endocrinologists began to get interested when Dr. Hisaw and fellow researchers found the relaxing substance in the blood of pregnant guinea pigs, rabbits, sows, dogs, cats, mares, women. In non-burrowing animals, relaxin dissolved no bone (as in the pocket gopher) but relaxed the pelvic ligaments and widened the pelvic canal, thus making birth easier. Hisaw found that even virgin female animals were relaxed by relaxin...
...must indeed be a new hormone. The proof was partly chemical: they produced a concentrated ovarian extract from which estrogen and progesterone (which are soluble in alcohol) had been removed; the extract nonetheless had a strong relaxing effect. But the most significant evidence was a contrast in speed between relaxin and progesterone. Relaxin acted within six hours, while progesterone took two to four days to produce the same effect. Estrogen seemed to be needed to help the reaction in both cases. Hisaw's conclusion: relaxin is a separate hormone produced in the female reproductive organs by progesterone...
...Relaxin seems to be a protein compound, insoluble in most solvents. Though the pure hormone has not yet been isolated, Hisaw has produced highly concentrated doses. A conscientious scientist who never lets himself get ahead of his facts, Dr. Hisaw refuses to predict what use, if any, may be made of relaxin...