ABSTRACT
The number of young ova in hypertrophied or increased ovarian fragments is reduced, sometimes highly reduced. This phenomenon has been seen in five experiments on young rabbits.
It is not very likely that the diminution is an apparent one due to the increased volume of the ovarian fragment.
Ovarian hypertrophy is not due to new formation of young ova but to follicular development.
The diminution of the number of young ova is explained by the fact that in an ovarian fragment a relatively increased number of young ova are used for follicular development.
It is very probable that the increase of follicular development, as taking place in an ovarian fragment and causing hypertrophy of the latter, is due to some general factor possibly to some substance available in the body in a given amount.
The ovarian fragment which alone remains in the body, reveals a tendency to cystic degeneration ; hypertrophy is in some cases nothing else than increase in volume by formation of big follicular cysts.
In five young rabbits fifteen ovaries from animals mostly of the same litters were subcutaneously engrafted. The grafts disappeared without any exception, in any case two months after the operation. In view of the great facility with which ovarian grafts generally take in homoiotransplantation, these negative results though not proving make it probable that the taking of the ovarian graft is rendered difficult when the ovaries in situ are present and use the substances as necessary for follicular development.
In three out of six cases of rabbits containing hypertrophied ovarian fragments the uterus was normal ; the fact that the uterus was less developed in the remaining cases might be explained by the long latent period as necessary till the threshold quantity of hormones can be produced by the ovarian fragment.
I am much indebted to my former co-worker Dr Karl Wagner, now Professor of Histology at the University of Kowno, for the sections for figs. 1 to 10 and 13 to 17; to Dr H. E. V. Voss for the sections for fig. II ; and to my friend Sergej Všnjakov for the photographs.
Preliminary communications in the C.R. de la Soc. de Biol.; see References (No. 7). The experiments have been performed in 1920 to 1922.
During 1924 I have made a new series of experiments in which a third ovary has been engrafted into not castrated female guinea pigs. The intrarenal method of ovarian transplantation was used which guarantees success in every case when the glands in situ are absent. So comparison is easy. The results will be given elsewhere.
See fig. 99 A, B, and C in Lipschütz, The Internal Secretions of the Sex Glands. Cambridge, 1924.
