From the mid-seventeenth century, resorption of a testicular \"ferment\" and resorption of some part of the semen constituted reputable accounts of secondary sexual characteristics. Only in the early twentieth century was the latter, \"recrementitious secretion\" theory, explicitly considered superseded by one of internal secretion, an advance ushering in the hormone era. A reconstruction of these proto-endocrinological concepts is offered onward from the first, 1490 print edition of Galen\'s On Semen. Early modern physicians picking up from Galen deliberated widely on the medium and pathway of male and female testicular influences on \"the entire body,\" including the mind, causing \"femininity\" and \"masculinity\" in physical, mental-temperamental, and behavioral terms. A switch is discernible from \"heat and strength\" (Galen) to blood-borne \"virility\" or testicular vapor (such as proposed in 1564 by Tomás Rodrigues da Veiga), to iatrochemical postulations of a \"seminal ferment\" (suggested in the late 1650s, perhaps independently, by Thomas Willis at Oxford and Lambert van Velthuysen in Utrecht), finally to a \"seminal recrement\" or \"reabsorbed semen\" concept soon after (emergent in the posthumous work of Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, among others). During the late eighteenth century, mounting controversy surrounded both the very idea of that concept and the involved anatomical pathways, informed by multiple experiments.

BACKGROUND: An often-retold historical outline of endocrinology was established over a century ago. An exhaustive history of sexual physiology remains forthcoming, however.
OBJECTIVE: To explore and contextualize the remarkable medical-historical and medical-anthropologic frenzy triggered by Brown-Séquard\'s 1889 self-injections with testicular juice, which ultimately settled down into an early history of endocrinology.
METHODS: Pertinent primary sources were selected from a broader study, primarily between 1889 and 1914, as well as selected older texts identified and unidentified by these sources.
RESULTS: Endocrinology\'s early historians in a short space of time moved from the history of testicular opotherapy to that of glandular typology and physiology and to increasingly encompassing medical-historical accounts of internal secretion as an epochal idea. Early historians nominated \"precursors\" to Brown-Séquard but underestimated physiologic continuities-specifically, early modern protoendocrinologic notions concerning semen as a \"recrement,\" notions still recited by Brown-Séquard and early Brown-Séquardists as well their detractors. Brown-Séquard himself worked through this old (recremental) concept of semen between 1889 and 1892 but was later identified with it, by among others Ancel and Bouin.
CONCLUSIONS: Western sexual physiology is a medical palimpsest, the undertexts of which remain to be studied in detail.

This brief commentary reviews key steps in the history of steroid endocrinology that have resulted in important conceptual shifts. Our understanding of the \"Fast Effects of Steroids\" now reflect substantial progress, including the major concept that steroids act rapidly on a variety of physiological and behavioral responses, via mechanisms that are too fast to be fully accounted for by classical receptor-dependent regulation of gene transcription. Several so-called \'non-classical\' mechanisms have been identified and include binding to membrane receptors and regulating non genomic signaling cascades. We survey the discovery of steroids, the initial characterization of their intracellular receptors, key progress in the understanding of the genomic effects of steroids and then the progressive discovery of the rapid non-classical and membrane-initiated actions of steroids. Foundational discoveries about brain steroid synthesis in neural processes and terminals has converged with emerging evidence for the rapid actions of steroids on brain and behavior. Had the rapid effects of steroids in the central nervous system been discovered first, these molecules would likely now be considered as a class of neurotransmitter.

BACKGROUND: Walter E. Dandy (1886-1946) was an outstanding neurosurgeon who spent his entire career at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. After graduating from medical school in 1910, he completed a research fellowship in the Hunterian laboratory with Harvey Cushing and then joined the Department of Surgery as resident, rising to the rank professor in 1931. Dandy made several contributions that helped building the neurosurgical specialty, most famously the introduction of pneumo-ventriculography to image brain lesions for which he received a Nobel prize nomination. He also performed many pituitary surgeries, although his role in this area is less known and overshadowed by that of Cushing\'s.
OBJECTIVE: This retrospective cohort study was designed to unveil Dandy\'s pituitary work and place it in the context of the overall pituitary surgeries performed at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.
METHODS: Pituitary surgery data were obtained by screening the paper and electronic surgical pathology records of the Department of Pathology, as well as the general operating room log books of the Johns Hopkins Hospital housed in the Chesney Medical Archives.
RESULTS: A total of 3211 pituitary surgeries associated with a pathological specimen were performed between February 1902 and July 2017 in 2847 patients. Most of the surgeries (2875 of 3211 89%) were done by 21 neurosurgeons. Dandy ranks 4th as number of surgeries, with 287 pituitary operations in 35 years of activity. He averaged 8 pituitary surgeries per year, a rate that positions him 6th among all Hopkins neurosurgeons. With the exception of his first operation done in July 1912 while Cushing was still at Hopkins, Dandy approached the pituitary gland transcranially, rather than transphenoidally. The majority of Dandy\'s pituitary patients had a pathological diagnosis of pituitary adenomas, followed by craniopharyngiomas and sellar cysts. In the decades Dandy operated, pituitary surgeries represented 0.56% of the total Johns Hopkins surgeries, a percentage significantly greater (p < 0.001) than the 0.1% observed in modern days. Dandy\'s pituitary clinical work was matched by important experimental studies done in the early stages of his career.
CONCLUSIONS: This study highlights the role of Dandy as an important contributor to advance our understanding of pathophysiology and treatment of pituitary diseases.

Diabetes mellitus is a group of metabolic diseases involving carbohydrate, lipid, and protein metabolism. It is characterized by persistent hyperglycemia which results from defects in insulin secretion, or action or both. Diabetes mellitus has been known since antiquity. Descriptions have been found in the Egyptian papyri, in ancient Indian and Chinese medical literature, as well as, in the work of ancient Greek and Arab physicians. In the 2(nd) century AD Aretaeus of Cappadocia provided the first accurate description of diabetes, coining the term diabetes, while in 17(th) century Thomas Willis added the term mellitus to the disease, in an attempt to describe the extremely sweet taste of the urine. The important work of the 19(th) century French physiologist Claude Bernard, on the glycogenic action of the liver, paved the way for further progress in the study of the disease. In 1889, Oskar Minkowski and Joseph von Mering performed their famous experiment of removing the pancreas from a dog and producing severe and fatal diabetes. In 1921, Frederick Banting and Charles Best extended Minkowski\'s and Mering\'s experiment. They isolated insulin from pancreatic islets and administrated to patients suffering from type 1 diabetes, saving thus the lives of millions and inaugurating a new era in diabetes treatment.

Despite being an obscure pharaoh who ruled for a very short time, Tutankhamun, the boy king, has reigned popular consciousness since the discovery of his tomb in 1922. To endocrinologists, the depiction of the kings of the 18(th) dynasty in an androgynous form complete with gynecomastia has been a source of intrigue and academic curiosity. Many explanations abound. But is the depiction just stylized art? Or did the kings indeed have familial gynecomastia, or aromatase excess with craniosynostosis. An inspired team of researchers used molecular genetic tests to truly lay the Tut controversy to rest..