IT has been known for many years that pregnancy urine contains oestradiol-17/3, oestrone and oestriol. Recently epioestriol (16/3, 17p), 2-methoxyoestradiol, 2-methoxyoestrone, 16ahydroxyoestrone, 16/?-hydroxyoestrone, 18hydroxyoestrone and 16-0x0-oestradiol have also been isolated from it. In all 23 natural oestrogens have been identified. Methods have been devised for the chemical assay of oestradiol 17p, oestrone and oestriol in urine but the estimation of the other oestrogen metabolites is not possible at present. However, the measurement of a single metabolite may be sufficient for some clinical purposes. The daily oestriol excretion of a woman in late pregnancy is more than a thousand times that of a non-pregnant woman, but the excretion of oestrone and oestradiol does not rise in like measure. In pregnancy, particularly, there may be a case for the estimation of oestriol only. In order to produce a quicker and simpler method for the estimation of oestriol only in pregnancy urine an attempt has been made to modify the method of Brown (1955) and of Brown, Bulbrook and Greenwood (1957). EXPERIMENTALThe first four steps of the Brown method, acid hydrolysis, extraction, solvent partition and hot alkali treatment are simple and quick. Pre-liminary experiments were done in which oestriol was added to male urine to produce concentrations similar to those found in pregnancy. This urine was then put through the first four steps and the oestriol content of the residue determined by the Kober reaction as in the Brown method. It was found that there was a good deal of chromogenic impurity present in the final residue although only 5 ml. of male urine had been used. The reading due to this impurity was largely eliminated by the Allen correction. In urine with a low oestriol concentration this background colour forms a relatively large

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Summary Human chorionic gonadotrophin was given every other day to 8 women during 11 luteal phases and their excretion of oestrone and pregnanediol compared with the excretion of these steroids during an untreated luteal phase. Some of these subjects were also given chorionic somatomammotrophin while being treated with chorionic gonadotrophin. It was found that treatment with chorionic gonadotrophin resulted in an increase of ovarian hormone excretion and that the steroid levels remained elevated while the onset of menstruation was postponed. A decline in steroid excretion and menstruation eventually occurred in spite of continued treatment with chorionic gonadotrophin. There was no evidence that the administration of chorionic somatomammotrophin had any effect on ovarian steroidogenesis.