Nutrition and the Anterior Pituitary with Special Reference to the General Adaptation Syndrome

Body weight and food intake as initiating factors for puberty in the rat

“…Its effect resembles that of a rise in environmental temperature, and hypothalamic centres which react to such environmental changes in the adult would be expected to respond similarly to effects of growth which simulate them. Marshall (1936Marshall ( , 1942 and others have stressed the importance of such exteroceptive factors as food intake, light and temperature in initiating sexual activity in seasonal breeders, and they can be shown to influence puberty in the rat (Luce-Clausen & Brown, 1939;Fiske, 1941;Ershoff, 1952). The stable relation between puberty and changes in energy balance when we varied growth rate suggested that food intake or its correlate metabolic rate may act as the normal signal to initiate puberty.…”

“…It is possible by chronic underfeeding to delay both growth and sexual development in rats (Ershoff, 1952). However, this by itself tells us little about the relation between puberty and body weight, because of the associated underfeeding.…”

Body composition of rats in B-vitamin deficiencies

“…Increased protein content has been found in livers of rats treated with cortisone (Silber & Porter, 1953; Clark & Pesch, 1956). Evidence of involvement of the adrenals in deficiencies of pyridoxine, riboflavin and pantothenic acid has accumulated during recent years (Morgan, 1951; Ershoff, 1952;Forker & Morgan, 1954; Guggenheim, 1954a; Guggenheim & Diamant, 1955 ;Eisenstein, 1957). The compositions of liver and carcass of adrenalectomized and of cortisone-treated rats were therefore studied for comparison.…”

Spontaneous Precocious Puberty in the Rat

“…This has been confirmed by many investigators (e.g. Luce-Clausen & Brown, 1939;Fiske, 1941 ;Ershoff, 1952;Kennedy & Mitra, 1963). For this reason the young were kept with their mothers from their birth onwards in a subterranean room into which no daylight penetrated.…”