Abstract
In 1937 Astwood et al. observed that the mammary glands of young rats on a restricted food intake (»approximately that consumed by hypophysectomized animals«) failed to respond to injections of oestrone, while the mammary glands of littermate control rats on an unrestricted food intake responded with marked development of the duct system. These authors suggested that the inability of the mammary glands of starved rats to react to oestrogen stimulation was due to a deficiency of some nutrients necessary for growth processes. They also suggested that this observation might offer an explanation for the fact that ovarian hormones fail to stimulate mammary gland development in hypophysectomized rats, in which food intake is always much reduced. However, it has since been shown that a high food intake cannot per se make the mammary glands responsive to the action of ovarian hormones in hypophysectomized rats (Samuels et al., 1941, Ahrén, 1959 b).
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