The origins of discoveries can usually be very interesting and this is the case surrounding the discovery of testosterone. In 1889, a Harvard professor by the name of Brown-Sequard who then lived in Paris, injected just under his skin a "rejuvenating elixir". This elixir was made from a concoction he derived from guinea pig and dog testicles. He reported that his energy and vigor were noticeably restored, but the effects were not at all long lasting and probably had a lot to do with the placebo effect.



So unfortunately for Professor Brown-Sequard, his peers busted his balls, the whole mammalian collection of them in fact, and his work was abandoned...for about forty years.

Then someone came up with the cajones, bull cajones in fact -- lot's of them...to get this abandoned study going again. So forget Harvard and Professor Brown-Sequard, now the University of Chicago's Professor of Physiological Chemistry, a man named Fred Koch, found a way to tap into a very large supply of bull testicles --the Chicago stock yards. In addition, he also had access to an army of students willing to give their toil and sweat to the endeavor of extracting their isolates. So in 1927, Koch and his main student, Lemuel McGee, ended up extracting a mere 20 mg of extract out of an entire supply of 40 pounds of bull testes. And, instead of injecting it into themselves, like along with the real life Professor Brown-Sequard so many main characters of science fiction stories tend to do, they had the good sense to inject it into capons. A capon is a rooster whose testicles are removed at a young age. Typically, this castration puts a stop to the poor bird from developing its natural male traits. No cock-a-doodle-doing for you little buddy. No developing that not so tender muscle mass. Your destined to be an oven stuffer roaster.

What were the results of these injections? The capons were actually remasculinated. An incredible, successful experiment. Fred said "yabba-dabba-doo", in harmony with the capon's "cock-a-doodle-do" over this monumental discovery. And with a little more study and further experimentation by other scientists in Amsterdam and Europe, a full scale steroid research program finally materialized in the 1930's because now it was feasible. Now they were able to isolate a pure form of testosterone and begin study on the effect this substance would have on humans.

So in 1935 we had an extract of the hormone that we now know as testosterone. Later that year they were able to chemically synthesize this hormone from cholesterol. By 1939 the Nobel prize in chemistry was given jointly to two scientists, Butenandt and Ruzicka. They partially sythesized testosterone from a cholesterol base, and thus began the "golden age" of steroid chemistry that occurred in the period from this time into the 1950's.

This sythesized compound of testosterone as it was called, or more accurately a whole family of this compounds derivatives were discovered throughout the 1950's and 1960's. It was found that this was a potent exaggerator of male attributes such as muscle mass an strength, sexual libido, energy and overall well being. It really became the rejuvenating elixir that Professor Brown-Sequard expected it to be.