The a to z of hrtThe experience of menopause is a roller coaster ride for some women, and the history of menopause-related sex hormone therapy has also had its ups and downs. Early this century medical practitioners and alternative therapists used powdered and desiccated concoctions prepared from animal ovaries as remedies for many physical and mental disorders in women. All sorts of problems were blamed on ovarian malfunction, and it seemed logical to look to healthy ovaries for a solution. The preparations given to women were full of impurities, however, and the results were unpredictable and discouraging. Hormone replacement therapy as we know it today had its beginnings in the late 1920s, when the form of oestrogen now known as oestrone (see page 171) was first isolated from the urine of pregnant women. A later (1943) development was the extraction of an oestrogen from the urine of pregnant mares. This preparation, called conjugated equine oestrogen, was, and continues to be, prescribed widely under the brand name Premarin. The next big development had nothing to do with science and everything to do with marketing. In 1963 the Wilson Foundation was established in New York by the Brooklyn gynaecologist Dr Robert A. Wilson, and backed by $USi.3 million in grants from the pharmaceutical industry. The foundation's mission was to promote the use of oestrogens and Wilson succeeded in this, particularly through his widely read book Feminine Forever. In an article summarising his book, Wilson described menopausal women as 'living decay', and said that oestrogen therapy could save them from being 'condemned to witness the death of their womanhood'. He listed twenty-six symptoms that the 'youth pill' could avert -including hot flushes, osteoporosis, thinning of the vaginal walls, sagging and shrinking breasts, wrinkles, absent-minded episodes, irritability, frigidity (a condition rarely referred to these days!), depression, alcoholism and even suicide. *18\38\8* Hormonal «Online Pharmacy no Prescription» |
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