Akshay Chopra - Story of Dianabol (Methandrostenolone) The Steroid that Changed the Face of Sports

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HOW IT ALL BEGAN?

The greed for human superiority is probably the reason humans became the most dominant species on the face of the earth, despite of being among the weakest. Since millions of years of evolution, there has been only one, single minded focus of the human species, i.e. Survival. In the days of our ancestors, anything which threatened our survival was a threat to the species, and it had to be eliminated.

Over millions of years, as the human beings started dominating the earth and became the superior species, the focus shifted from other species to the ones of their own kind, as the aim of survival and domination always existed. The humans started confronting other humans, through small fights, or large scale battles. Communities which survived the blood bath, survived and thrived.

Slowly, the humans developed a more peaceful way of showcasing their superiority, i.e. through physical competitions which turned into big scale games and sporting events. Winning in these events meant everything. Physical strength was the ultimate in human performance back then, and the participants were ready to do anything to win.

The trend still continues, and is a never ending one. Slowly, the humans started searching for external ergogenic aids to support their hard work. Various herbal and plant concoctions were tried over thousands of years, but the real breakthrough came when the laboratory manipulative chemicals came into the limelight.

The first recorded experiment on hormones was by Arnold A. Berthold in 1849. In the 19th century though the details of the structures of tissues and glands were described, the functional significance was not known.

For a long period of time it was known that castrating the animals made them infertile and less wild which meant that it was easy for the people to domesticate animals as they were now more docile. Well they did not know what caused this change. Berthold noted that castration of cocks led to non-development of male behaviour which consisted of showing interest in hens and aggressiveness towards other males.

Berthold speculated that the testes secreted some substance that entered the blood and acted on the body of the cock to develop male characteristics. However, this was not proved till a long time until 1930s.

As per a study in the Journal of Urology in 2001, it was as early as the year 1849, when the scientists had suggested that a substance secreted by the testes into the blood stream was related to physiological and behavioural characteristics into male animals.

In 1889, Brown Sequard who is considered the founding fathers of modern endocrinology, published results from his experiments on testicular substances, in which he reported increase in muscular strength, mental abilities and appetite. Though his studies could not be substantiated, following this a new field was born in the medical world called as Organotherapy, wherein tissues and organs from the animals were transferred into humans in order to create the effects which were present in the animal from which the tissue or organ is taken. This therapy became very famous and was used to treat a number of diseases back then. Of course, this was never practically possible due to various medical complications involved in such a procedure.

As per the study conducted by Hobberman and Yesalis on The History of Synthetic Testosterone, based on Browns work, Oskar Zoth and Friderik Pregl began to investigate the effects of injections of testicular extracts on muscle strength and athletic performance. In fact, they injected themselves with testicular extracts from bulls and measured the strength during exercise. Zoth may be the first person to suggest injecting athletes with hormones in an attempt to increase performance.

In 1927, Koch, who was the professor of Physiological Chemistry at the University of Chicago, started extracting the isolates of testicles and injected them into castrated roosters, pigs and rats to re-introduce masculine characteristics.

As per Daniel Rosen, the author of Dope, Koch along with one of his students began their research by extracting testosterone from 40 lbs of bull testicles they had acquired. But, as a result they were only able to obtain a mere 20 mg of that substance. In 1929, Koch and Dr. Gallagher refined the technique of extraction of testosterone and this time used 1000 lbs. of bull testicles. To test this hormone, whether it was the male hormone they wanted, they tried the hormone on men with little or no testosterone like eunuchs. The results were proven beyond doubt and the race was on.

In the 1930s, three European pharma companies like Schering (Germany), Organon (Netherlands) and Ciba (Switzerland) began a full scale steroid research and development programmes in the 1930s. The Organon group was the first one to isolate the hormone, and name it testosterone.

By 1935, a Jewish-German Pharmacologist, named Ernest Laqueur, determined the actual molecular structure of the hormone and was the one who named it Testosterone.

It was not until 1929, that the first sex hormone was isolated. Chemist Adolf Butenandt was the first to isolate the sex hormone estrone from the urine of pregnant women.

In 1931, Butenandt discovered the hormone Androstenone, which was synthesized in 1934 by a chemist in Zurich named Leopold Ruzicka. The first 15mg of Androstenone was extracted from hundreds of litres of urine. When the comparisons were made between the two extracts, it was found that the extract from the male had greater androgenic properties.