The task of finding the brain hormones that communicated with the pituitary was stupendously difficult. The circulatory system between the brain and the pituitary is miniscule—smaller than the full stop at the end of this sentence. These hormones, if they existed, would be in such minute quantities that they would not be traceable in the general circulation of the blood. The best bet was to look for the traces of these hormones in the tiny bits of tissue at the base of the brain. This tissue contains the blood vessels that go from the brain to the pituitary.
In the initial phase, Guillemin and Schally collaborated and started their quest for the brain hormones. In the late 1950s, they went their separate ways. They were no doubt drawn to this stupendously difficult problem by the abstract intellectual puzzle, the fame and glory to be had at the end plus their mutual hatred!
The parting of the two scientists could not have been over the direction of their research as both of them essentially followed the same path. The problem they faced could be described as—how do you find a hormone that may or may not exist and even if it does, occurs in such tiny amounts in an extremely small circulatory system, which cannot be accessed? Both scientists used the same strategy. They collected animal brains from slaughterhouses and cut out the small part at the bottom that is near the pituitary.
In a blender they combined these brain parts to get a mash and then attempted to purify the mash. The purified droplets were then injected in rats to see if the pattern of pituitary hormones released was altered. If it did, they went on to purify that droplet and make an artificial version of it. A straightforward approach in theory but the effort took them years.
There were several problems that confounded the two scientists. At best, there was a miniscule portion of the hormones in any one brain. To get any reasonable quantity for analysis, they required truckloads of animal brains. Chemists had to design new ways to isolate the different chemicals in the brain.
New theories and practices had to be invented for analysis and synthesis of the chemicals. This was not just a mindless task but involved a lot of complicated science. New methods of testing the effects of hormones on animals were invented. The enormously difficult problem was made worse by the fact that a number of people in the scientific community believed that these brain hormones were fictitious and the two scientists were wasting a lot of time and money!
The search for the hormones led to a new corporatization of scientific research. Whole teams of physicians, chemists, physiologists, and biochemists were involved in isolating these putative hormones. Finally, it worked. In a ‘short’ span of 14 years in 1969, the chemical structure of the first releasing hormone was published. So, asks the breathless reader, who won? Just like the problem, the answer is complicated Everyone was very happy and the by-then-deceased Geoffrey Harris was proved correct.
So, the brain turns out to be the master gland after all and like they say in the children’s song—the brain is the boss of the body. It tells everybody what to do…. It is now recognized that the base of the brain, the hypothalamus, contains a huge array of the hormones that instruct the pituitary. In turn, the pituitary releases hormones that control the action of the other glands of the body.