The Amazing History of Anabolic Steroids in Sports
August 12, 2011
By Millard Baker
Testosterone, Dianabol , Winstrol, Deca Durabolin, Anavar and Anadrol are some of the most popular anabolic steroids currently used by athletes and bodybuilders today. Few people outside the steroid subculture realize that these anabolic drugs have been available for over fifty years.
Many sports fans seem to be under the impression that widespread steroid use in sports is only a relatively recent phenomena. They are sorely mistaken. The truth is athletes have been experimenting with these drugs practically from the moment they became commercially available. The “secret” of steroids has been well-known among insiders for some time.
The First Injectable Anabolic Steroid Product
The testes have been known to be responsible for male-typical characteristics and behaviors since ancient times but it was not until 1849 that scientists learned how this happened. German scientist Arnold Adolf Berthold discovered that the testes influenced masculine behavior by secreting an unknown substance into the bloodstream.
A few decades later, French physiologist Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard, the father of modern-day hormone research, sought to capture this essence of masculinity with a concentrated extract derived from guinea pig and dog testicles. He claimed that injecting the extract would increase physical strength and intellectual ability in humans.
The First Athlete to Use Steroids
Athletes looking for an edge have often looked to science as a means to improve their athletic abilities. Brown-Séquard’s hormone research intrigued future Major League Baseball pitcher and Hall of Famer “Pud” Galvin. Galvin wondered if injections of the Brown-Séquard Elixir would enhance baseball performance.
Since the extract undoubtedly contained trace amounts of as-of-yet-unidentified androgenic steroids, Galvin became the first known athlete to inject a steroid-based product when he became a regular user of the rejuvenating Brown-Sequard Elixir. The year was 1889. Galvin’s use of “steroids” preceded the recent steroids in baseball scandal by over 100 years.
Brown-Séquard’s research inspired several scientists to build on his research with testicular extracts.
Steroids Can Enhance Athletic Performance
A few years after “Pud” Galvin became baseball’s first “steroid user”, Austrian physiologist Oskar Zoth hypothesized that injections of steroid-based testicular extracts could enhance athletic performance.
Zoth published an 1896 paper proposing further research on performance be conducted with athletes. The idea that some mysterious substance in animal testicles could offer performance-enhancing benefits in athletes has been firmly planted in the research community ever since.
The next two decades saw scientists repeatedly confirm the androgenic effects of various testicular extracts.
In 1927, University of Chicago chemistry professor Fred Koch and research assistant Lemuel McGee derived 20 mg of a substance from 40 pounds of bovine testicles obtained from the Chicago Stockyards. The testicular extract re-masculinized castrated roosters, pigs and rats.
Still, the chemical structures of powerful androgens such as testosterone had not yet been elucidated and identified.
The Decade of Sex Hormones
Steroid hormone research exploded in the 1930s. The decade started off with the milestone discovery involving the isolation of the first androgenic hormone in 1931 by German biochemist Adolf Butenandt.
The discovery generated considerable excitement in the scientific community but researchers believed that a much more powerful anabolic-androgenic steroid hormone still existed. The race was on!
The “decade of sex hormones” would open a Pandora’s box with a far-reaching impact of sport and medicine.
The Horsemen of the Steroid Revolution
Three powerful pharmaceutical companies were highly involved in the rush to developed anabolic steroids. Not surprisingly, these three companies had a long and lasting effect on the history and development of anabolic steroids that continues until the present.
The development of steroids was big business even in the 1930s. Major pharmaceutical companies such as Organon, Schering and Ciba saw considerable potential in this emerging market. It is little surprise that the companies that launched the steroid revolution continue to be strongly associated with anabolic steroids among modern-day athletes.
The chemists working for these big pharma companies have changed the world perhaps not in ways that they could have imagined. They would become “steroid gods” in the annals of sports history. Athletes would soon make use of their creations during the next 75 years!
The Discovery and Identification of Testosterone
Organon, Schering and Ciba rushed to isolate and synthesize the powerful hormones contained in testicular extracts.
Karoly David and Ernst Laqueur of Organon (Netherlands) were the first pharmaceutical team to isolate and identify the chemical structure of testosterone when they isolated 10 mg from 100 kg of bull testicles. The discovery of testosterone was first announced in the classic paper entitled “On Crystalline Male Hormone from Testes (Testosterone): More Active Than Androsterone Preparations from Urine or Cholesterol” on May 27, 1935.
At this point, large quantities of animal testicles were required to extract testosterone which made the use of testosterone impractical for commercial use. However, competing research teams were only months away from publishing more efficient methods of synthesizing testosterone.
The Synthesis of Testosterone and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Schering and Ciba independently discovered less expensive methods of synthesizing testosterone in August 1935.
German biochemist Adolf Butenandt and G. Hanisch of Schering (Germany) published a paper entitled “On Testosterone Conversion of Dehydroandrosterone in Androstenediol and Testosterone: A Method for Preparing Testosterone from Cholesterol” on August 24, 1935.
Croatian organic chemist Leopold Ružička and German chemist Alfred Wettstein of Ciba (Switzerland) published the paper entitled “On the Artificial Preparation of the Testicular Hormone Testosterone (Androsten-3-one-17-ol)” on August 31, 1935.
This steroid research was deemed so important that the lead researchers from the Schering and Ciba teams ultimately shared the 1939 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their remarkable work on anabolic-androgenic steroid hormones.
The Golden Age of Anabolic Steroid Research
The discovery of synthetic methods of preparing the anabolic-androgenic steroid known as testosterone was a major breakthrough in the pharmaceutical world allowing steroid hormone research to flourish.
This is when the golden age of anabolic steroid research (from 1935 to 1965) truly began.
Nobel Prize winner Ružička didn’t waste any time; he synthesized some pretty cool steroids back in 1935 including methyltestosterone, mestanolone and methandriol.
By 1937, the injectable anabolic steroid testosterone propionate and the oral steroid methyltestosterone were available in sufficient quantities to be used in human clinical research trials.
Leopold Ružička also synthesized androstenedione which, several decades later, became one of the most infamous steroids in the history of steroids in baseball. (Illinois chemist Patrick Arnold introduced androstenedione into the dietary supplement market in the United States in 1995 and it found its way into the controversy surrounding home run slugger Mark McGwire and steroids.)
Testosterone Increases Muscle Mass
Charles Kochakian, a synthetic steroid pioneer, made a milestone discovery in the history of steroids. Kochakian’s animal research with testosterone acetate proved that testosterone was indeed an anabolic hormone in 1936. Kochakian’s research group was the first to scientifically document a connection between testosterone and increased muscle mass.
In 1938, Allan Kenyon’s research group confirmed that the anabolic muscle effects of testosterone propionate occurred in human subjects as well during steroid experiments on eunuchoidal boys, men and women.
The Use of Anabolic Steroids in World War II
Kochakian participated in a medical conference exploring methods to speed the healing process in injured American soldiers returning from combat during World War II. Kochakian promoted the muscle-building effects of testosterone for the post-surgical care of these soldiers.
There has been no evidence that steroids were ever used to enhance performance of soldiers on the battlefield.
Nazi Soldiers and Anabolic Steroids
The claim that German soldiers were injected with testosterone in World War II has often been repeated but Professor of Germanic Studies John Hoberman believes the use of steroid by Nazi soldiers is a myth. There has been no evidence in the German literature to support the use of anabolic steroids by soldiers in Nazi Germany.
Similarly, the rumor that German athletes used testosterone as an ergogenic aid during the 1936 Berlin Olympics is unsupported by literature published during this period.
Russell Marker Makes Steroid Use Affordable
The most significant discovery to facilitate the commercialization of pharmaceutical sex hormones was made by Pennsylvania State chemistry professor Russell Marker.
Ružicka and Butenandt may have won the Nobel Prize for their synthesis of testosterone but Marker made anabolic steroids a mass market phenomenon.
The cost of testosterone, progesterone and other important steroids fell dramatically in the 1940s when Marker recognized that the raw materials for steroid synthesis could be obtained from the naturally-occurring plant steroid diosgenin instead of the much more expensive method of converting cholesterol that existed at the time.
He developed a three-step chemical process by which diosgenin could be converted to progesterone. It became known as the Marker Degradation. Now, he only needed to find an inexpensive plant source of diosgenin.
The Indiana Jones of the Steroid Industry
In January 1942, the eccentric Marker became the Indiana Jones of the steroid industry when he left the ivory tower at Pennsylvania State College to explore the jungles of Mexico. He organized an expedition exploring the area surronding the city of Orizaba in the State of Veracruz.
Marker succeeded in locating the diosgenin-containing variety of Mexican wild yam known as the “cabeza de negro” (dioscorea mexicana). This variety of wild yam reached up to 100 kilograms in size.
Marker’s team continued searching for richer sources of plant steroids and eventually found the “barbasco” variety of wild yam (dioscorea composita) which contained four times the amount of diosgenin as the “cabeza de negro”.
The Mexican Steroid Industry Becomes International Player in Steroid Trade
The pharmaceutical company Parke-Davis funded Marker’s 1942 expedition to Mexico but rejected proposals to commercialize the discovery. The president of Parke-Davis didn’t consider Mexico a reliable investment given its instability and anti-American sentiment in the midst of World War II.
Marker resigned from Parke-Davis in 1943. He shopped his discovery to other American pharmaceutical houses which all rejected his proposal.
So, in 1944, Marker founded Syntex SA in Mexico City, with investments by the Mexican company Laboratorios Hormona SA, for the commercial production of steroid hormones.
The Mexican steroid industry, including “Syntex” and several other steroid companies, produced the bulk of sex hormones sold in the United States and became an international player in the field.
The price of anabolic steroids fell drastically setting the stage for their increased use in sport and society.
The Popularization of Testosterone Among West Coast Bodybuilders
In 1945, writer Paul de Kruif celebrated the anabolic properties of testosterone, testosterone propionate and methyltestosterone in the book entitled “The Male Hormone”. This widely-read book was rumored to have helped popularize the potential of testosterone (and future anabolic steroids) to increase muscle mass among West Coast bodybuilders in the late 1940s and early 1950s. This was only the beginning of bodybuilding’s fascination with anabolic steroids.
The bodybuilding community as a whole would soon start widely experimenting with anabolic steroids in the 1950s and become pioneers in steroid use. They would remain on the cutting edge of performance-enhancement drugs well into the next century.
IFBB Mr. Olympia Larry Scott admitted that he, and practically all of the top competitive bodybuilders, were also using anabolic steroids by 1960.
S.D. Searle Pharmaceuticals Creates One Thousand Different Anabolic Steroids in Laboratory
Searle initiated an unprecedented effort in steroid research to discover superior synthetic steroid hormones for use in medicine. Between 1948 and 1955, chemists at Searle had synthesized more than a thousand different testosterone derivatives and analogues with the specific goal of creating an orally active anabolic steroid with minimal androgenic side effects. Searle wanted to create steroids that avoided any virilizing effects.
Nilevar Becomes First Synthetic Oral Anabolic Steroid Approved by FDA (1956)
Of the thousand potential steroid profiles created by Searle during this period, Nilevar (norethandrolone) was the winning candidate selected for commercialization. Searle chemist Frank Colton synthesized norethandrolone in 1953.
Norethandrolone became the first orally-active, synthetic anabolic steroid when it was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the brand name Nilevar in 1956. The only other orally-active androgen available at the time was methyltestosterone which was simply a 17?-methylated version of testosterone to increase its oral bioavailability.
Bodybuilding Champion Bill Pearl Uses Nilevar
In 1958, West Coast bodybuilder and Mr. Universe champion Bill Pearl was one of the first bodybuilders to experiment with the new anabolic steroid created by Searle. Pearl did a 12-week cycle using 30 mg of Nilevar and increased his bodyweight by 25 lbs from 225 to 250 lbs.
Bill Pearl openly admitted using anabolic steroids in preparation for the 1961 National Amateur BodybBuilders Association (NABBA) Mr. Universe contest. He revealed that steroid use was no longer an underground practice among top bodybuilders corroborating Mr. Olympia Larry Scott’s assessment of the steroid scene in bodybuilding.
Pharmaceutical Companies Go Nuts Creating Anabolic Steroids
G.D. Searle was not the only pharmaceutical company to spend massive resources on developing new synthetic anabolic steroids. Several major pharmaceutical companies went absolutely nuts creating anabolic steroids during the 1950s and the early 1960s.
Between 1950 and 1965, practically all of the popular steroids currently used today had been developed. These included but are not limited to: Dianabol, Anadrol, Anavar, Winstrol,Halotestin, Equipoise , Durabolin, Deca Durabolin, Primobolan, Oral Turinabol, Masteron, Proviron and Trenbolone Acetate.
Even some of the more esoteric steroids to be used by future bodybuilders were developed during this period such as furazabol, Esiclene (formebolone), Oranabol (oxymesterone), Cheque Drops (mibolerone), Anatrofin (stenbolone) and Orabolin.
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