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.Bythen, the sex hormones had become sex steroids; they had been crystal-lized and purified, their metabolism was being successfully investigatedand partial synthesis was under way.The industrialist is quite visible inthe Dutch trajectory of the sex hormones.As N.Oudshoorn recounts, thefirm Organon was the main provider of glands and research material foracademic researchers, and it also supplied the drugs for clinical use, becom-ing a critical actor in the techno-scientific construction of gender identities.The main focus of Beyond the Natural Body is, however, on forms of bio-logical standardization that took place within the physiological laboratory.Here, processes revolved around the control of experimental systems, withparticular attention being paid to the various factors and parameters thatmight affect biological functions.The main aim was to stabilize local resultsby facilitating reproducibility, thus black-boxing various biological entitiesthat participated in the physiology of reproduction.Hohlweg s quote, cited at the beginning, reminds us that the stand-ardization of the sex hormones was not in the first instance an academicproblem but an industrial issue, a process pursued in various ways by thelarge pharmaceutical companies responsible for the production of as well assome research into hormone preparations.In comparison with laboratory 178 The Visible Industrialiststandardization, its industrial variant focused on testing rather than experi-mental systems, that is, on technical arrangements that were simple androbust enough to on the one hand provide a model for production processesand monitor their functioning, and on the other provide the means for thelarge-scale control of raw materials, as well as ensuring product quality withhomogeneous composition.Industrial standardization did not operate in isolation, within produc-tion sites alone.It was linked to practices of laboratory standardization thatcould be pursued either in-house or in collaborative academic settings.Itwas also closely related to standardization in the clinic, since the manufac-turer s definition of quality or the measurement of potency aimed at thestandardization of dosage, route of administration and indications in a glo-bal strategy for disciplining adverse reactions, toxic events, lack of toleranceand variable efficacy.Even if animal substitutes were occasionally handledand assessed in hospitals, clinical standardization relied in the first place onthe comparison of human cases.Using this simple but convenient analytical distinction between experi-mental, industrial and clinical work, we now want to go on to explorethe multiple dimensions of biological drug standardization by comparingdevelopments in two German firms, IG Farben and Schering.Although bothcompanies produced hormonal substances in the1930s, they developed sig-nificantly different regimes of standardization.The testing laboratory and its contextBoth IG Farben and Schering created physiological laboratories in thelate 1920s, at a time when the preparation of powdered extracts of ovariesmarketed as female hormones to be used in glandular therapy were beingreplaced by purification protocols using the urine of pregnant women orpregnant mares as raw material.Schering s commercial product was calledProgynon, IG Farben s, Unden, with the two firms adopting different struc-tures and, more importantly, different ways of situating biological testing inthe company s research infrastructure.As recounted by J.Lesch, Bayer (later incorporated into IG Farben)expanded its drug research infrastructure in the 1920s, turning the identi-fication of chemicals with putative therapeutic properties into a systematicenterprise, thereby instituting an industrial organization of drug research.10Bayer s screening system that would become a reference after the develop-ment of the sulfonamides in the1930s was based on the mobilization of anarmy of organic chemists responsible for the synthesis of entire families ofmolecules related by their core structure.In parallel, the company devel-oped bacteriological and pharmacological laboratories where these com-pounds could be tested either on pure cultures of bacteria, or inoculatedinto animals infected with model diseases.Focusing on the chemotherapy Jean-Paul Gaudillire 179of infections, the system nonetheless opened niches for developments inother therapeutic domains, beginning with the synthesis of anaesthet-ics, barbiturates, or gland extracts.In vivo and in vitro testing was in allinstances pursued within the pharmacological department under the direc-tion of Gerhard Domagk.Rooted in the culture of bacteriology, the local understanding of stand-ardization focused on the homogeneity of tools, the control of gestures,and purity.This combination did not imply that all preparations of phar-maceutical interest were pure chemicals.Unden, for example, was not sucha chemical
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