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<\/a>\nSerge Voronoff, Himself.<\/em><\/p>\n
In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, trends in\u00a0xenotransplantation\u00a0included the work of\u00a0Charles-\u00c9douard Brown-S\u00e9quard.\u00a0In 1889, Voronoff injected himself under the skin with extracts from ground-up\u00a0dog\u00a0and\u00a0guinea pig\u00a0testicles. These experiments failed to produce the desired results of increased hormonal effects to retard aging.<\/p>\n
Voronoff’s experiments launched from this starting point. He believed glandular transplants would produce more sustained effects than mere injections. Voronoff’s early experiments in this field included transplanting\u00a0thyroid glands\u00a0from\u00a0chimpanzees\u00a0to humans with thyroid deficiencies. He moved on to transplanting the testicles of executed\u00a0criminals\u00a0into\u00a0millionaires, but, when demand outstripped supply, he turned to using monkey testicle tissue instead.<\/p>\n
In 1917, Voronoff began being funded by Evelyn Bostwick, a wealthy American socialite and the daughter of\u00a0Jabez Bostwick.\u00a0The money allowed him to begin transplantation experiments on animals. Bostwick also acted as his laboratory assistant at the\u00a0Coll\u00e8ge de France\u00a0in Paris, and consequently became the first woman admitted to that institution.\u00a0They married in 1920.<\/p>\n
Between 1917 and 1926, Voronoff carried out over five hundred transplantations on\u00a0sheep\u00a0and\u00a0goats, and also on a\u00a0bull, grafting testicles from younger animals to older ones. Voronoff’s observations indicated that the transplantations caused the older animals to regain the vigor of younger animals.\u00a0He also considered monkey-gland transplantation an effective treatment to counter\u00a0senility.<\/p>\n
His first official transplantation of a monkey gland into a human took place on June 12, 1920.\u00a0Thin slices (a few millimetres wide) of testicles from chimpanzees and\u00a0baboons\u00a0were implanted inside the patient’s\u00a0scrotum, the thinness of the tissue samples allowing the foreign tissue to fuse with the human tissue eventually.\u00a0By 1923, 700 of the world’s leading surgeons at the\u00a0International Congress of Surgeons\u00a0in\u00a0London,\u00a0England, applauded the success of Voronoff’s work in the “rejuvenation” of old men.<\/p>\n
In his book\u00a0Rejuvenation by Grafting<\/em>\u00a0(1925),\u00a0Voronoff describes what he believes are some of the potential effects of his surgery. While “not an aphrodisiac”, he admits the sex drive may be improved. Other possible effects include better memory, the ability to work longer hours, the potential for no longer needing glasses (due to improvement of muscles around the eye), and the prolonging of life. Voronoff also speculates that the grafting surgery might be beneficial to people with “dementia praecox”, the mental illness known today as\u00a0schizophrenia.<\/p>\n Voronoff’s monkey-gland treatment was in vogue in the 1920s..\u00a0The poet\u00a0E. E. Cummings\u00a0sang of a “famous doctor who inserts monkeyglands in millionaires”, and\u00a0Chicago\u00a0surgeon\u00a0Max Thorek, for whom the\u00a0Thorek Hospital and Medical Center\u00a0is named, recalled that soon, “fashionable dinner parties and cracker barrel confabs, as well as sedate gatherings of the medical \u00e9lite, were alive with the whisper – ‘Monkey Glands’.”<\/p>\n By the early 1930s, over 500 men had been treated in France by his rejuvenation technique (including Voronoff’s younger brother Georges), and thousands more around the world, such as in a special clinic set up in\u00a0Algiers.\u00a0Noteworthy people who had the surgery included\u00a0Harold McCormick, chairman of the board of\u00a0International Harvester Company.\u00a0To cope with the demand for the operation, Voronoff set up his own monkey farm on\u00a0the Italian Riviera, employing a former circus-animal keeper to run it.\u00a0French-born\u00a0U.S.\u00a0coloratura\u00a0soprano\u00a0Lily Pons\u00a0was a frequent visitor to the farm.\u00a0With his growing wealth, Voronoff occupied the whole of the first floor of one of Paris’s most expensive hotels, surrounded by a retinue of chauffeurs, valets, personal secretaries and two mistresses.<\/p>\n Voronoff’s later work included transplants of monkey\u00a0ovaries\u00a0into women. He also tried the reverse experiment, transplanting a human ovary into a female monkey, and then tried to\u00a0inseminate\u00a0the monkey with human\u00a0sperm. The notoriety of this experiment resulted in the novel\u00a0Nora, la guenon devenue femme<\/em>\u00a0(Nora, the Monkey Turned Woman<\/em>) by\u00a0F\u00e9licien Champsaur. In 1934, he was the first to officially recognize scientific work done by Greek Professor\u00a0Skevos Zervos.<\/p>\n Voronoff’s experiments ended following pressure from a skeptical scientific community and a change in public opinion.\u00a0It became clear that Voronoff’s operations did not produce any of the results he claimed.<\/p>\n In his book\u00a0The Monkey Gland Affair<\/em>, David Hamilton, an experienced transplant surgeon, discusses how animal tissue inserted into a human would not be absorbed, but instantly rejected. At best, it would result in scar tissue, which might fool a person into believing the graft is still in place. Interestingly, this means the many patients who received the surgery and praised Voronoff were “improved” solely by the\u00a0placebo effect.<\/p>\n Part of the basis of Voronoff’s work was that testicles are glands, much like the thyroid and adrenal glands. Voronoff believed that at some point, scientists would discover what substance the testicular glands secrete, making grafting surgery unnecessary.<\/p>\n Eventually, it was determined that the substance emitted by the testicles is\u00a0testosterone. Voronoff expected that this new discovery would prove his theories. Testosterone would be injected into animals and they would grow young, strong, and virile. Experiments were performed, and this was not the case. Besides an increase in some secondary sexual characteristics, testosterone injections did little. Testosterone did not prolong life, as Voronoff expected. In the 1940s,\u00a0Dr. Kenneth Walker, an eminent British surgeon, dismissed Voronoff’s treatment as “no better than the methods of witches and magicians.”<\/p>\n Culled from:\u00a0Wikipedia<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/a>
\n14-year-old boy after having an ape thyroid gland grafted onto his own; and same boy at age 15. From Serge Voronoff’s book\u00a0Life: A Study of the Means of Restoring\u00a0(1920)<\/em><\/p>\nVintage Cocktail: The Monkey Gland<\/h3>\n