Eyesight Improves.“Four days after the operation,” the Chancellor continued, “the headaches had disappeared, and my eyesight was greatly improved. And seven days afterwards, I left the hospital a new man.”One month after the operation Chancellor Tobias wrote to Dr. Brinkley: “I really feel twenty years younger. My health hasimproved wonderfully. I have regained my lost vigor and vitality. I’m a recreated youth.”And today even Chancellor Tobias’ fellow faculty members, many of them nationally famous attorneys, admit that Dr. Tobias has improved 100 per cent.“Almost Unbelievable.”“I hesitate to speak of this,” Chancellor Tobias said. “It is so wonderful it is almost unbelievable. The public cannot appreciate what the operation means. There has been some levity over the news of the gland operations, but it should be treated with the greatest respect and admiration. The operation has been a success on me so I am in a position to speak authoritatively. It is one of the greatest things of the century.”Among the other thirty-five patients who have been successfully operated on are many well-known to thousands of people in Chicago. Here are some typical Chicago cases omitting names:Policeman——, aged 60, suffering from chronic diabetes and a general breakdown, which was about to compel his retirement from the force. Operated on August 9. Left the hospital yesterday feeling like “a new man.”Alderman——, aged 55, chronic asthma sufferer. Operated on April 26. Asthma had disappeared by the time he left the hospital. Declared he felt years younger and is now completely revivified.Mr. G——, newspaperman, aged 39. Suffered from complete nervous breakdown from overwork. Operated on April 25. Resumedwork almost immediately, full of pep, and today is the picture of health.Judge——, aged 58. Premature old age from hardening of the arteries. Operated on April 28. Because of his wonderful improvement in health has changed his mind about retiring from the bench.Operation Painless.“Ignorance about the gland transplanting is almost universal,” I told Dr. Brinkley. “I know nothing of it. Tell me how it is done, why you use goat-glands, all the whys and wherefores, so the readers ofThe Americanwill have some authentic information. Is the operation painful?”“No,” Dr. Brinkley replied. “It is a simple incision with very little actual pain. In practically all cases a local anesthetic is used. A general anesthetic is used only in exceptional cases.”“How long does the operation take?”“Fifteen to twenty minutes. It is as simple as grafting new shoots on a fruit tree. No part of the human gland is removed. The goat-gland is simply planted to take the place of the old gland.”“And the hospital confinement?”“One week, to rest the patient and allow the gland to begin functioning without undue exertion.”“Any danger?”“None whatever. It’s like grafting on a piece of skin. There is absolutely no danger.”Eliminates Disorders.Lost youth is regained, according to Dr. Brinkley, as a result of the revivifying fluid secreted by the transplantedgland, leading to the elimination of organic disorders that are hastening old age.Dr. Brinkley explained in detail:“I began my experiments nine years ago, and began using goat-glands three years ago in the interstitial gland operation because the goat-glands resemble to a large degree the human glands in their histological make-up. The interstitial glands and the blood, of a goat, are a very close approach in their constituents to those of a human being.“Old people are simply broken down. The goat-gland secretes the fluid that builds up the brokendown parts of the human body. Eyesight improves 50 per cent. If a man is underweight he will gain to normal, and if he is overweight he will reduce to normal, showing that the goat glands actually function.”Chronic Diseases Cured.“Chronic skin diseases are cleared up. Stomach trouble disappears under the new gland’s guardianship of the body. I have the laboratory data, the scientific records, and the actual revivified patients to prove it. The only unsuccessful cases are certain people whose blood lacks necessary essentials, and they are few.”Dr. Brinkley gives Dr. G. Frank Lydston of Chicago credit for performing the first gland transplanting operations.Lydston Is Pioneer.“Dr. Lydston is the pioneer,” Dr. Brinkley said. “He was the first man to transplant glands from a human to a human. I have never transplanted anthropoid ape glands, as Dr. Voronoff of Paris, and only in three cases human glands, as Dr. Lydston,and I was not pleased with the results in those three cases. I was the first to transplant goat glands. Dr. Serge Voronoff has performed the operation on only two human beings. He failed to give Dr. Lydston credit, although it is obvious he followed Dr. Lydston’s book.”****This completes Mr. Lehrbas’ interview. In the same paper,The Chicago Evening American, a month later, date of September 15, appeared the following account of another visit to Chancellor Tobias, written by Edward M. Thierry:J. J. Tobias, chancellor of the Chicago Law School, told me it was none of my business how old he is. He’s got a goat-gland sewed into his innards and I was trying to get some personal Ponce de Leon statistics.“I’m over 50,” Tobias conceded. “How much I won’t say. But I will say my clock has been turned back from ten to twenty years! Just look at me!”He jumped out of his chair—er—friskily. That’s the only expressive word. Tobias is little, thin and wiry. His face wrinkles up and his teeth flash when he smiles. He has grey hair and talks with quick jerks—as if his energy is running a race with his tongue.“I’m rejuvenated,” Tobias said. “Time will tell whether my goat-gland will make me live longer. I had that operation on last March 26, and I’m still living. I’m no decrepit old man, either.”Tobias was operated on by Dr. J. R. Brinkley, who has caused a furor in medical circlesthrough his many successful goat-gland operations.Critics of Dr. Brinkley make Tobias tired. Get his goat, so to speak. He says he knows what he’s talking about, for he was formerly lecturer in a Chicago medical college.“Seventy-five years ago my father had a little German machine,” Tobias said, “called the ‘life waker.’ It was a disk as big as a dollar with a lot of needles in it. You jabbed it into the small of the back and waked life that way. We can laugh at that archaic system, for it was crude. Now we’re more scientific. Witness the transplantation of goat-glands.”Tobias said he went to see Dr. Brinkley at Milford, Kansas, to investigate his goat-gland discovery because of long suffering from congestion of the brain arteries. Doctors had told him he was in danger of death because of severe attacks of vertigo and a high blood pressure.“The operation,” Tobias said, “occupied about 20 minutes. Within three hours after the operation the goat-gland began to function, the congestion was relieved, and within three days the cause was eliminated.“I am a new man physically, with new mental vigor, and a new power of sustained effort. I can distinctly sense the function of a new gland in my body.”It must have functioned muscularly, for when I left Tobias gave me a knuckle-crushing grip which made it necessary to write this story with my left hand.These newspaper articles are printed here without change, in spite of evident repetitions, because of their evidential value. It is an old trick of the public press in the United States, and probably in Europe also, to start a sensation with a blazing front page story, and in the course of a few weeks follow it with a complete and sarcastic expose of the whole matter as a baseless fabrication, piling facts on facts to show that the first story was an ingenious piece of deception got up by the subject with the purpose of making capital out of the credulity of the public. There are no better detectives in the world than newspaper men. They work for the love of it. An expose is dearer to the detective-instinct in them than a laudatory article, and they leave no stone unturned to get at the facts. When, therefore, after the lapse of months, the newspapers of the United States repeat and confirm their first stories about Dr. Brinkley’s work it means something to one who knows their methods of working. Money cannot buy this sort of publicity. There must be facts, and facts of value, and facts verified again and again, before stories of this kind appear and reappear in the great organs of publicity in all the big cities of the United States. How far they carry, and how wide-reaching is the interest, will be understood by the statement that the announcement of Dr. Brinkley’s work, printed first in American newspapers, and copied in the English papers, has brought him urgent requests to visit South Africa, Australia, Sweden, Scotland, and many othercountries. From England in particular come requests from women that he do not fail to make a journey to some part of Europe in the summer of 1921, in order that they may take the operation with a view to bearing children. This he has arranged to do about June of this year, expecting to find in England a climate during the months of June, July and August, which will not be too hot to prevent him from transplanting the goat-glands. He does not operate at his hospital in Kansas during June, July and August, on account of the heat, having found that when the outdoor temperature is high the glands will certainly slough. The high temperature without seems to create a high temperature for the patient, and the result is a wasted pair of good goat glands, with loss of time and money to all concerned. In England in the summer it should be necessary to wait a few days only for right climatic conditions to present themselves, and be sure that they will do so. There are the further matters of a supply of goats of the right Toggenburg breed, a place to keep them, in close proximity to the operating hospital, and the hospital itself, to be dealt with suitably in the shortest possible space of time after arrival. The supply of goats can probably be best procured direct from Switzerland through some London importer, and the other matters will no doubt fall easily into place. The goats must not come from a high altitude, or their glands will not contain a right amount of iodine. This is curiously important. Dr. Brinkley cannot use goats from Colorado forthat reason. If the doctor’s reception in England is cordial he will probably make his visit there an annual summer affair of three months’ duration for some years to come, which would give him an opportunity of keeping in continued touch with his English and European patients. The English are a practical people, and less sensitive than we to, or more careless of, ridicule, and they are likely to grasp the importance of Dr. Brinkley’s work on the instant of his arrival, compelling a long visit.CHAPTER VIIPROFESSOR STEINACH AND THE RATWriting with vivacity and humor, Mr. Clarence Day, Jr., speculates with so much whimsicality upon the possible effects of surgical rejuvenation of men that one might overlook the keenness of his observation in a hurried perusal of his article. For the sake of preserving it for more leisurely study, and because the points raised are really worthy of attention, the article is reproduced here in full, with acknowledgments toThe Literary Review, in which it first appeared, of date November 20, 1920. Says Mr. Day:Biologists really seem to be discovering ways of making men young again. So far, it is like making men drunk; the state that is produced does not last. But it looks as though they might succeed in adding a chapter to life. I wish it could be added to the other end: to youth instead of to the last flickers. But if we can renew and re-live middle-age, that will be better still.A man named Steinach, in Vienna, has been experimenting for ten years with rats. Full accounts of his work were published last summer in the great biological journal founded by Roux, and these were summarized and discussed by the LondonAthenaeum, which is now the most interesting of all English weeklies. It is from theAthenaeum’saccount that I am taking these facts.Steinach has been studying the interstitial cells that fill in the spaces between the tubules of the testes, in males, and between the follicles of the ovaries in females. His reason for choosing these cells for his experiments is that they are a well-spring of life. Furthermore, since all our vital functions are interrelated, to make these cells active gives the whole organism new life and strength. This is not the only way of stimulating the organism, but it seems the most powerful.An old rat is like a senile old man; he is bald and emaciated, his eyes are clouded, his breathing is labored. He stays in one place, with bent back, and has small interest in anything. If you cut one of his genital ducts, however, which is a comparatively slight operation, it has the effect of making the interstitial cells multiply actively. Waves of life flood his being. Within a few weeks he is transformed. These currents restore and rebuild him; skin, muscle and mind. Both in looks and behavior he is indistinguishable from other strong rats.He has cast off old age. Senility, which sets in with men when they are from sixty to eighty years old, begins after twenty to thirty months in a rat. He is then about through. But when an operation is performed on a senile rat he gets from six to eight months’ new life. In other words, the addition to his normal span is 20 to 30 per cent. That would be a large fraction of life for a man to live over again. The rat lives it vigorously, eagerly, back in his prime.When senility again comes upon him it is in a modified form. His organism as a whole is in better shape. It is his mind now that tires. As Steinach has already cut one or both of his genital ducts, that method of stimulating his cells cannot, of course, be repeated. But another operation is ready. Some unfortunate young male is deprived of his testes by Steinach, and these are implanted forthwith in this hoary old rat.A second spell of active life follows, not so long as the first. It ends in acute psychic senility. The rat goes all to pieces. It is as if the brain, twice restimulated to emotion, curiosity, keenness, had approached the very limit of its running, and was completely exhausted.Steinach has not yet tried whether a third rejuvenation is possible. That remains to be seen. He lives in Vienna, and everything there has come to a stop. He has no assistants, no funds, with which to conduct further experiments. “May happier lands or cities carry the work on,” he writes at the end.It seems as though some rich American ought to stake the old boy.****Steinach has naturally found it more difficult to give new youth to females. But here, too, he has in a measure succeeded. X-ray treatment and ovarian transplantation are the methods employed.As to human experiments, there is a colleague of Steinach’s named Lichtenstern, who has operated on numerous men and womenwith apparent success. There has not been time yet to measure how long their new lease of life is to be; but they have regained the joy of life they had lost—strength and powers of work. Still, all this needs confirming.In a rat it is the sexual impulses that are directly reanimated. He again knows the fevers of courtship, the conflicts of marriage; and whether he is glad to repeat these commotions depends on the rat. In man, however, the sexual impulses are more or less sublimated, so that the new energy may appear in any of the other forms of psychic activity. Whatever such faculties he has in him once more grow strong.****How wonderful it would be if we could at least prolong certain lives—great writers like H. G. Wells and Conrad, great artists, great doctors. But in practice, the men who would get hold of this would be John D. Rockefeller and W. J. Bryan. The rich uncle would walk in and tell his hopeless heirs he had been to see Steinach. Senators would live forever. The world would grow harder for youth.Even were we able to control all this, and reserve the boon for the best, would it work? Say we did choose the right men—is it not too intimate a suggestion that we should set a man of science upon them, prepared with a little knife to slice one of their genital ducts? Men have fought all these years for the right to live. Have they no right to die? Must an old man who is needed by the public be condemned to live on, his aged cells stirred andrestirred while we glean his brains bare? Some Socrates of the future may yet envy that other his hemlock.****This, we say it regretfully, is the end of Mr. Day’s article. It is admirable fooling. We will not pay his wit the poor compliment of taking him seriously at the last and pointing out to him that it was Heine who said, “Nobody loves life like an old man!” There will be no need of insistence to urge the old men, useful or useless, to submit to an operation to renew their youth. But it is to be hoped that they will never be asked to submit to the cutting of the genital duct. It seems to the writer thatThe Athenaeummust have misconstrued Dr. Steinach’s experiments in some degree, inasmuch as it is difficult to conceive of the operation of severing a genital duct as conducive to cell-formation. However, probably ligating is meant instead of severing. But this is not the point really brought out by Mr. Day’s clever article. The real point is, Is it likely that if Mr. John Jones takes Dr. Brinkley’s goat-gland operation for the renewal of his youth, and thereby adds thirty years to his life, and at the end of this thirty years of friskiness undergoes a second transplantation of glands, thereby gaining twenty years more, and at the end of this twenty years takes the operation a third time, securing a further lease of gaiety for ten years, will the final years of Mr. John Jones be years of acute psychic senility, as observed by Dr. Steinach in his rat? To the writer it seems anon sequitur.The cases are not parallel. The rejuvenated rat appears to regard his acquired vitality as impelling toward revelry and excess. It is necessary to emphasize the point that the pith and marrow of Dr. Brinkley’s discovery is that since it is clearly shown that rejuvenation is accomplished by the restoration of activity to the sex-glands, therefore the preservation of this rejuvenation MUST depend upon the CONSERVATION of the seminal fluids, and cannot depend upon any other single factor whatever. It has been already explained that Dr. Brinkley puts it out of the power of the rejuvenated man to destroy the good that has come into his life, and protects him against the danger of yielding too freely to passionate impulse, by preventing the escape of the rejuvenating agent. The means of nourishing the body and brain being therefore insured as to supply, it is not reasonable to suppose that the nerve-cells of the rejuvenated man can fail to receive their proper nourishment for many succeeding years, and, passing by the rat as a fallacious parallel, we cannot see any good reason why the human body and brain, either under the guidance of self-control, or surgically safeguarded against the waste of excess, should not function at their best for fifty years of added life, with very possibly another fifty added to that. The real crux of the matter is the resistive quality of tissue, which is approximately 200 years for such organs as kidneys and heart, and, say, 150 for nerve-substance.see captionTHE OPERATING ROOM AT THE BRINKLEY HOSPITALCHAPTER VIIIA WEEK AT DR. BRINKLEY’S HOSPITALThe writer, approaching the age of 54, and finding himself in first-class physical and mental condition, except for a high blood pressure, which was certainly the prelude to a later arterio-sclerosis, decided that he would be doing himself a service, and put himself in a better position to write with some authority upon the effects of the goat-glands, if he took the operation.On Saturday, April 16. 1921, Dr. Brinkley operated on him at the hospital, Milford, Kansas, transplanting the glands of a three-weeks old male goat. He remained in bed Saturday and Sunday, got up and went for an auto drive on Monday, and passed an uneventful week at the hospital, returning to Chicago on Saturday. He experienced a marked increase in mental energy, which might have shown itself also as increased physical energy if it had been put to the test. This feeling of added pep, snap, energy, or what you please to call it, could be psychological in its origin if it were not for the fact that it is continuous, with no set-backs. Every student of psychology is aware that auto-suggestion has the power to bring out latent energy, raise the drooping spirits, and generate a feeling of well-being. But the student, if he is a reasonably close observer, is also aware that these improvedstates of feeling have an annoying habit of being offset by corresponding periods of depression, and though he may persist in his effort to lift himself out of the black moods with such success that he finally arrives at a higher tone-level mentally, with a corresponding physical improvement, there is indubitably a strong sense of effort needed for this good result. When, therefore, the writer finds himself working long hours day after day with no sense of mental fatigue, but a certain unusual gaiety of heart accompanying the successive days, as if life were on the whole rather a lark, he, being accurately introspective, and not easily deceived into optimistic conclusions, is forced to give the whole credit for this change of spirit to the functioning of the new glands, and he is confirmed in this conclusion by the fact that the high blood pressure, which was noticeable enough before the operation, cannot now, ten days after the operation, be detected by him at all. Ten days is all too short a time in which to write of details in a matter of this importance. He expects to be able to confirm improvement in eyesight by the middle of May, and will be in a position to speak at greater length on the matter after the summer has passed. The intent of this chapter is to give a brief account of something he saw at Dr. Brinkley’s hospital during the week of his treatment.Two weeks before his arrival a man suffering from locomotor ataxia had been carried in, unable to help himself at all. When the writer saw this man and talked with him he was upand dressed and walking about, without a cane, and he left for home after a total stay of something less than three weeks. In parting from him the doctor said, “You are on the high-road to complete recovery. I expect to hear that you are getting stronger every day. Practice in walking will bring back to you the old confidence and banish the helpless feeling that you are sure to fall. You see that you can control the motions of your feet and legs now as you could not before. Sensation has returned to the soles of your feet, and you can now turn yourself over in bed, which you could not do before without assistance. This means that the brain, spinal cord, muscles and will are co-ordinating again. This means that the goat-glands are actively working, dissolving scar-tissue, and bringing you back to health. But it is asking a good deal of a pair of goat-glands to do as much as they must do in your case to bring about complete recovery. I would rather give them some extra assistance. If you will come back to me, therefore, next Fall, to this hospital, I will put two new goat-glands into you; and I believe that with this extra help you will go right through to a complete cure without any trouble. The operation will not cost you a cent. I am anxious only to complete the good work. I may be wrong at that, and it is possible that the glands you have now will be enough to do the work, but if they do not, come back here for two more next Fall. Don’t forget.”This man had been everywhere for relief, and had taken every treatment known for hisdisease, with no results whatever, as he told the writer. “This is the first time for twelve years,” he said, “that I have had any feeling in my feet. I am surely going to get well at last.”In another case of the same disease the patient, when he came to the hospital, was taking morphine daily to relieve the lightning-pains. He could not stand upright with his eyes shut without falling, and if spoken to suddenly was likely to lose his balance and fall. He had not walked without a cane for several years. Twenty-four hours after the goat-gland operation he said that the pains had left him, and voluntarily stopped the morphine. In two weeks he was walking five miles before breakfast, without a cane to help him. He left the hospital a cured man. There has never been a case of true locomotor ataxia cured by any means whatever, in the history of man, until this Kansas surgeon, Dr. Brinkley, found the cure for it in this transplantation of goat-glands. Ataxia is an after-math of syphilis, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, and it is a question, which no layman can solve, whether the cause of the ataxia is in the disease, or in the mercurial treatment used to combat the disease. Another age, following this, may decide that the disease, syphilis, is less destructive of human tissue than the cure, Mercury. However that may be, the fact remains that goat-glands will cure Locomotor Ataxia, and they are apparently the only means of cure hitherto discovered.The writer talked with some of the townspeople of Milford regarding Dr. Brinkley’swork. Their attitude was detached, but on the whole affirmative. They could not, as they put it, doubt their own eyesight, implying that they would do so if they could. They had seen case after case carried into the hospital, and they had seen those same people walk out and go their way to their homes. It was queer, they said, and wagged a critical head. So true is it in all parts of the earth that a prophet hath honor save in his own country! Here and there, however, the writer found a townsman who had nothing but words of praise and admiration for Dr. Brinkley’s work. These always proved to be people who had had some relative under Dr. Brinkley’s care at the hospital, and they were intelligent men who could give their reasons for their conclusions. They were proud of the lustre which Dr. Brinkley’s Goat-Gland work was shedding upon the name of their village. Most of the townspeople, however, seemed to think that Dr. Brinkley should be proud of the town. Their engaging surliness of demeanor with regard to the miracles being performed in their village was a fascinating study to a city man, who saw here at its best the typical small-town attitude towards the big local thing. It is not peculiar to Milford. It is universal. It is as true in England and France and Belgium and Germany as in any little town in the United States. What do you suppose the country villagers thought of Fabre, the great French naturalist, probably to be hailed by the next generation as the greatest figure since Darwin? Without doubt they thought him mad, and if kindly,pitied him, or if savage, despised him. Meanwhile it is quite certain that the work of Dr. Brinkley has put the town of Milford, Kansas, on the map, and, if you do not find it on the railroad map you may some day consult, it will help a little to say here that you go from Kansas City, Missouri, by the Union Pacific Railroad to Junction City, Kansas, and from that point change to a little branch line which carries you to Milford. The depot at Milford is about a mile from the village itself. You will find an auto at the depot which will carry you to the hospital, where you will be met by Dr. or Mrs. Brinkley, or Miss Lewis, the Head Nurse, and where you will be very comfortable if you decide to make a stay of a week or so for personal reasons. The food is good, and the Kansas air fresh and bracing and plentiful. Winds are indeed common, but the village is safely out of the track of the Kansas cyclones, and the storm cellar is unknown. The hospital is spotlessly clean and a marvel of completeness in equipment. The preparations for the gland transplantation are simple but thorough; a test of spermatic fluid, a blood test, a test for blood pressure, a blood count, and a purgative the night before the operation, with no breakfast on the morning of the operation. You will eat a good lunch in bed, however, on that day, and miss no meals afterwards. Briefly, the writer can say honestly that the pain of the operation is no more than the twinge of a toothache.CHAPTER IXSUMMARYDr. Brinkley’s employment of the goat-glands for the past three years of continuous operating, therefore, has proved to his satisfaction and to that of his patients that the testes in men and the ovaries in women furnish a secretion which has the property of a revivifying fluid when restored to the system by the currents of blood and lymph. In that commonly fatal condition of the arteries which follows rapidly upon the state of blood pressure known as hardening of the arteries, or arterio-sclerosis, a practically incurable condition hitherto, the results obtained by the goat-gland transplantation are miraculously swift. When the arteries are, as the doctor puts it, “as hard as pipe-stems,” they grow in a few weeks, sometimes in a week, soft and pliable. The change, according to Dr. Brinkley, is brought about in the walls of the arteries themselves, and is not a process of dissolving the accumulations or deposits of calcareous material within the arteries. The change is in the material of the walls of the arteries, producing a return of the condition of elasticity, permitting expansion and contraction as in youth.It is a favorite theory with some modern writers that the physical change from youth to age is accompanied in the body, and in a sense caused by, the deterioration in the quality ofthe cells of the body, and they call this change a breaking-down process by which the finer and more highly differentiated cells, such, for example, as the nerve-cells, and others which have high and complicated duties to perform, are displaced by cells of an inferior type, which they name conjunctive cells, much as the common sparrow drives away the songbirds from the home garden and, usurping the place of the songbird, substitutes a wretched twitter for the golden notes of the warblers which once delighted our ears. The common cells, also, on usurping the place of the nobler cells, are unable to perform the difficult duties of the latter, and the result upon human organism is disorder, decay, disease, etc., contributing to, if not causing, the condition of old age. This is an ingenious but not convincing theory. Our knowledge of histological processes is too incomplete at this stage to permit its acceptance as fact. It assumes too much to be known which is quite unknown. Moreover, it refutes itself upon examination in this particular, and in several others, that if it were true that these inferior cells are on the lookout to invade instantly any part of the human organism in which there was a breaking down of nerve-tissue, for example, then it would be impossible to build new nerve-tissue to take the place of that which was destroyed, because its place, according to this theory, has been already taken by an intruder who cannot be dislodged. But new nerve-cells are constantly being rebuilt, and constantly being put to use in the organism. If this theory were true, thena brain in middle age would be unable to function because of the impossibility of renewing its cells.A much more reasonable and probably true explanation of the cause of old age is the gradual disappearance of animal matter in the bones and tissues, and the corresponding increase of the mineral matter in the bones and tissues, amounting to ossification of cartilage, whereby the supple cartilage, losing its animal content, becomes practically bone by deposit of lime particles. This would also account in a common-sense manner for the fragility of the bones of the aged, the brittleness being due to calcareous deposits in the substance of the bone itself, in excess of the normal mineral contents of the bones in youth. The function of the seminal fluids, therefore, appears to be to restore to the aging tissues this property, this animal matter, which when in its right ratio and proportion in the cells of the organism produces the condition of youth. The action of these seminal fluids, therefore, seems to be two-fold, a dissolving and a nourishing. The distinction should be clearly made that the action is NOT merely stimulating. The stimulation of a nerve-cell is a temporary excitement. We speak of the stimulation of alcohol, and this illustration gives a clearer view of the difference between the nourishing action of the seminal fluids and a stimulating action than we could obtain by the employment of many words. It is interesting to remember that while it is possible to increase the mineral particles of soda, potash, lime, iron,silica and magnesia in the blood and lymph, it is practically impossible for us to increase the animal contents of the cells by any method of medication or dieting known to us. Only Life can produce this change in the cells, and only this method of gland-transplantation has furnished a means of impressing Life into service to work for us in this matter. To produce the effects which are needed to rejuvenate a body that has increased its mineral matter at the expense of its animal matter we require the co-operation of glands made active, because only the glands, in the marvelous chemistry of the body, are able to compound the animal substances required to nourish the cells, tissues and organs of the body, and to dissolve and remove those injurious substances of a mineral nature which have accumulated in excess in cells and tissues, usurping the place of the animal matter in the cells because of the inactivity of function generally, and the poor elimination of waste matter, as the years pass. This is the re-creative and rejuvenating work of the gland secretions. It is beyond us to say exactly what these secretions consist of. We know the importance of their presence in blood and lymph only by the disasters that follow their absence. The thyroid gland and parathyroids, for instance, seem to be connected by some close sympathy with the activity or non-activity of the interstitial glands, and the atrophy of one is often accompanied by the atrophy of the other. The subject is still hidden in darkness to the extent of insufficient knowledge on our part of the exact constituentsof the active agents in the secretions of the testes, thyroids, suprarenals, pituitary and other glands. Time and further opportunity for experiment are needed to show to what extent the goat-gland transplantation can be used to remedy goitre, epilepsy and the graver lesions of paralysis. The use of the goat-glands is too recent to admit of anything but speculation on these points. There would seem to be no good reason to doubt that if the male organs of a young goat do rejuvenate the atrophied testes of a man, which Dr. Brinkley has abundantly proved they do, the thyroid gland of a young goat might be expected to restore the atrophied thyroid of a human being. This again is only conjecture, Dr. Brinkley’s work up to the present having been confined to the transplantation of testes and ovaries. But he expects to find time during the present year to satisfy himself of the results of such important experimental work as is here indicated. It is possible that his visit to Europe this summer may be the means of enlarging his field considerably, although it would appear that if he had six pairs of hands and could keep all employed in continuous service he could scarcely cope with the demands upon his time which any and all countries of the earth may be expected to make when his work is known. In ten years, no doubt, gland-transplantation, particularly goat-gland transplantation, for the renewal of youth in man and woman will be so usual as to occasion neither wonder nor hilarity. But we are not living ten years from now, but at this presentmoment, and Dr. Brinkley’s operation to-day is a marvel, a wonder and a joy. There is a satisfaction in being in the van. It is fine to be the first to do a big thing, especially if that big thing is something of the most practical value to humanity. Mankind has always crowned its great generals, its great destroyers of life. Here is a man who comes forward to preserve life. That is his mission, if you like. Certainly it is his life work. It is a noble work. The question in the writer’s mind is, What will they do to him? How will they take him in England? Will they applaud, or crucify, or neglect? Probably they will show him something of the generous hospitality of England, and leaven this with a plentiful sprinkling of ridicule, because the subject of the goat lends itself to humor of the obvious kind. But it is our belief that the hard, practical common sense of the Anglo-Saxon will lead them to make the utmost use of this opportunity of his visit, and, having got him, it is to be expected that they will know enough to keep him. This is quite as much their opportunity as his. While they sharpen their wit upon the sacrificial goat and make merry, they are pretty sure to make full use of his knowledge and skill while they have him with them, and might make things so pleasant for him that he might say, when the summer is over and he looks back upon the white cliffs of Dover, returning to his own country, “This is a good land. I have enjoyed the trip. I like the people. I will return next summer, and for many summers thereafter.”CHAPTER XTHE SPARK OF LIFEBy J. R. Brinkley, M.D., C.M., Ph.D., Sc.D.Chief Surgeon, Brinkley-Jones Hospital and TrainingSchool for Nurses, Milford, Kansas(Written October, 1920)For many years scientists have believed that a part, or all of the glands of the human body influenced longevity. They believed our glands contained the “life spark.” Men for hundreds of years have been seeking the “fountain of youth.” Ponce de Leon when he landed in Florida and saw the beautiful springs and flowers thought he had found it, and so announced to the world. Long ago we learned that the pituitary gland influenced growth and development. For instance if the pituitary gland over-functioned we had Giantism. If it under-functioned the opposite was the result—a dwarf. If the thyroid gland was at fault we would have either the low mentality commonly spoken of as cretinism, or myxedema. We found that by feeding children the fresh gland substance a marked improvement would be obtained and sometimes a cure. Some years ago there was a surgical craze which called for the removal of the women’s ovaries. It was thought that many nervous troubles, including epilepsy, etc., were due to diseased ovaries, so the surgeons removed ovaries just about as promiscuously as tonsils and teeth are now taken out.After a while they found a woman without ovaries was about ruined, so something had to be done, and ovarian extracts and substances were fed to the unfortunates. Good results were obtained so long as the feeding process kept up, but if the feeding was stopped, the miserable symptoms returned. One factor was always in evidence, that a woman who had no ovaries never menstruated again. Premature change of life (menopause) resulted.Ageingtook place early. A loss of interest in the pleasant things of life existed. As a wife or companion for the home the woman was worse than useless. Her life was so miserable that all who came in contact with her were made miserable, also. She was unsexed, and one of the “sparks of life” had been taken away. She assumed characteristics of the male. If the testes of a man are removed he will assume the characteristics of a woman. Many changes will take place. His mind is no longer clear, he tires easily, cannot concentrate upon any subject, and has marked loss of memory and of physical well being. The things that once appealed to him are now undesirable. The opposite sex are repulsive and he shuns their society. A man or woman who suffers the premature loss of their glands of regeneration will become more or less defective mentally and their life will be materially shortened.At one time a favorite expression was, “A man is as old as his arteries.” We know better than this now. A man is just as old as he feels, when said feeling is directed to his sex organs.The first sign of old age is impotency, and more men are reaching a premature impotencythan ever before in the history of the world. Their glands are burning up, as it were. After impotency is well on its way arterio-sclerosis or hardening of the arteries is noticed, then the mental inefficiency, as well as physical weakness. Right on the heels of impotency comes prostatitis. I was taught in medical school that nearly all men suffered from an enlarged prostate and prostatitis: that it was one of the diseases of “old age”; that we were heir to it and might expect it to show up after the age of 45. I was also taught that arterio-sclerosis was another disease of old age, and all men were heir to it. However, we are beginning to awaken to a few things. We are approaching the dawn of a new day. We are beginning to understand the whys and wherefores. While I have been criticized and called everything under the sun, except an angel, I expected as much, and I am ready to face the world with my facts; not theories. I have a long and hard fight before me yet.The cures that I have effected by gland transplantation up to the present time are enough to justify me for all of my work and efforts along this new line of science. Should I never operate again, I feel justly repaid and know that I have started something that will go on and on and live forever. Gland transplantation for the cure of disease within the next ten years will be as common as the removal of a diseased appendix is now. You can hardly pick up a daily paper without reading an account of some surgeon performing a wonderful operation of transplanting bone or tissue from some animal to replace that which was diseasedin the human. Why not borrow what we need from the animal? We use their flesh for food. We also use their gland substances in the fresh or dried form to supply our bodies with whatever we may not possess.see captionTHE TOGGENBURG GOATSMy first efforts in gland transplantation were directed towards the cure of sterility. A man came to me who had been impotent for sixteen years. Every known means had been used in his case. My experiments in the use of glands from animal to animal, led me to believe that if the gland from a goat could be transplanted into the human body this impotency and sterility could be overcome. This man was willing to try anything as he was 46 and his wife was 42. They were very anxious for a male child. Twelve months after the transplantation I delivered his wife of a 10-pound baby boy, who is alive and well today. In appreciation of what the goat glands had done for them they named the baby “Billy.” He lives within four miles of me now. This first case being a wonderful success encouraged me to experiment with humans on a larger scale. Willing subjects were not easy to obtain. After obtaining, it was difficult to operate. The operation or experiment could not be performed in any of the general hospitals. Ethics as well as country and little town gossip forbid such work. It was necessary for me to build a hospital of my own so that my experiments could be carried on without the public or profession knowing anything about them. If good results were obtained I could announce to the world; if none were obtained the matter could be dropped. After four male children had beenborn, due directly to gland transplantation, the news leaked out, and has swept the world like wildfire. While I was transplanting glands for sterility, other beneficial effects were noted by me as well as my patients. Now, since I have transplanted glands into more than 600 men and women it is an easy matter to give some comprehensive statistics. A complete record is kept of each case and follow-up letters are used so that we are in a pretty fair way to estimate just what we are doing. Five cases of insanity have been cured to date. The great difficulty in obtaining insane people for operation is, they are confined in a state institution, and the authorities will not permit their removal, especially when their loved ones tell the “higher ups” they wish Dr. Brinkley, “the gland man,” to transplant goat glands. “Oh, no, it’s all rot and will never do!” However, we have operated upon five cases and have cured five cases. After awhile we will break down this great wall of prejudice, and insane people will be ordered out for this operation. At present when habeas corpus proceedings are all that will obtain the release, and gland transplantation is the object, not much of a chance exists. I am going to mention one of our very interesting cases, as the man lives only about 15 or 20 miles from me in Dickinson County, Kansas. His name is Lon Jones, and his case is known far and wide within the state of Kansas. My writing about Mr. Jones will not be the betrayal of a professional secret. He is anxious for the world to know about it. Some six weeks or two months before I was called to see him he was stricken suddenly, insane. He had mounted his horse and was drivinghis cattle home for the night when it was noticed by others that he acted “queer.” He began to whip and fight his steed as well as the cattle unmercifully. He dismounted or fell off his horse and at first was thought unconscious. A physician was called, another, and another, and his case was diagnosed as Dementia Praecox. Violent in character. He wanted to kill his doctor, or commit some rash act. One of the first acts was to try and give away all of his land and stock as well as corn and feed.It was unsafe for his wife and children to be near him. Men remained with him, day and night. Finally his guards had to tie him in bed. His arms and feet were securely fastened, as well as his body, to a heavy iron bed. Application for his entry into the state institution had been made when I was called. With the assistance of neighbor men he was conducted into my hospital here. Immediate gland transplantation was performed, and three days after said operation he asked me to remove his irons so that he could rest comfortably. He informed me that he was in his right mind and we need have no further fear of him. Soon afterwards he was permitted to roam around the building and over town. He went home more than a year ago and is transacting his business as a sane man should. No evidence of his former trouble has occurred. He did not know until the day that we discharged him what my line of treatment had been. Another notable case was that of a man who had spent 11 years of his life in three state institutions for the insane in New York. Heleft here entirely cured and is now holding an important position in New York City. Another case was that of a young man who became insane suddenly. His first act was to try and murder his father and mother, his greatest bitterness being directed towards his mother. He attempted to kill me when I approached him, and it was necessary to open a bottle of chloroform and stand at a safe distance and throw the anesthetic in his face and eyes. Less than a week after the operation he was in his right mind, and has been so since. Another case of a young man who became insane and was violent. He secured a number of rifles and shotguns and barricaded himself in a corn field. When he learned I had been sent for he was worse than ever, and if it had not been for his mother I would have been killed. I operated upon him immediately, and for one week after the operation I could not visit him. However, he soon was in his right mind, and when it was told to him what he had done he went to Indianapolis, Ind., and secured a position. His shame was so great that he could not remain where he was known. After two years he returned home and resumed work where he had left off. The fifth case was just as interesting as the above.I have operated upon and cured 5 cases oflocomotor-ataxia. It is almost impossible for me to get cases oflocomotor-ataxia. When a man writes me he also asks his family physician, who very quickly informs him “there is nothing to it; it’s all bunk!”My cases have ranged in age from 18 to 75 years. My patients that are from 60 to 75years of age write me they feel as they did when they were boys 18 years of age. I have transplanted glands for almost every conceivable disease and have received splendid results in almost every case. All cannot be cured, but all of them can be greatly benefited. At this writing I have with me as a patient a noted United States Senator from Washington, D.C. He has been treated by Dr. Cary T. Grayson, the president’s personal physician, as well as taking 3 years of treatment at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He is depressed and discouraged. He speaks of suicide. He has been operated on only two days and I venture to say that before his week is passed he will be a different man.My greatest number of men come for impotency, next for prostatitis, and many for a general improvement in health. Many come with but one purpose—to prolong their lives. I believe that those who receive gland transplantation will live much longer than without it. Possibly as much as from 10 to 25 years can be added. Then successive transplants can be made, and we have no idea how long they will live. Their skin takes on the appearance of youth. I know that after the ovaries have been transplanted into women who have none their menses return on a 4-day period regularly. Women who had passed the menopause have a return flow. Hardening of the arteries as well as high blood pressure are returned to normal in 100 per cent of the cases. Eyesight is improved from 50 to 100 per cent. A well-known judge was operated upon by me a short time ago, and his eyesight was so muchimproved that he could no longer wear glasses of any kind. Men who had not heard for 16 years write me that since gland transplantation they can hear the tick of a watch. In women a development of the bust is noted and the wrinkles disappear from their cheeks. Chronic constipation is cured as well as old chronic skin diseases, such as psoriasis, eczema, etc.With the best will in the world I am unable to describe on paper just how my fellow practitioners should perform this operation, because I never meet with precisely similar conditions in any two cases. I can say positively that I do not know just what I shall do until the case itself is under my hands in the operating room. The operation is simple in itself, but in my early days of operating I made a number of mistakes because I was on new ground, and there was no authority from whom I could learn the technique. Now, after my six hundred operations have taught me what to do and how to do I am able to avoid these earlier mistakes, and as a consequence I hardly ever have an operation that is not a success. Not very many months ago I was called to San Francisco to re-operate on a number of cases which had gone wrong in the hands of a fellow practitioner. I re-operated on these cases successfully. The surgeon who had performed the operation in the first place is skilful and experienced in all lines of surgical work, but in this particular line of transplanting of goat-glands into human bodies in such wise that the tissue of the goat will blend with and nourish the human tissue no living man exceptmyself has had the necessary experience to teach him through his successes and failures, what to do and how to do it. Nor should I be successful if today, in spite of all the work I have done with the Goat-Glands, I shouldrelinguishthe goat-gland in favor of the human-gland or the monkey-gland. Results have taught me that I made a wise choice in pinning my faith to the young goat as the healthiest possible animal from which tissue could be used for transplanting into human bodies. The goat is immune to practically all diseases. The human being and the monkey, on the other hand, are liable to tuberculous or some tropical disease. For his splendid work with human glands I give full credit to Dr. Frank Lydston of Chicago, who was not only the pioneer in this use of human glands, but actually made his first transplantation upon himself. This is but another instance of that fine confidence in our beliefs and convictions which is typical of the medical profession as a whole. In the use of the human-gland Dr. Lydston is as supreme as I am in the use of the goat-gland, and you must understand that in saying this I am not throwing bouquets at myself in idle vanity. I have a clear cold reason for saying this. I have devoted my life to this particular work, and have brought it to a point where I can speak with authority upon it. I foresee that because of the marvelous results obtained by the transplanting of the goat-glands at my hospital there will be a great awakening of interest in this operation on the part of the public and the medical profession. A great many operations of a similar character will be performednot alone in this country, but all over the world. A great many of these operations will be unsuccessful because the experience of the operator will not have taught him what to do under certain unusual conditions, or rather, what to do under any and all conditions. In the face of an unsuccessful operation this work will be blamed, and the theory upon which I work, namely, that the sex-energy is the basis of all human energy, physical and mental, will be given a setback, and scouted as untrue. But I am constantly proving its truth by the results I get, and find its confirmation in the effect of successful goat-gland transplantation in both men and women. Therefore I am urgent in saying that the work must be rightly done in the first place to obtain right results.Briefly, the operation for men means that the glands of a three weeks’ old male goat are laid upon the non-functioning glands of a man, within twenty minutes of the time they are removed from the goat. In some cases I open the human gland and lay the tissue of the goat within the human gland. The scrotum of the man is opened by incision on both sides under local anesthetic. Conditions of the case may show that there are adhesions of tissue which must also be broken down before the new gland can function. I find that after being properly connected these goat-glands do actually feed, grow into, and become absorbed by the human glands, and the man is renewed in his physical and mental vigor.The operation upon women means that the ovaries of a female goat not more than twelve months of age are removed and inserted intothe woman. If the woman’s organs are sound and merely inert and atrophied, the new ovary will find its way to its proper position and begin the work of restoring the arrested functions, so that the act of menstruation, for example, which has ceased because of the atrophic condition of the woman’s ovaries, begins again and continues on a normal twenty-eight day period. The effect of the new glands upon women is even more noticeable, if such a thing were possible, than upon men, since in their case the rejuvenation is more striking in the changed appearance. But though I claim much, and with good reason, for this operation, I warn against undue expectations. In many cases I advise against the operation as a sure waste of time and money. In many cases I explain that the results will be experimental only, there being nothing in my experience to warrant assurance of success. For instance, in blindness and deafness I have no faith that this operation will remove the disease in spite of the fact that in almost every case operated upon there is great improvement in the sight and hearing. But I have no certain knowledge why this improvement followed. It partakes, therefore, of the nature of an accident. In the case of very fat people the operation trims them down to normal weight. Very thin people are built up to normal weight by it. Barren women and impotent men become mothers and fathers. But in no case do I permit a grandfather or grandmother to entertain the hope that they may be rejuvenated to such an extent that they can procreate again if they wish. This is mere romance, with which I have nothing to do. Nordo I advise a young woman of forty who has not reached the menopause stage to take the operation if she is in good health, in spite of her belief that the goat-glands will enable her to remain indefinitely young. This is experimental work, and is not in the same class as the case of the same woman who has just passed through her menopause and ceased to menstruate. By all means I advise the latter to take the operation because I feel that it will rejuvenate her. If a woman has had both ovaries removed by surgical operation, will this operation grow new ovaries for her, and enable her to become a mother? At this stage of my knowledge my answer is, “Certainly not.” If a man has lost both glands by surgical removal will this operation grow new glands for him? Nine times out of ten, “No.” The tenth time, “Yes.” I do not know why.I can use only a certain breed of goat, a Swiss milk goat, and only animals of a certain youth. My goats cost me about $75 each on an average, and that is one reason why it would be impossible to conduct this work as a free surgical clinic might be conducted, unless the undertaking were specially endowed with funds to meet the expense.Some time in the month of June I expect to make a trip to London, England, and will be away possibly until the end of August. Even the month of May in Kansas is sometimes too hot for this operation to be successfully performed, and I make it a rule to suspend operations entirely throughout June, July and August. Experience has taught me that when the outdoor temperature is high the operationwill almost certainly be unsuccessful, and on account of the cost involved, as well as for the saving of time and trouble for the patient, it is in the highest degree unwise to go contrary to this rule. If the glands are transplanted during very hot weather they will almost certainly slough, which means re-operating later.In many cases that are brought to me I do not operate or even advise that the goat-glands be transplanted later. I cannot go into details of such cases in these pages, but might cite the case of a man, syphilitic, who was sent to me. Certainly I have never made the statement anywhere, at any time, that this operation would curesyhpilis. The man is being treated now for syphilis, and should not have been sent to me at all.I quote the case of a woman of forty, who is normal in every way, and the picture of health at the present time. Her desire is that she may never grow to look any older than she does at this moment, and she asks me if this gland-operation will hold her at the point she has now reached. Frankly, this is pure experiment. I do not know. After another ten years of work in this gland-surgery I might be able to give her a definite opinion, but not at this stage, seeing that my oldest cases go back only three years. On one point only I can speak with positiveness, namely, if I cannot answer this question there is no man living who can answer it, because I am the only man alive who can give an opinion on this work that is founded on first-hand knowledge. We learn in this work only by experience, and we draw just conclusions only fromquantityofexperience. No other man alive has had this experience in sufficient quantity to justify him in forming a conclusion derived from his facts. This is my answer not only to those who listen to encouraging advice regarding the effects of this operation tendered by surgeons who are embarking in this goat-gland operation, but also to those general practitioners who inform patients asking their opinion in the matter that the operation is useless because the glands are certain to slough, I hold that they are not qualified to speak on the subject because they have no knowledge. I have the most positive knowledge that when the operation is rightly performed the glands do NOT slough, and my knowledge is founded upon the hard facts of much experience. In another ten years I shall know more than I know today because I shall have added to my facts, and among those facts there may be some which confirm the hope of the woman of forty alluded to above that this gland transplantation may hold the condition of youth steady as something static, which will not be suffered to pass. At present I do not know, and if I offer an opinion it is to be understood that it is only a guess. My guess, then, would be that in this case the operation would be a waste, producing no effect whatever, neither adding to nor detracting from the condition of health and normal function which is present today.
Eyesight Improves.“Four days after the operation,” the Chancellor continued, “the headaches had disappeared, and my eyesight was greatly improved. And seven days afterwards, I left the hospital a new man.”
One month after the operation Chancellor Tobias wrote to Dr. Brinkley: “I really feel twenty years younger. My health hasimproved wonderfully. I have regained my lost vigor and vitality. I’m a recreated youth.”
And today even Chancellor Tobias’ fellow faculty members, many of them nationally famous attorneys, admit that Dr. Tobias has improved 100 per cent.
“Almost Unbelievable.”“I hesitate to speak of this,” Chancellor Tobias said. “It is so wonderful it is almost unbelievable. The public cannot appreciate what the operation means. There has been some levity over the news of the gland operations, but it should be treated with the greatest respect and admiration. The operation has been a success on me so I am in a position to speak authoritatively. It is one of the greatest things of the century.”
Among the other thirty-five patients who have been successfully operated on are many well-known to thousands of people in Chicago. Here are some typical Chicago cases omitting names:
Policeman——, aged 60, suffering from chronic diabetes and a general breakdown, which was about to compel his retirement from the force. Operated on August 9. Left the hospital yesterday feeling like “a new man.”
Alderman——, aged 55, chronic asthma sufferer. Operated on April 26. Asthma had disappeared by the time he left the hospital. Declared he felt years younger and is now completely revivified.
Mr. G——, newspaperman, aged 39. Suffered from complete nervous breakdown from overwork. Operated on April 25. Resumedwork almost immediately, full of pep, and today is the picture of health.
Judge——, aged 58. Premature old age from hardening of the arteries. Operated on April 28. Because of his wonderful improvement in health has changed his mind about retiring from the bench.
Operation Painless.“Ignorance about the gland transplanting is almost universal,” I told Dr. Brinkley. “I know nothing of it. Tell me how it is done, why you use goat-glands, all the whys and wherefores, so the readers ofThe Americanwill have some authentic information. Is the operation painful?”
“No,” Dr. Brinkley replied. “It is a simple incision with very little actual pain. In practically all cases a local anesthetic is used. A general anesthetic is used only in exceptional cases.”
“How long does the operation take?”
“Fifteen to twenty minutes. It is as simple as grafting new shoots on a fruit tree. No part of the human gland is removed. The goat-gland is simply planted to take the place of the old gland.”
“And the hospital confinement?”
“One week, to rest the patient and allow the gland to begin functioning without undue exertion.”
“Any danger?”
“None whatever. It’s like grafting on a piece of skin. There is absolutely no danger.”
Eliminates Disorders.Lost youth is regained, according to Dr. Brinkley, as a result of the revivifying fluid secreted by the transplantedgland, leading to the elimination of organic disorders that are hastening old age.
Dr. Brinkley explained in detail:
“I began my experiments nine years ago, and began using goat-glands three years ago in the interstitial gland operation because the goat-glands resemble to a large degree the human glands in their histological make-up. The interstitial glands and the blood, of a goat, are a very close approach in their constituents to those of a human being.
“Old people are simply broken down. The goat-gland secretes the fluid that builds up the brokendown parts of the human body. Eyesight improves 50 per cent. If a man is underweight he will gain to normal, and if he is overweight he will reduce to normal, showing that the goat glands actually function.”
Chronic Diseases Cured.“Chronic skin diseases are cleared up. Stomach trouble disappears under the new gland’s guardianship of the body. I have the laboratory data, the scientific records, and the actual revivified patients to prove it. The only unsuccessful cases are certain people whose blood lacks necessary essentials, and they are few.”
Dr. Brinkley gives Dr. G. Frank Lydston of Chicago credit for performing the first gland transplanting operations.
Lydston Is Pioneer.“Dr. Lydston is the pioneer,” Dr. Brinkley said. “He was the first man to transplant glands from a human to a human. I have never transplanted anthropoid ape glands, as Dr. Voronoff of Paris, and only in three cases human glands, as Dr. Lydston,and I was not pleased with the results in those three cases. I was the first to transplant goat glands. Dr. Serge Voronoff has performed the operation on only two human beings. He failed to give Dr. Lydston credit, although it is obvious he followed Dr. Lydston’s book.”
****
This completes Mr. Lehrbas’ interview. In the same paper,The Chicago Evening American, a month later, date of September 15, appeared the following account of another visit to Chancellor Tobias, written by Edward M. Thierry:
J. J. Tobias, chancellor of the Chicago Law School, told me it was none of my business how old he is. He’s got a goat-gland sewed into his innards and I was trying to get some personal Ponce de Leon statistics.
“I’m over 50,” Tobias conceded. “How much I won’t say. But I will say my clock has been turned back from ten to twenty years! Just look at me!”
He jumped out of his chair—er—friskily. That’s the only expressive word. Tobias is little, thin and wiry. His face wrinkles up and his teeth flash when he smiles. He has grey hair and talks with quick jerks—as if his energy is running a race with his tongue.
“I’m rejuvenated,” Tobias said. “Time will tell whether my goat-gland will make me live longer. I had that operation on last March 26, and I’m still living. I’m no decrepit old man, either.”
Tobias was operated on by Dr. J. R. Brinkley, who has caused a furor in medical circlesthrough his many successful goat-gland operations.
Critics of Dr. Brinkley make Tobias tired. Get his goat, so to speak. He says he knows what he’s talking about, for he was formerly lecturer in a Chicago medical college.
“Seventy-five years ago my father had a little German machine,” Tobias said, “called the ‘life waker.’ It was a disk as big as a dollar with a lot of needles in it. You jabbed it into the small of the back and waked life that way. We can laugh at that archaic system, for it was crude. Now we’re more scientific. Witness the transplantation of goat-glands.”
Tobias said he went to see Dr. Brinkley at Milford, Kansas, to investigate his goat-gland discovery because of long suffering from congestion of the brain arteries. Doctors had told him he was in danger of death because of severe attacks of vertigo and a high blood pressure.
“The operation,” Tobias said, “occupied about 20 minutes. Within three hours after the operation the goat-gland began to function, the congestion was relieved, and within three days the cause was eliminated.
“I am a new man physically, with new mental vigor, and a new power of sustained effort. I can distinctly sense the function of a new gland in my body.”
It must have functioned muscularly, for when I left Tobias gave me a knuckle-crushing grip which made it necessary to write this story with my left hand.
These newspaper articles are printed here without change, in spite of evident repetitions, because of their evidential value. It is an old trick of the public press in the United States, and probably in Europe also, to start a sensation with a blazing front page story, and in the course of a few weeks follow it with a complete and sarcastic expose of the whole matter as a baseless fabrication, piling facts on facts to show that the first story was an ingenious piece of deception got up by the subject with the purpose of making capital out of the credulity of the public. There are no better detectives in the world than newspaper men. They work for the love of it. An expose is dearer to the detective-instinct in them than a laudatory article, and they leave no stone unturned to get at the facts. When, therefore, after the lapse of months, the newspapers of the United States repeat and confirm their first stories about Dr. Brinkley’s work it means something to one who knows their methods of working. Money cannot buy this sort of publicity. There must be facts, and facts of value, and facts verified again and again, before stories of this kind appear and reappear in the great organs of publicity in all the big cities of the United States. How far they carry, and how wide-reaching is the interest, will be understood by the statement that the announcement of Dr. Brinkley’s work, printed first in American newspapers, and copied in the English papers, has brought him urgent requests to visit South Africa, Australia, Sweden, Scotland, and many othercountries. From England in particular come requests from women that he do not fail to make a journey to some part of Europe in the summer of 1921, in order that they may take the operation with a view to bearing children. This he has arranged to do about June of this year, expecting to find in England a climate during the months of June, July and August, which will not be too hot to prevent him from transplanting the goat-glands. He does not operate at his hospital in Kansas during June, July and August, on account of the heat, having found that when the outdoor temperature is high the glands will certainly slough. The high temperature without seems to create a high temperature for the patient, and the result is a wasted pair of good goat glands, with loss of time and money to all concerned. In England in the summer it should be necessary to wait a few days only for right climatic conditions to present themselves, and be sure that they will do so. There are the further matters of a supply of goats of the right Toggenburg breed, a place to keep them, in close proximity to the operating hospital, and the hospital itself, to be dealt with suitably in the shortest possible space of time after arrival. The supply of goats can probably be best procured direct from Switzerland through some London importer, and the other matters will no doubt fall easily into place. The goats must not come from a high altitude, or their glands will not contain a right amount of iodine. This is curiously important. Dr. Brinkley cannot use goats from Colorado forthat reason. If the doctor’s reception in England is cordial he will probably make his visit there an annual summer affair of three months’ duration for some years to come, which would give him an opportunity of keeping in continued touch with his English and European patients. The English are a practical people, and less sensitive than we to, or more careless of, ridicule, and they are likely to grasp the importance of Dr. Brinkley’s work on the instant of his arrival, compelling a long visit.
Writing with vivacity and humor, Mr. Clarence Day, Jr., speculates with so much whimsicality upon the possible effects of surgical rejuvenation of men that one might overlook the keenness of his observation in a hurried perusal of his article. For the sake of preserving it for more leisurely study, and because the points raised are really worthy of attention, the article is reproduced here in full, with acknowledgments toThe Literary Review, in which it first appeared, of date November 20, 1920. Says Mr. Day:
Biologists really seem to be discovering ways of making men young again. So far, it is like making men drunk; the state that is produced does not last. But it looks as though they might succeed in adding a chapter to life. I wish it could be added to the other end: to youth instead of to the last flickers. But if we can renew and re-live middle-age, that will be better still.
A man named Steinach, in Vienna, has been experimenting for ten years with rats. Full accounts of his work were published last summer in the great biological journal founded by Roux, and these were summarized and discussed by the LondonAthenaeum, which is now the most interesting of all English weeklies. It is from theAthenaeum’saccount that I am taking these facts.
Steinach has been studying the interstitial cells that fill in the spaces between the tubules of the testes, in males, and between the follicles of the ovaries in females. His reason for choosing these cells for his experiments is that they are a well-spring of life. Furthermore, since all our vital functions are interrelated, to make these cells active gives the whole organism new life and strength. This is not the only way of stimulating the organism, but it seems the most powerful.
An old rat is like a senile old man; he is bald and emaciated, his eyes are clouded, his breathing is labored. He stays in one place, with bent back, and has small interest in anything. If you cut one of his genital ducts, however, which is a comparatively slight operation, it has the effect of making the interstitial cells multiply actively. Waves of life flood his being. Within a few weeks he is transformed. These currents restore and rebuild him; skin, muscle and mind. Both in looks and behavior he is indistinguishable from other strong rats.
He has cast off old age. Senility, which sets in with men when they are from sixty to eighty years old, begins after twenty to thirty months in a rat. He is then about through. But when an operation is performed on a senile rat he gets from six to eight months’ new life. In other words, the addition to his normal span is 20 to 30 per cent. That would be a large fraction of life for a man to live over again. The rat lives it vigorously, eagerly, back in his prime.
When senility again comes upon him it is in a modified form. His organism as a whole is in better shape. It is his mind now that tires. As Steinach has already cut one or both of his genital ducts, that method of stimulating his cells cannot, of course, be repeated. But another operation is ready. Some unfortunate young male is deprived of his testes by Steinach, and these are implanted forthwith in this hoary old rat.
A second spell of active life follows, not so long as the first. It ends in acute psychic senility. The rat goes all to pieces. It is as if the brain, twice restimulated to emotion, curiosity, keenness, had approached the very limit of its running, and was completely exhausted.
Steinach has not yet tried whether a third rejuvenation is possible. That remains to be seen. He lives in Vienna, and everything there has come to a stop. He has no assistants, no funds, with which to conduct further experiments. “May happier lands or cities carry the work on,” he writes at the end.
It seems as though some rich American ought to stake the old boy.
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Steinach has naturally found it more difficult to give new youth to females. But here, too, he has in a measure succeeded. X-ray treatment and ovarian transplantation are the methods employed.
As to human experiments, there is a colleague of Steinach’s named Lichtenstern, who has operated on numerous men and womenwith apparent success. There has not been time yet to measure how long their new lease of life is to be; but they have regained the joy of life they had lost—strength and powers of work. Still, all this needs confirming.
In a rat it is the sexual impulses that are directly reanimated. He again knows the fevers of courtship, the conflicts of marriage; and whether he is glad to repeat these commotions depends on the rat. In man, however, the sexual impulses are more or less sublimated, so that the new energy may appear in any of the other forms of psychic activity. Whatever such faculties he has in him once more grow strong.
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How wonderful it would be if we could at least prolong certain lives—great writers like H. G. Wells and Conrad, great artists, great doctors. But in practice, the men who would get hold of this would be John D. Rockefeller and W. J. Bryan. The rich uncle would walk in and tell his hopeless heirs he had been to see Steinach. Senators would live forever. The world would grow harder for youth.
Even were we able to control all this, and reserve the boon for the best, would it work? Say we did choose the right men—is it not too intimate a suggestion that we should set a man of science upon them, prepared with a little knife to slice one of their genital ducts? Men have fought all these years for the right to live. Have they no right to die? Must an old man who is needed by the public be condemned to live on, his aged cells stirred andrestirred while we glean his brains bare? Some Socrates of the future may yet envy that other his hemlock.
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This, we say it regretfully, is the end of Mr. Day’s article. It is admirable fooling. We will not pay his wit the poor compliment of taking him seriously at the last and pointing out to him that it was Heine who said, “Nobody loves life like an old man!” There will be no need of insistence to urge the old men, useful or useless, to submit to an operation to renew their youth. But it is to be hoped that they will never be asked to submit to the cutting of the genital duct. It seems to the writer thatThe Athenaeummust have misconstrued Dr. Steinach’s experiments in some degree, inasmuch as it is difficult to conceive of the operation of severing a genital duct as conducive to cell-formation. However, probably ligating is meant instead of severing. But this is not the point really brought out by Mr. Day’s clever article. The real point is, Is it likely that if Mr. John Jones takes Dr. Brinkley’s goat-gland operation for the renewal of his youth, and thereby adds thirty years to his life, and at the end of this thirty years of friskiness undergoes a second transplantation of glands, thereby gaining twenty years more, and at the end of this twenty years takes the operation a third time, securing a further lease of gaiety for ten years, will the final years of Mr. John Jones be years of acute psychic senility, as observed by Dr. Steinach in his rat? To the writer it seems anon sequitur.The cases are not parallel. The rejuvenated rat appears to regard his acquired vitality as impelling toward revelry and excess. It is necessary to emphasize the point that the pith and marrow of Dr. Brinkley’s discovery is that since it is clearly shown that rejuvenation is accomplished by the restoration of activity to the sex-glands, therefore the preservation of this rejuvenation MUST depend upon the CONSERVATION of the seminal fluids, and cannot depend upon any other single factor whatever. It has been already explained that Dr. Brinkley puts it out of the power of the rejuvenated man to destroy the good that has come into his life, and protects him against the danger of yielding too freely to passionate impulse, by preventing the escape of the rejuvenating agent. The means of nourishing the body and brain being therefore insured as to supply, it is not reasonable to suppose that the nerve-cells of the rejuvenated man can fail to receive their proper nourishment for many succeeding years, and, passing by the rat as a fallacious parallel, we cannot see any good reason why the human body and brain, either under the guidance of self-control, or surgically safeguarded against the waste of excess, should not function at their best for fifty years of added life, with very possibly another fifty added to that. The real crux of the matter is the resistive quality of tissue, which is approximately 200 years for such organs as kidneys and heart, and, say, 150 for nerve-substance.
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THE OPERATING ROOM AT THE BRINKLEY HOSPITAL
The writer, approaching the age of 54, and finding himself in first-class physical and mental condition, except for a high blood pressure, which was certainly the prelude to a later arterio-sclerosis, decided that he would be doing himself a service, and put himself in a better position to write with some authority upon the effects of the goat-glands, if he took the operation.
On Saturday, April 16. 1921, Dr. Brinkley operated on him at the hospital, Milford, Kansas, transplanting the glands of a three-weeks old male goat. He remained in bed Saturday and Sunday, got up and went for an auto drive on Monday, and passed an uneventful week at the hospital, returning to Chicago on Saturday. He experienced a marked increase in mental energy, which might have shown itself also as increased physical energy if it had been put to the test. This feeling of added pep, snap, energy, or what you please to call it, could be psychological in its origin if it were not for the fact that it is continuous, with no set-backs. Every student of psychology is aware that auto-suggestion has the power to bring out latent energy, raise the drooping spirits, and generate a feeling of well-being. But the student, if he is a reasonably close observer, is also aware that these improvedstates of feeling have an annoying habit of being offset by corresponding periods of depression, and though he may persist in his effort to lift himself out of the black moods with such success that he finally arrives at a higher tone-level mentally, with a corresponding physical improvement, there is indubitably a strong sense of effort needed for this good result. When, therefore, the writer finds himself working long hours day after day with no sense of mental fatigue, but a certain unusual gaiety of heart accompanying the successive days, as if life were on the whole rather a lark, he, being accurately introspective, and not easily deceived into optimistic conclusions, is forced to give the whole credit for this change of spirit to the functioning of the new glands, and he is confirmed in this conclusion by the fact that the high blood pressure, which was noticeable enough before the operation, cannot now, ten days after the operation, be detected by him at all. Ten days is all too short a time in which to write of details in a matter of this importance. He expects to be able to confirm improvement in eyesight by the middle of May, and will be in a position to speak at greater length on the matter after the summer has passed. The intent of this chapter is to give a brief account of something he saw at Dr. Brinkley’s hospital during the week of his treatment.
Two weeks before his arrival a man suffering from locomotor ataxia had been carried in, unable to help himself at all. When the writer saw this man and talked with him he was upand dressed and walking about, without a cane, and he left for home after a total stay of something less than three weeks. In parting from him the doctor said, “You are on the high-road to complete recovery. I expect to hear that you are getting stronger every day. Practice in walking will bring back to you the old confidence and banish the helpless feeling that you are sure to fall. You see that you can control the motions of your feet and legs now as you could not before. Sensation has returned to the soles of your feet, and you can now turn yourself over in bed, which you could not do before without assistance. This means that the brain, spinal cord, muscles and will are co-ordinating again. This means that the goat-glands are actively working, dissolving scar-tissue, and bringing you back to health. But it is asking a good deal of a pair of goat-glands to do as much as they must do in your case to bring about complete recovery. I would rather give them some extra assistance. If you will come back to me, therefore, next Fall, to this hospital, I will put two new goat-glands into you; and I believe that with this extra help you will go right through to a complete cure without any trouble. The operation will not cost you a cent. I am anxious only to complete the good work. I may be wrong at that, and it is possible that the glands you have now will be enough to do the work, but if they do not, come back here for two more next Fall. Don’t forget.”
This man had been everywhere for relief, and had taken every treatment known for hisdisease, with no results whatever, as he told the writer. “This is the first time for twelve years,” he said, “that I have had any feeling in my feet. I am surely going to get well at last.”
In another case of the same disease the patient, when he came to the hospital, was taking morphine daily to relieve the lightning-pains. He could not stand upright with his eyes shut without falling, and if spoken to suddenly was likely to lose his balance and fall. He had not walked without a cane for several years. Twenty-four hours after the goat-gland operation he said that the pains had left him, and voluntarily stopped the morphine. In two weeks he was walking five miles before breakfast, without a cane to help him. He left the hospital a cured man. There has never been a case of true locomotor ataxia cured by any means whatever, in the history of man, until this Kansas surgeon, Dr. Brinkley, found the cure for it in this transplantation of goat-glands. Ataxia is an after-math of syphilis, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, and it is a question, which no layman can solve, whether the cause of the ataxia is in the disease, or in the mercurial treatment used to combat the disease. Another age, following this, may decide that the disease, syphilis, is less destructive of human tissue than the cure, Mercury. However that may be, the fact remains that goat-glands will cure Locomotor Ataxia, and they are apparently the only means of cure hitherto discovered.
The writer talked with some of the townspeople of Milford regarding Dr. Brinkley’swork. Their attitude was detached, but on the whole affirmative. They could not, as they put it, doubt their own eyesight, implying that they would do so if they could. They had seen case after case carried into the hospital, and they had seen those same people walk out and go their way to their homes. It was queer, they said, and wagged a critical head. So true is it in all parts of the earth that a prophet hath honor save in his own country! Here and there, however, the writer found a townsman who had nothing but words of praise and admiration for Dr. Brinkley’s work. These always proved to be people who had had some relative under Dr. Brinkley’s care at the hospital, and they were intelligent men who could give their reasons for their conclusions. They were proud of the lustre which Dr. Brinkley’s Goat-Gland work was shedding upon the name of their village. Most of the townspeople, however, seemed to think that Dr. Brinkley should be proud of the town. Their engaging surliness of demeanor with regard to the miracles being performed in their village was a fascinating study to a city man, who saw here at its best the typical small-town attitude towards the big local thing. It is not peculiar to Milford. It is universal. It is as true in England and France and Belgium and Germany as in any little town in the United States. What do you suppose the country villagers thought of Fabre, the great French naturalist, probably to be hailed by the next generation as the greatest figure since Darwin? Without doubt they thought him mad, and if kindly,pitied him, or if savage, despised him. Meanwhile it is quite certain that the work of Dr. Brinkley has put the town of Milford, Kansas, on the map, and, if you do not find it on the railroad map you may some day consult, it will help a little to say here that you go from Kansas City, Missouri, by the Union Pacific Railroad to Junction City, Kansas, and from that point change to a little branch line which carries you to Milford. The depot at Milford is about a mile from the village itself. You will find an auto at the depot which will carry you to the hospital, where you will be met by Dr. or Mrs. Brinkley, or Miss Lewis, the Head Nurse, and where you will be very comfortable if you decide to make a stay of a week or so for personal reasons. The food is good, and the Kansas air fresh and bracing and plentiful. Winds are indeed common, but the village is safely out of the track of the Kansas cyclones, and the storm cellar is unknown. The hospital is spotlessly clean and a marvel of completeness in equipment. The preparations for the gland transplantation are simple but thorough; a test of spermatic fluid, a blood test, a test for blood pressure, a blood count, and a purgative the night before the operation, with no breakfast on the morning of the operation. You will eat a good lunch in bed, however, on that day, and miss no meals afterwards. Briefly, the writer can say honestly that the pain of the operation is no more than the twinge of a toothache.
Dr. Brinkley’s employment of the goat-glands for the past three years of continuous operating, therefore, has proved to his satisfaction and to that of his patients that the testes in men and the ovaries in women furnish a secretion which has the property of a revivifying fluid when restored to the system by the currents of blood and lymph. In that commonly fatal condition of the arteries which follows rapidly upon the state of blood pressure known as hardening of the arteries, or arterio-sclerosis, a practically incurable condition hitherto, the results obtained by the goat-gland transplantation are miraculously swift. When the arteries are, as the doctor puts it, “as hard as pipe-stems,” they grow in a few weeks, sometimes in a week, soft and pliable. The change, according to Dr. Brinkley, is brought about in the walls of the arteries themselves, and is not a process of dissolving the accumulations or deposits of calcareous material within the arteries. The change is in the material of the walls of the arteries, producing a return of the condition of elasticity, permitting expansion and contraction as in youth.
It is a favorite theory with some modern writers that the physical change from youth to age is accompanied in the body, and in a sense caused by, the deterioration in the quality ofthe cells of the body, and they call this change a breaking-down process by which the finer and more highly differentiated cells, such, for example, as the nerve-cells, and others which have high and complicated duties to perform, are displaced by cells of an inferior type, which they name conjunctive cells, much as the common sparrow drives away the songbirds from the home garden and, usurping the place of the songbird, substitutes a wretched twitter for the golden notes of the warblers which once delighted our ears. The common cells, also, on usurping the place of the nobler cells, are unable to perform the difficult duties of the latter, and the result upon human organism is disorder, decay, disease, etc., contributing to, if not causing, the condition of old age. This is an ingenious but not convincing theory. Our knowledge of histological processes is too incomplete at this stage to permit its acceptance as fact. It assumes too much to be known which is quite unknown. Moreover, it refutes itself upon examination in this particular, and in several others, that if it were true that these inferior cells are on the lookout to invade instantly any part of the human organism in which there was a breaking down of nerve-tissue, for example, then it would be impossible to build new nerve-tissue to take the place of that which was destroyed, because its place, according to this theory, has been already taken by an intruder who cannot be dislodged. But new nerve-cells are constantly being rebuilt, and constantly being put to use in the organism. If this theory were true, thena brain in middle age would be unable to function because of the impossibility of renewing its cells.
A much more reasonable and probably true explanation of the cause of old age is the gradual disappearance of animal matter in the bones and tissues, and the corresponding increase of the mineral matter in the bones and tissues, amounting to ossification of cartilage, whereby the supple cartilage, losing its animal content, becomes practically bone by deposit of lime particles. This would also account in a common-sense manner for the fragility of the bones of the aged, the brittleness being due to calcareous deposits in the substance of the bone itself, in excess of the normal mineral contents of the bones in youth. The function of the seminal fluids, therefore, appears to be to restore to the aging tissues this property, this animal matter, which when in its right ratio and proportion in the cells of the organism produces the condition of youth. The action of these seminal fluids, therefore, seems to be two-fold, a dissolving and a nourishing. The distinction should be clearly made that the action is NOT merely stimulating. The stimulation of a nerve-cell is a temporary excitement. We speak of the stimulation of alcohol, and this illustration gives a clearer view of the difference between the nourishing action of the seminal fluids and a stimulating action than we could obtain by the employment of many words. It is interesting to remember that while it is possible to increase the mineral particles of soda, potash, lime, iron,silica and magnesia in the blood and lymph, it is practically impossible for us to increase the animal contents of the cells by any method of medication or dieting known to us. Only Life can produce this change in the cells, and only this method of gland-transplantation has furnished a means of impressing Life into service to work for us in this matter. To produce the effects which are needed to rejuvenate a body that has increased its mineral matter at the expense of its animal matter we require the co-operation of glands made active, because only the glands, in the marvelous chemistry of the body, are able to compound the animal substances required to nourish the cells, tissues and organs of the body, and to dissolve and remove those injurious substances of a mineral nature which have accumulated in excess in cells and tissues, usurping the place of the animal matter in the cells because of the inactivity of function generally, and the poor elimination of waste matter, as the years pass. This is the re-creative and rejuvenating work of the gland secretions. It is beyond us to say exactly what these secretions consist of. We know the importance of their presence in blood and lymph only by the disasters that follow their absence. The thyroid gland and parathyroids, for instance, seem to be connected by some close sympathy with the activity or non-activity of the interstitial glands, and the atrophy of one is often accompanied by the atrophy of the other. The subject is still hidden in darkness to the extent of insufficient knowledge on our part of the exact constituentsof the active agents in the secretions of the testes, thyroids, suprarenals, pituitary and other glands. Time and further opportunity for experiment are needed to show to what extent the goat-gland transplantation can be used to remedy goitre, epilepsy and the graver lesions of paralysis. The use of the goat-glands is too recent to admit of anything but speculation on these points. There would seem to be no good reason to doubt that if the male organs of a young goat do rejuvenate the atrophied testes of a man, which Dr. Brinkley has abundantly proved they do, the thyroid gland of a young goat might be expected to restore the atrophied thyroid of a human being. This again is only conjecture, Dr. Brinkley’s work up to the present having been confined to the transplantation of testes and ovaries. But he expects to find time during the present year to satisfy himself of the results of such important experimental work as is here indicated. It is possible that his visit to Europe this summer may be the means of enlarging his field considerably, although it would appear that if he had six pairs of hands and could keep all employed in continuous service he could scarcely cope with the demands upon his time which any and all countries of the earth may be expected to make when his work is known. In ten years, no doubt, gland-transplantation, particularly goat-gland transplantation, for the renewal of youth in man and woman will be so usual as to occasion neither wonder nor hilarity. But we are not living ten years from now, but at this presentmoment, and Dr. Brinkley’s operation to-day is a marvel, a wonder and a joy. There is a satisfaction in being in the van. It is fine to be the first to do a big thing, especially if that big thing is something of the most practical value to humanity. Mankind has always crowned its great generals, its great destroyers of life. Here is a man who comes forward to preserve life. That is his mission, if you like. Certainly it is his life work. It is a noble work. The question in the writer’s mind is, What will they do to him? How will they take him in England? Will they applaud, or crucify, or neglect? Probably they will show him something of the generous hospitality of England, and leaven this with a plentiful sprinkling of ridicule, because the subject of the goat lends itself to humor of the obvious kind. But it is our belief that the hard, practical common sense of the Anglo-Saxon will lead them to make the utmost use of this opportunity of his visit, and, having got him, it is to be expected that they will know enough to keep him. This is quite as much their opportunity as his. While they sharpen their wit upon the sacrificial goat and make merry, they are pretty sure to make full use of his knowledge and skill while they have him with them, and might make things so pleasant for him that he might say, when the summer is over and he looks back upon the white cliffs of Dover, returning to his own country, “This is a good land. I have enjoyed the trip. I like the people. I will return next summer, and for many summers thereafter.”
By J. R. Brinkley, M.D., C.M., Ph.D., Sc.D.
Chief Surgeon, Brinkley-Jones Hospital and TrainingSchool for Nurses, Milford, Kansas
(Written October, 1920)
For many years scientists have believed that a part, or all of the glands of the human body influenced longevity. They believed our glands contained the “life spark.” Men for hundreds of years have been seeking the “fountain of youth.” Ponce de Leon when he landed in Florida and saw the beautiful springs and flowers thought he had found it, and so announced to the world. Long ago we learned that the pituitary gland influenced growth and development. For instance if the pituitary gland over-functioned we had Giantism. If it under-functioned the opposite was the result—a dwarf. If the thyroid gland was at fault we would have either the low mentality commonly spoken of as cretinism, or myxedema. We found that by feeding children the fresh gland substance a marked improvement would be obtained and sometimes a cure. Some years ago there was a surgical craze which called for the removal of the women’s ovaries. It was thought that many nervous troubles, including epilepsy, etc., were due to diseased ovaries, so the surgeons removed ovaries just about as promiscuously as tonsils and teeth are now taken out.After a while they found a woman without ovaries was about ruined, so something had to be done, and ovarian extracts and substances were fed to the unfortunates. Good results were obtained so long as the feeding process kept up, but if the feeding was stopped, the miserable symptoms returned. One factor was always in evidence, that a woman who had no ovaries never menstruated again. Premature change of life (menopause) resulted.Ageingtook place early. A loss of interest in the pleasant things of life existed. As a wife or companion for the home the woman was worse than useless. Her life was so miserable that all who came in contact with her were made miserable, also. She was unsexed, and one of the “sparks of life” had been taken away. She assumed characteristics of the male. If the testes of a man are removed he will assume the characteristics of a woman. Many changes will take place. His mind is no longer clear, he tires easily, cannot concentrate upon any subject, and has marked loss of memory and of physical well being. The things that once appealed to him are now undesirable. The opposite sex are repulsive and he shuns their society. A man or woman who suffers the premature loss of their glands of regeneration will become more or less defective mentally and their life will be materially shortened.
At one time a favorite expression was, “A man is as old as his arteries.” We know better than this now. A man is just as old as he feels, when said feeling is directed to his sex organs.The first sign of old age is impotency, and more men are reaching a premature impotencythan ever before in the history of the world. Their glands are burning up, as it were. After impotency is well on its way arterio-sclerosis or hardening of the arteries is noticed, then the mental inefficiency, as well as physical weakness. Right on the heels of impotency comes prostatitis. I was taught in medical school that nearly all men suffered from an enlarged prostate and prostatitis: that it was one of the diseases of “old age”; that we were heir to it and might expect it to show up after the age of 45. I was also taught that arterio-sclerosis was another disease of old age, and all men were heir to it. However, we are beginning to awaken to a few things. We are approaching the dawn of a new day. We are beginning to understand the whys and wherefores. While I have been criticized and called everything under the sun, except an angel, I expected as much, and I am ready to face the world with my facts; not theories. I have a long and hard fight before me yet.
The cures that I have effected by gland transplantation up to the present time are enough to justify me for all of my work and efforts along this new line of science. Should I never operate again, I feel justly repaid and know that I have started something that will go on and on and live forever. Gland transplantation for the cure of disease within the next ten years will be as common as the removal of a diseased appendix is now. You can hardly pick up a daily paper without reading an account of some surgeon performing a wonderful operation of transplanting bone or tissue from some animal to replace that which was diseasedin the human. Why not borrow what we need from the animal? We use their flesh for food. We also use their gland substances in the fresh or dried form to supply our bodies with whatever we may not possess.
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THE TOGGENBURG GOATS
My first efforts in gland transplantation were directed towards the cure of sterility. A man came to me who had been impotent for sixteen years. Every known means had been used in his case. My experiments in the use of glands from animal to animal, led me to believe that if the gland from a goat could be transplanted into the human body this impotency and sterility could be overcome. This man was willing to try anything as he was 46 and his wife was 42. They were very anxious for a male child. Twelve months after the transplantation I delivered his wife of a 10-pound baby boy, who is alive and well today. In appreciation of what the goat glands had done for them they named the baby “Billy.” He lives within four miles of me now. This first case being a wonderful success encouraged me to experiment with humans on a larger scale. Willing subjects were not easy to obtain. After obtaining, it was difficult to operate. The operation or experiment could not be performed in any of the general hospitals. Ethics as well as country and little town gossip forbid such work. It was necessary for me to build a hospital of my own so that my experiments could be carried on without the public or profession knowing anything about them. If good results were obtained I could announce to the world; if none were obtained the matter could be dropped. After four male children had beenborn, due directly to gland transplantation, the news leaked out, and has swept the world like wildfire. While I was transplanting glands for sterility, other beneficial effects were noted by me as well as my patients. Now, since I have transplanted glands into more than 600 men and women it is an easy matter to give some comprehensive statistics. A complete record is kept of each case and follow-up letters are used so that we are in a pretty fair way to estimate just what we are doing. Five cases of insanity have been cured to date. The great difficulty in obtaining insane people for operation is, they are confined in a state institution, and the authorities will not permit their removal, especially when their loved ones tell the “higher ups” they wish Dr. Brinkley, “the gland man,” to transplant goat glands. “Oh, no, it’s all rot and will never do!” However, we have operated upon five cases and have cured five cases. After awhile we will break down this great wall of prejudice, and insane people will be ordered out for this operation. At present when habeas corpus proceedings are all that will obtain the release, and gland transplantation is the object, not much of a chance exists. I am going to mention one of our very interesting cases, as the man lives only about 15 or 20 miles from me in Dickinson County, Kansas. His name is Lon Jones, and his case is known far and wide within the state of Kansas. My writing about Mr. Jones will not be the betrayal of a professional secret. He is anxious for the world to know about it. Some six weeks or two months before I was called to see him he was stricken suddenly, insane. He had mounted his horse and was drivinghis cattle home for the night when it was noticed by others that he acted “queer.” He began to whip and fight his steed as well as the cattle unmercifully. He dismounted or fell off his horse and at first was thought unconscious. A physician was called, another, and another, and his case was diagnosed as Dementia Praecox. Violent in character. He wanted to kill his doctor, or commit some rash act. One of the first acts was to try and give away all of his land and stock as well as corn and feed.
It was unsafe for his wife and children to be near him. Men remained with him, day and night. Finally his guards had to tie him in bed. His arms and feet were securely fastened, as well as his body, to a heavy iron bed. Application for his entry into the state institution had been made when I was called. With the assistance of neighbor men he was conducted into my hospital here. Immediate gland transplantation was performed, and three days after said operation he asked me to remove his irons so that he could rest comfortably. He informed me that he was in his right mind and we need have no further fear of him. Soon afterwards he was permitted to roam around the building and over town. He went home more than a year ago and is transacting his business as a sane man should. No evidence of his former trouble has occurred. He did not know until the day that we discharged him what my line of treatment had been. Another notable case was that of a man who had spent 11 years of his life in three state institutions for the insane in New York. Heleft here entirely cured and is now holding an important position in New York City. Another case was that of a young man who became insane suddenly. His first act was to try and murder his father and mother, his greatest bitterness being directed towards his mother. He attempted to kill me when I approached him, and it was necessary to open a bottle of chloroform and stand at a safe distance and throw the anesthetic in his face and eyes. Less than a week after the operation he was in his right mind, and has been so since. Another case of a young man who became insane and was violent. He secured a number of rifles and shotguns and barricaded himself in a corn field. When he learned I had been sent for he was worse than ever, and if it had not been for his mother I would have been killed. I operated upon him immediately, and for one week after the operation I could not visit him. However, he soon was in his right mind, and when it was told to him what he had done he went to Indianapolis, Ind., and secured a position. His shame was so great that he could not remain where he was known. After two years he returned home and resumed work where he had left off. The fifth case was just as interesting as the above.
I have operated upon and cured 5 cases oflocomotor-ataxia. It is almost impossible for me to get cases oflocomotor-ataxia. When a man writes me he also asks his family physician, who very quickly informs him “there is nothing to it; it’s all bunk!”
My cases have ranged in age from 18 to 75 years. My patients that are from 60 to 75years of age write me they feel as they did when they were boys 18 years of age. I have transplanted glands for almost every conceivable disease and have received splendid results in almost every case. All cannot be cured, but all of them can be greatly benefited. At this writing I have with me as a patient a noted United States Senator from Washington, D.C. He has been treated by Dr. Cary T. Grayson, the president’s personal physician, as well as taking 3 years of treatment at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He is depressed and discouraged. He speaks of suicide. He has been operated on only two days and I venture to say that before his week is passed he will be a different man.
My greatest number of men come for impotency, next for prostatitis, and many for a general improvement in health. Many come with but one purpose—to prolong their lives. I believe that those who receive gland transplantation will live much longer than without it. Possibly as much as from 10 to 25 years can be added. Then successive transplants can be made, and we have no idea how long they will live. Their skin takes on the appearance of youth. I know that after the ovaries have been transplanted into women who have none their menses return on a 4-day period regularly. Women who had passed the menopause have a return flow. Hardening of the arteries as well as high blood pressure are returned to normal in 100 per cent of the cases. Eyesight is improved from 50 to 100 per cent. A well-known judge was operated upon by me a short time ago, and his eyesight was so muchimproved that he could no longer wear glasses of any kind. Men who had not heard for 16 years write me that since gland transplantation they can hear the tick of a watch. In women a development of the bust is noted and the wrinkles disappear from their cheeks. Chronic constipation is cured as well as old chronic skin diseases, such as psoriasis, eczema, etc.
With the best will in the world I am unable to describe on paper just how my fellow practitioners should perform this operation, because I never meet with precisely similar conditions in any two cases. I can say positively that I do not know just what I shall do until the case itself is under my hands in the operating room. The operation is simple in itself, but in my early days of operating I made a number of mistakes because I was on new ground, and there was no authority from whom I could learn the technique. Now, after my six hundred operations have taught me what to do and how to do I am able to avoid these earlier mistakes, and as a consequence I hardly ever have an operation that is not a success. Not very many months ago I was called to San Francisco to re-operate on a number of cases which had gone wrong in the hands of a fellow practitioner. I re-operated on these cases successfully. The surgeon who had performed the operation in the first place is skilful and experienced in all lines of surgical work, but in this particular line of transplanting of goat-glands into human bodies in such wise that the tissue of the goat will blend with and nourish the human tissue no living man exceptmyself has had the necessary experience to teach him through his successes and failures, what to do and how to do it. Nor should I be successful if today, in spite of all the work I have done with the Goat-Glands, I shouldrelinguishthe goat-gland in favor of the human-gland or the monkey-gland. Results have taught me that I made a wise choice in pinning my faith to the young goat as the healthiest possible animal from which tissue could be used for transplanting into human bodies. The goat is immune to practically all diseases. The human being and the monkey, on the other hand, are liable to tuberculous or some tropical disease. For his splendid work with human glands I give full credit to Dr. Frank Lydston of Chicago, who was not only the pioneer in this use of human glands, but actually made his first transplantation upon himself. This is but another instance of that fine confidence in our beliefs and convictions which is typical of the medical profession as a whole. In the use of the human-gland Dr. Lydston is as supreme as I am in the use of the goat-gland, and you must understand that in saying this I am not throwing bouquets at myself in idle vanity. I have a clear cold reason for saying this. I have devoted my life to this particular work, and have brought it to a point where I can speak with authority upon it. I foresee that because of the marvelous results obtained by the transplanting of the goat-glands at my hospital there will be a great awakening of interest in this operation on the part of the public and the medical profession. A great many operations of a similar character will be performednot alone in this country, but all over the world. A great many of these operations will be unsuccessful because the experience of the operator will not have taught him what to do under certain unusual conditions, or rather, what to do under any and all conditions. In the face of an unsuccessful operation this work will be blamed, and the theory upon which I work, namely, that the sex-energy is the basis of all human energy, physical and mental, will be given a setback, and scouted as untrue. But I am constantly proving its truth by the results I get, and find its confirmation in the effect of successful goat-gland transplantation in both men and women. Therefore I am urgent in saying that the work must be rightly done in the first place to obtain right results.
Briefly, the operation for men means that the glands of a three weeks’ old male goat are laid upon the non-functioning glands of a man, within twenty minutes of the time they are removed from the goat. In some cases I open the human gland and lay the tissue of the goat within the human gland. The scrotum of the man is opened by incision on both sides under local anesthetic. Conditions of the case may show that there are adhesions of tissue which must also be broken down before the new gland can function. I find that after being properly connected these goat-glands do actually feed, grow into, and become absorbed by the human glands, and the man is renewed in his physical and mental vigor.
The operation upon women means that the ovaries of a female goat not more than twelve months of age are removed and inserted intothe woman. If the woman’s organs are sound and merely inert and atrophied, the new ovary will find its way to its proper position and begin the work of restoring the arrested functions, so that the act of menstruation, for example, which has ceased because of the atrophic condition of the woman’s ovaries, begins again and continues on a normal twenty-eight day period. The effect of the new glands upon women is even more noticeable, if such a thing were possible, than upon men, since in their case the rejuvenation is more striking in the changed appearance. But though I claim much, and with good reason, for this operation, I warn against undue expectations. In many cases I advise against the operation as a sure waste of time and money. In many cases I explain that the results will be experimental only, there being nothing in my experience to warrant assurance of success. For instance, in blindness and deafness I have no faith that this operation will remove the disease in spite of the fact that in almost every case operated upon there is great improvement in the sight and hearing. But I have no certain knowledge why this improvement followed. It partakes, therefore, of the nature of an accident. In the case of very fat people the operation trims them down to normal weight. Very thin people are built up to normal weight by it. Barren women and impotent men become mothers and fathers. But in no case do I permit a grandfather or grandmother to entertain the hope that they may be rejuvenated to such an extent that they can procreate again if they wish. This is mere romance, with which I have nothing to do. Nordo I advise a young woman of forty who has not reached the menopause stage to take the operation if she is in good health, in spite of her belief that the goat-glands will enable her to remain indefinitely young. This is experimental work, and is not in the same class as the case of the same woman who has just passed through her menopause and ceased to menstruate. By all means I advise the latter to take the operation because I feel that it will rejuvenate her. If a woman has had both ovaries removed by surgical operation, will this operation grow new ovaries for her, and enable her to become a mother? At this stage of my knowledge my answer is, “Certainly not.” If a man has lost both glands by surgical removal will this operation grow new glands for him? Nine times out of ten, “No.” The tenth time, “Yes.” I do not know why.
I can use only a certain breed of goat, a Swiss milk goat, and only animals of a certain youth. My goats cost me about $75 each on an average, and that is one reason why it would be impossible to conduct this work as a free surgical clinic might be conducted, unless the undertaking were specially endowed with funds to meet the expense.
Some time in the month of June I expect to make a trip to London, England, and will be away possibly until the end of August. Even the month of May in Kansas is sometimes too hot for this operation to be successfully performed, and I make it a rule to suspend operations entirely throughout June, July and August. Experience has taught me that when the outdoor temperature is high the operationwill almost certainly be unsuccessful, and on account of the cost involved, as well as for the saving of time and trouble for the patient, it is in the highest degree unwise to go contrary to this rule. If the glands are transplanted during very hot weather they will almost certainly slough, which means re-operating later.
In many cases that are brought to me I do not operate or even advise that the goat-glands be transplanted later. I cannot go into details of such cases in these pages, but might cite the case of a man, syphilitic, who was sent to me. Certainly I have never made the statement anywhere, at any time, that this operation would curesyhpilis. The man is being treated now for syphilis, and should not have been sent to me at all.
I quote the case of a woman of forty, who is normal in every way, and the picture of health at the present time. Her desire is that she may never grow to look any older than she does at this moment, and she asks me if this gland-operation will hold her at the point she has now reached. Frankly, this is pure experiment. I do not know. After another ten years of work in this gland-surgery I might be able to give her a definite opinion, but not at this stage, seeing that my oldest cases go back only three years. On one point only I can speak with positiveness, namely, if I cannot answer this question there is no man living who can answer it, because I am the only man alive who can give an opinion on this work that is founded on first-hand knowledge. We learn in this work only by experience, and we draw just conclusions only fromquantityofexperience. No other man alive has had this experience in sufficient quantity to justify him in forming a conclusion derived from his facts. This is my answer not only to those who listen to encouraging advice regarding the effects of this operation tendered by surgeons who are embarking in this goat-gland operation, but also to those general practitioners who inform patients asking their opinion in the matter that the operation is useless because the glands are certain to slough, I hold that they are not qualified to speak on the subject because they have no knowledge. I have the most positive knowledge that when the operation is rightly performed the glands do NOT slough, and my knowledge is founded upon the hard facts of much experience. In another ten years I shall know more than I know today because I shall have added to my facts, and among those facts there may be some which confirm the hope of the woman of forty alluded to above that this gland transplantation may hold the condition of youth steady as something static, which will not be suffered to pass. At present I do not know, and if I offer an opinion it is to be understood that it is only a guess. My guess, then, would be that in this case the operation would be a waste, producing no effect whatever, neither adding to nor detracting from the condition of health and normal function which is present today.