There is no fool like an old fool--particularly in matters of
rejuvenation. For the senile, tottering old man, the world has had only
the pity that it confers on a Faust, who bartered his soul for a few
years of youthfulness; the ridicule that it darts upon a Don Quixote;
the mild amusement with which it listens to the tale of Ponce de Leon;
or the savagery with which it attacks the decrepit prey of physical
lust, inspired by inflamed tissues, who slakes his appetite with the
inveiglement of girls. Psychologists observe these as the expression
of the law of self-preservation, the reaction of the living toward
approaching death, the feeble call on unresponsive nerves and muscles
for power that they cannot give.
Today the public is told again and again that the secret of restoring
youthful vigor to worn out tissues has been solved in the laboratories
of the Austrian Steinach and of the Frenchman Voronoff. Alas! medical
scientists, who like to be shown before they are convinced, mistrust
the evidence. They grant readily that the senescent graybeard with the
will-to-believe may be instilled with young ideas, but they have yet
to admit that any surgical operation, any transplantation of glands,
any decoction of plant, organ or mineral remedies will confer on the
withered form the machinery to put those ideas into action. Of the
mechanical contrivances, the glandular extracts, and the other forms
of hocus-pocus sold with claims for their ability to rejuvenate more
will be said later. Here the disciples of the scalpel who are reaping
something of a harvest in the field of surgical rejuvenation will
receive discriminating attention.
Man’s search for the elixir of eternal youth was never a scientific
one previous to the period of Brown-Sequard. Long before that famous
French physiologist, however, scientists had been studying the nature
and the functions of the glands. It had been shown that the ability
to have children was co-ordinate with certain changes in the body
of the growing child. The voice of the boy deepens, causing great
embarrassment when a fine soprano statement suddenly changes to a basso
growl. The first inklings of mustache and beard send him to his mirror
for hours of painstaking scrutiny. He begins to take a more serious
interest in the female of the species. And it was taken for granted
that the development of these characters was the result of a special or
internal secretion poured into the blood by the glands. In science,
however, it is not well to take anything for granted.
In 1889, the famous French physiologist thought that he had discovered
the potent substance in extracts of the glands. One need not be a
Freudian to realize the suggestion conveyed by the terms vim, vigor,
virility or vitality. It was not strange, therefore, that attention
should be turned to the peculiarly male organs in the search for
the important substance. Indeed, the most primitive savages of
cannibalistic nature were wont themselves to brew essences of the
organs of the enemies whom they slew in battle, believing that the
eating of the tissues was sufficient to confer upon them the prowess
of their vanquished foes. Nor is it surprising that Brown-Sequard,
having inoculated himself with extracts of glands, developed a
sort of similitude of youthfulness. He reported that he could now
climb a flight of steps with greater rapidity and ease than before
his inoculation. Nevertheless, at the appointed time, the body of
Brown-Sequard went the way of all flesh. And the skeptical scientists
who repeated his experiments, checking them with numerous cases
and controlling them with injections of plain water instead of the
extracts, shook their heads in dismay. The great scientist--for
Brown-Sequard was all of that--had yielded science to enthusiasm and
his conclusions could not be sustained.