THE PRACTICE. WOMEN
At Dr. Brinkley's hospital, a beautifully appointed private residence,
it is a comfort to women patients to have the doctor's wife, herself a
competent surgeon if necessary, at hand during the actual operation.
Mrs. Brinkley administers the local anesthetic, or the general
anesthetic, if that is called for, as it sometimes is. While
the bulk of the operations performed on both men and women are
gland-transplantations, a diseased condition of tubes and ovaries has
sometimes made a laporotomy necessary, and many major operations have
been successfully performed in the white-enameled operating room.
At such times a woman clings to the presence of a woman, and Mrs.
Brinkley's kind and pleasant manner is usually sufficient to banish all
nervousness from the woman patient.
In ordinary cases of gland-transplantation into women, where the patient
is in good physical condition, with no disease of the organs, the
operation is as simple as in the case of the man. The speculum discloses
the condition of the vagina, and the insertion of the new ovary is into
the mucous membrane of the vagina, leaving the goat-ovary about four
inches distant from the woman's. The only incision made is a small one,
about one inch long, painless under local anesthetic, the purpose of the
incision being to get a blood supply for the goat-ovary. Sometimes one
ovary is implanted, sometimes two; invariably the new ovary is trimmed
to a reduction in size. Invariably it is implanted within twenty minutes
of its removal from the nanny-goat. Unfortunately for the goat, the
removal of her ovaries usually costs her her life. She mopes for a few
days, refuses to eat, and dies. She is always given a general
anesthetic, and the removal is painless at least, if fatal. Pursuing the
conclusions drawn from his long experience, Dr. Brinkley has found that
women derive more instant benefit from the glands than men with respect
to their awakened enthusiasm, improved appearance, and recovery of the
feeling of poise and well-being. Very noticeable is the change of figure
which follows the implanting of the new ovaries in the case of a fat
woman. The change is equally marked in the case of a fat man. A man of
abnormal weight, 250 lbs., lost fifty pounds in two weeks following the
operation, during which time he remained at the hospital, feeling well
and strong, but shrinking in girth amazingly. When he left the hospital
his clothes hung about him in bags and folds. The fat woman's spirits
seem to rise as her weight decreases, and she feels as if she had indeed
regained the buoyancy of her youth.
Dr. Brinkley by no means asserts that the woman whose ovaries have been
removed by surgical operation will grow two new ovaries after the
transplantation has been made, but he cites the case of a woman whose
ovaries had been removed by surgical operation some years previous, the
uterus remaining intact, in whom he implanted two goat-ovaries, and
whose periods shortly afterwards returned on a four-day basis, with
twenty-eight-day interval. He does not say that the goat-ovaries
transplanted into the woman have grown new ovaries, but there remains
the phenomenon of the renewed menstruation, and this is very difficult
to account for. In barren women, from twenty-eight to thirty-five years
of age, in whom he has found not a diseased, but an atrophied, condition
of the ovaries, the transplantation has invariably been attended with
success to the removal of the barrenness, the new glands evidently
bringing about the development of ova. Nor does Dr. Brinkley say that in
the case of a man who has had both glands removed by surgical operation,
the transplantation will produce new glands for the man, and yet he has
had two successes to offset several failures in this very result,
without any clue to why the success followed in the one case and not in
the other. The work is yet in its infancy stage, and Dr. Brinkley is the
first to admit that there is far more about it to be known than he has
yet succeeded in knowing. He is averse to experimenting upon women
patients at this stage of his knowledge, and has many times refused to
transplant the glands for women who have requested him to perform the
operation for them. One such case was at the hospital during the
writer's visit there in April. She was a paralysis case, quite fat,
unable to walk except by putting forward one foot at a time, supported
by the arm of someone on each side of her. She was driven to the
hospital in an automobile, accompanied by her husband and daughter, from
the farm--two hundred miles away! Dr. Brinkley strongly urged her not to
have the gland operation performed at all, but she insisted upon giving
it a trial. It is too soon yet to speak of results in this case, but in
Dr. Brinkley's view it is asking too much of the glands to expect them
to produce favorable results in a case of this severity. Yet, at this
time, there was in the hospital a young woman suffering from Dementia
Praecox, whose mother had been watching over her for twelve years, and
on whom the affliction of her daughter had so weighed that she told the
writer she wished God would take one or the other of them, because it
was more than she could bear. This young woman had been confined in the
State Hospital for the Insane, and had been treated by specialists for
many years, without any benefit at all. There was some homicidal mania,
much depression, and attempts at suicide. She could not be left alone in
her room for a moment. But the day after the transplantation of the
glands this young woman embraced her mother, and talked so rationally to
her that she called in Dr. Brinkley, and with tears repeated what her
daughter had just said. Dr. Brinkley advised her that the results were
altogether too sudden to build upon. "There will certainly be ups and
downs yet," he said. "You must expect good days and bad days, when you
will doubt if your daughter is any better. But, to make a normal
recovery, she +ought+ to show an alternation of good and bad days, with
the good days gradually drawing ahead and becoming more frequent and
more marked. I look for her to recover entirely in a year's time, but
she will always retain her sensitiveness and a certain amount of
hysteria, so that things that would not bother you or me will hurt her
grievously. You must be prepared to expect this to happen. But I see no
reason at all why she should not in the near future become a happy wife
and mother." The blessings of this good mother were a reward in
themselves, and were so received by the doctor and his wife. When such
results as this are obtained it becomes very difficult to draw a line
and say, "The goat-glands will do no good here." Physicians of the best
standing had said to this poor mother before she took her daughter to
Kansas, "So you're determined to try the goat-glands? You are wasting
your time and money. Brinkley is nothing but a fake. If there were any
help for your daughter we could cure her. We can do nothing. There is no
help for her!" This was repeated to the writer by the mother, and he
vouches for its truth. Is it not evident that a better understanding of
the goat-gland operation is highly desirable among physicians and
surgeons today?
Quite a frequent style of inquiry from women to the doctor runs like
this: "I am in good health, and in every way normal; age 35. I want to
remain as I am, and grow no older in appearance than I am today. Do you
think that the goat-gland operation would keep me from getting any
older?" To this kind of inquiry Dr. Brinkley makes a stereotyped reply,
something as follows: "If you are today in good health I should not
advise the goat-gland operation, but would advise it in your case as
soon as you have passed the change of life, in ten or fifteen years from
now." To the writer he said, "I cannot conscientiously advise this woman
to submit to this operation, because I don't know that the glands would
advantage her in any way. They might, or they might not. I don't know.
It is therefore experimental work, and I cannot take her money for an
experiment. I must have something definite in the way of experience to
go upon. There must be some evident condition of ill-health to be set
right. But, on the other hand, though I will not advise these people to
take the gland operation, there may be something in her idea that the
glands will arrest age and hold it back. I have never been in a position
where I could afford to experiment on young and healthy human beings,
and this point can only be settled by such experiment upon healthy and
young human beings. I should say at a guess that the operation would do
her no good, but you understand that this is a guess only. I do not know
anything about it. All such things as this we shall learn by degrees by
further experiment. At present I am kept busy attending to cases of real
sickness, or defined conditions of arrest of function, where I have
experience to guide me in saying that the gland-operation will be of
benefit, but, if I could afford to perform a few of these experimental
operations for nothing, at no cost to the patient, I should be glad of
the chance. There is so much yet to be learned in this work."