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The Facts About Rejuvenation | Project Gutenberg
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<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78989 ***</div>
<figure class="figcenter illowp45" id="cover">
<img alt="" class="w100" src="images/cover.jpg" id="img_images_cover.jpg">
</figure>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</span></p>
<p class="ph2">LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 648</p>
<p class="ph3">Edited by <ins title="Original has 'D.'" id="E">E.</ins> Haldeman-Julius</p>
<h1>The Facts About<br>
Rejuvenation
</h1>
<p class="ph2">Morris Fishbein, M. D.</p>
<br><br>
<p class="ph3">HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY</p>
<p class="ph3">GIRARD, KANSAS</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</span></p>
<br><br>
<p class="ph3">Copyright, 1926</p>
<p class="ph3">Haldeman-Julius Company</p>
<br><br>
<p class="ph4">PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</span></p>
<h2>THE FACTS ABOUT REJUVENATION</h2>
</div>
<h3>THE APOTHEOSIS OF MEDICINE</h3>
<p>The medicine of the past was a medley of
superstition, faith, theory and tradition, lightened
by gleams of accurate observation and
logical thought. The medicine of today is a
science founded on actual observations of the
manifestations of disease in man and in animals,
in both living and dead bodies. The
medicine of an early day was based largely on
intricate hypotheses as to the causes of disease.
There was no systematic search in the unknown
in any way comparable to the steady,
steadfast progress of medical science resulting
from research during the last fifty years. The
medicine of a previous epoch included only the
physician who treated the individual patient.
The medicine of today has changed this old
profession, whose only function was the care
of the individual sick man, into a dozen professions,
which include not only the care of
the individual patient but also the study of
disease, its prevention, the attack on disease,
and the care of the public health.</p>
<p>No doubt everyone can remember the family
physician of some twenty or thirty years ago,
who made his diagnosis largely by asking
about the progress of the disease from the
time the patient first noted symptoms, and by
the use of such information as he could acquire
with his unaided senses. It must not
be thought, however, that the information
which the physician acquires in this way is the
less scientific because it depends merely on
the use of the hand, the ear and the eye. More
than one hundred years ago, two physicians
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</span>made observations as to the way in which
changes within the human body could be discovered
by the use of these simple methods.
Auenbrugger, in Austria, studied the sounds
that occur when the human chest is thumped.
Everyone knows that when you thump a cask
that is half full of water the lower half will
sound different from the empty half. Indeed,
an experienced Negro can tell you the relative
state of ripeness of a watermelon by a
similar test. And Auenbrugger used this simple
method to ascertain when the lung might
be solidified by pneumonia, when the chest
cavity might contain fluid or pus as a result
of some infection, when the heart was enlarged
beyond the normal limits as a result,
perhaps, of overstrain or disease. And when
all of these things were carefully written down
as a result of thousands of observations made
by physicians all over the world, it became
possible for those educated in this method to
know, with a fair degree of accuracy, the condition
that existed within the patient’s chest.</p>
<p>A little later, in Paris, a physician named
Laennec, while walking to the hospital, noted
two boys at opposite ends of a log, one listening
and the other scratching the log with a
pin. He found that the boy listened because
he could hear the sound transmitted through
the log. The outcome of this simple observation
was the discovery of the stethoscope, the
device which the physician employs to determine
the sounds that go on within the human
body when the organs function. On listening
to the heart in which one of the valves has
given way, one may hear gurgling and murmurs
which are the result of physical changes
in the heart. On listening to the lungs, one
may determine whether the little spaces are
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span>filled with air, as they ought to be when the
patient breathes, or whether some disease has
consolidated the lung and made breathing impossible.
These observations are just as regular
and certain as any mathematical formula;
they are as scientific as the observations
made by an engineer; they are as definite
as the diagnosis of a broken valve or a carbon-choked
cylinder in a motor car.</p>
<p>The textbooks in medicine of some fifty years
ago were an unusual conglomeration of the accumulated
facts of the centuries and of accurate
observations made by careful physicians,
mingled with queer ideas as to why things
were as they seemed to be and unestablished
rules based on the wrong interpretation of
only partially understood phenomena. There
was, for instance, certain knowledge that the
bark of the cinchona tree, from which quinine
comes, would stop the chills and fever of
malaria. There was not, however, the fact,
later shown by Laveran and by Rosa, that
malaria is caused by an organism in the blood
which is transmitted from one person to another
by a mosquito. It had been observed
that mercury would benefit syphilis, but no
one knew that syphilis was caused by a spiral
organism which may be transmitted from one
person to another. It was known that certain
drugs, such as digitalis, <ins title="Original has 'woud'" id="would">would</ins> slow the beat
of the heart and strengthen it, but it was not
known that it does this by action on the nerves
leading to the heart.</p>
<p>The time, then, was ripe for a scientist like
Pasteur, and particularly ripe for the attitude
of skepticism with which he approached the
established beliefs of his day. The credit for
the great advance of the last fifty years in
medicine must be given to several factors:
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span>First, a changing conception of the way in
which disease is brought about in the human
body, due to the establishment of what some
people still call the “germ theory.” Germs are
no more a theory than is poison ivy. The results
of the action of germs within the human
body are no more theoretical than is the eruption
that follows contact with poison ivy in
sensitive persons. The second great factor influencing
medical knowledge was the application
to it of facts and materials derived from
such fundamental sciences as chemistry, physics,
anatomy and physiology. And the third
important development was the invention of
mechanical accessories to aid the human senses
in studying disease, both within and without
the human body.</p>
<p>After Pasteur had shown that bacteria do
exist and that they cause disease, Robert Koch,
a German investigator and discoverer of the
cause of tuberculosis, established certain laws
for determining whether or not any single germ
was actually responsible for producing any
certain disease. It is unnecessary to mention
specifically each of these laws; suffice to say
that they involve the actual proof of the fact
that the germ is in the body of a person dying
from disease, and that the disease may be
produced in animals by injecting them with
the germ. It would be undesirable to mention
in this article all of the diseases for which medical
science now knows the bacterial cause;
the list would include, however, such diseases
as tuberculosis, syphilis, diphtheria, meningitis,
typhoid fever, dysentery, pneumonia, lock-jaw,
cholera, malaria, anthrax, scarlet fever and a
vast number of less commonly known diseases.
Hardly a year passes in which new germs are
not isolated and in which obscure conditions
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span>are not brought to light. The recognition of this
fact is of the greatest importance. If one accepts
the definitely proved facts as to the relationship
of bacteria to disease, one must at
once discard all of those systems of healing
which claim that all diseases are due to a
single form of disturbance and are curable by
a readjustment of that disturbance. There is
not, for instance, the slightest scientific evidence
that pressures on the nerves coming
from the spine or on the blood vessels leading
to the various organs are responsible for the
many diseases from which the human body
may suffer.</p>
<p>Now this does not mean that medical science
is in possession of the facts regarding all
diseases. Much remains to be learned. There
are such diseases as measles, chicken pox,
mumps, German measles, epidemic sleeping sickness,
and even common colds and influenza,
for which we have no germ that everyone will
admit is the cause of the disease. But medical
science, with its careful, systematic methods,
has learned many facts regarding such
diseases, and the application of these facts is
important in their proper diagnosis and healing.</p>
<p>I mention particularly the ways in which
medical science calls on mechanical aids in
modern diagnosis. The modern physician utilizes
mirrors and lights to observe directly the
inner lining of the stomach, the bladder, the
ear drum, the nose and the throat. You all
know the story of the young physician who
put the mirror into the woman’s mouth and
said: “Madam, you have no idea how far we
can see with these things.” She leaped from
the chair and said, “I beg your pardon, doctor;
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span>I left home with a hole in the heel of my
stocking.” By means of the X-ray, the doctor
is able to observe changes in solid organs
within the body; and through the injection of
air into the cavities, he is able, with the aid
of the X-ray, to outline organs heretofore not
visible and to determine the condition of tissues
that cannot be touched. The laboratories
have added information to be gained from
studies of the blood and from all of the secretions
and excretions of the body. Studies of
the blood may show the type of infection from
which the patient suffers; may show the manner
in which he is responding to infection;
may show whether he is anemic or has a sufficient
number of blood cells to conduct properly
the chemistry of his body. And these
matters are not beyond the comprehension of
the ordinary human being. They may be demonstrated
to any intelligent person; in fact,
in many laboratories these simple tests are
regularly performed by the people who have
been trained only in the tests and not in medical
knowledge. The interpretation of the test,
however, is always a matter for a well-informed
physician. Some of the cultists or misguided
persons who believe that all diseases
are brought about by pressures on nerves or on
ligaments, by vibrations, by the influence of
the mind, or by any other narrow, restricted
mechanism of disease causation, should begin
to realize that their theories must be discarded
in the face of such observations as
these.</p>
<p>I pass over also the newer methods in the
treatment of disease, involving the use of newly
discovered antiseptics, of glands and gland
substances, of vaccines and serums, and of
unusual drugs. I pass over the beneficent effects
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span>of modern surgery and the newer anesthetics
which have been developed and which
enable the physician to perform surgical operations
painlessly and safely, as contrasted with
the conditions a century ago that made operating
rooms bloody shambles. Even the brain,
particularly unapproachable in a previous century,
is now the subject of operations for the
removal of tumors and the relief of abscesses.</p>
<p>One by one, great infectious diseases and
plagues have been brought under control.
Fever-infested swamps and the jungle of the
tropics have been freed of such menaces as
yellow fever, malaria, African trypanosomiasis,
and other diseases transmitted to man by
insects. Through education in the value of a
periodic physical examination and through the
teaching of personal hygiene, intelligent persons
are being enabled to live more and more
comfortably. The death rate of tuberculosis
has been reduced by more than one-half; typhoid
fever no longer menaces communities
which are willing to pay the price for good
milk supply, good water and proper sewage
disposal; and inspection of fresh and prepared
foods has practically abolished the menace of
diseases formerly transmitted in this manner.
Special attention given to the problems of infant
mortality has reduced the death rate in
the earlier years of life and an infant coming
into the world today has a far greater expectancy
of life than did one coming into the
world fifty years ago. The child that might
then have expected to live to somewhere between
thirty-five and thirty-nine years of age
may now confidently look forward, under all
ordinary circumstances, to reaching the age of
fifty or fifty-five years. What hope, then, of
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span>giving that child an opportunity to reach its
allotted three score and ten?</p>
<p>Everyone knows from his own casual observations
that a great many more people are
living to a ripe old age nowadays than was the
case formerly. Indeed, these observations are
the exemplification of the statistics that have
been cited as to life expectancy. The diseases
that still remain to cut down the human being
at an earlier age than that at which he might
reasonably expect to depart this life through
the actual wearing out of the machinery which
is no longer able to renew itself include particularly
the diseases of the heart, blood vessels
and the kidney. Such conditions as <ins title="Original has 'Brights'" id="Brights">Bright’s</ins>
disease, a chronic inflammation of the kidney;
as hypertension, exemplified through high blood
pressure and the symptoms that accompany it;
as arteriosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries;
as angina pectoris and inflammations of the
lining of the heart and of its valves—all such
conditions constitute a problem which the medical
profession must meet and which it apparently
cannot meet properly without the complete
education and cooperation of the public.
Here are diseases, the prevention of which
seems to lie in the prevention of infections of
the throat in childhood, in the training of the
child and man in the proper hygiene of the nose,
throat and intestinal tract; in the teaching to
the adolescent and equally to the adult of the
desirability of a quiet, well-ordered existence
with a proper amount of food, exercise and rest;
and, not the least by any means, in letting
people know that there is such a thing as mental
hygiene, including relief from worry or mental
strain. And then there is pneumonia, a
disease likely to affect the older man much
more severely than the young one, called, indeed,
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span>“the old man’s friend” because of the
quick death that it produces in the senile; and
the “captain of the men of death” because of its
severely fatal character. The complete conquering
of this infection seems somehow to be
resting on the threshold of the future.</p>
<p>It is the belief of several competent statisticians
who have given careful consideration to
the matter, that when these diseases are brought
under control, the life expectancy will be moved
forward at least another five years, but probably
not a great deal more. The trend of modern
life seems to be toward speeding up, toward
greater mental strain and almost ceaseless activity.
If, coincident with such speeding, medical
science is still able to promise another five
years of life expectancy to the phenomenal
number of years that have thus far been added,
it will have accomplished a marvel beyond the
dreams of the medical scientists of fifty years
ago.</p>
<h3>THE FACTS ABOUT REJUVENATION</h3>
<p>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.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span>science, however, it is not well to take anything
for granted.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h4>THE THEORY OF STEINACH</h4>
<p>The conception on which the Steinach operation
for rejuvenation is based is not easy to
comprehend. About 1903, two French biologists
claimed that the secretion responsible for
maleness was developed by a certain part of
the male tissues. They asserted that this portion
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span>developed particularly if the tubes were
tied off. And Steinach claimed that he had
confirmed their experiments and that the performance
of this operation on old animals, particularly
rats, resulted in rejuvenation.</p>
<p>Now the finding of a substance or a system
of rejuvenation is much like the finding of
gold. Whether it is there or not, all of the
unsuccessful, romantic, and adventurous experimenters
rush in on the trail, and all of the aged
and worn out capitalists come in as soon as convenient
to take advantage of the discovery.
The cry of “gold, gold” was taken up quickly
by a number of young and enthusiastic investigators,
who followed Steinach. Some famous
actors, physicians and financiers who saw the
waning of their power and note and of their
ability to enjoy to the utmost the lives that
had given them so much became subjects of the
experiment. Where there are actors, authors
and financiers, there is also always, in these
modern times, good publicity. And where there
is publicity not too careful as to the facts, there
are soon more applicants for operations. This,
in medical science, is known as a vicious circle.</p>
<p>The careful experimenters who have followed
the work of Steinach, checking all his results
carefully on experimental animals, have demolished
his claims bit by bit. Oslund of the
Vanderbilt Medical School showed that the
Steinach adherents had been deceived because
of the type of experimental animal used. Since
the theory of the rejuvenescence is based on an
over-development of cells that does not actually
occur, it can be taken for granted that cutting
or tying of the tubes with the idea of producing
such over-development cannot cause rejuvenation.
And the work of Oslund has been confirmed
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span>by many other investigators of established
standing.</p>
<p>Moreover, the belief that the male glands
alone are responsible for the development of
male characteristics has been completely demolished.
The complete male features of mind
and body, including the external organs peculiar
to the male, have been found in persons
in whom the so-called male glands were absent
from birth, as proved by complete postmortem
examination. Furthermore, all of the features
of the male sex have been found in persons in
whom the male glands were absent from birth,
but who had within the body a complete set
of female glandular organs. There is a great
deal of much more technical evidence to support
the view that the male glands are not the
only tissues concerned with establishing maleness
or femaleness of any individual. Perhaps
the best of it developed in experiments on hens
and roosters, revealing hens possessing the
comb and wattles and even the feathers of the
rooster, yet living a hen’s life, laying eggs and
hatching them out! But what, you ask, has all
of this to do with Steinach’s theory of rejuvenation?</p>
<p>The elderly gentleman who prefers blondes
is hardly likely to be deterred by the details
of technical experiments on mice, rabbits, chickens,
or dogs. For him, therefore, one presents
the facts regarding man. For many years the
operation now called the Steinach rejuvenation
operation was performed on old men who suffered
with a disease quite common in old men.
But in not one of the hundreds of cases in
which the tubes were cut or tied as in the
Steinach operation did any of the meticulous
surgeons mention any restoration of youthful
vigor or anything resembling rejuvenation.
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span>This fact has been called to the attention of
Steinach and of all his followers again and
again in reputable medical publications, but an
explanation has never been offered.</p>
<p>To the proof of the scientific laboratory investigators
that the Steinach method is founded
on a fallacy, the Steinach adherents and the
surgeons who perform the Steinach operation
reply with the sort of cynical shrug of the
shoulders that such practical men use in answering
laboratory evidence. They point with
none too reluctant pride to their records of
cases operated on and to the letters of testimony.
Here is as simple a gesture as might
be made by a moron, but hardly the sort of
thing one expects from a scientist. The same
testimonials—in fact much stronger ones—can
be found for all of the nostrums and contrivances
that have invaded this fertile field.</p>
<p>Opposed to the enthusiastic statement of
Adolph Lorenz is that of Professor M. Zeissl of
Vienna, that the only change he noted after his
operation was less interest in sexual matters
than previously. Opposed to the quoted interviews
of Dr. Harry Benjamin of New York concerning
the one hundred cases on which he
operated with a claimed considerable percentage
of success are the records hidden away in medical
literature of thousands and thousands of
men on whom such operations were done without
any noticeable response.</p>
<p>There are, indeed, some records of senile men
who put upon their degenerated tissues far more
of stress than they could tolerate. Here the
illusion of vigor produced an earlier death than
might reasonably have occurred without the
operation and in the absence of the illusion.</p>
<p>The prime exponent of the Steinachian miracle
in this land that so readily accepts overnight
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span>miracles in medicine seems to be Dr.
Harry Benjamin. In his earlier publications
one finds no mention of any possible mental defects
associated with the surgical procedure.
But quite recently, regardless of the fact that
he is without status in the field of psychology
and psychiatry, he begins to mutter somewhat
vaguely concerning the importance of coincident
psycho-analysis. And in the publicity concerning
his efforts appearing within the past
few months appears what is, for so shrewd a
man, a most incautious admission: “The experts
declare that the value of the Steinach
method has been much reduced by ignorance
and by the opposition of doctors who have mistaken
ideas regarding the operation.” In other
words, the patient must believe thoroughly
that the operation will give him vim, vigor and
vitality, or he doesn’t get it. For many years,
physicians who have specialized in the diseases
peculiar to men have emphasized again and
again the great part played by the mind in
controlling the body functions. The records of
the surgeons who do the Steinach operations
are without scientific controls. To what extent
have they checked their work by cases on
whom the operation was not done, but who
otherwise were put through the same procedure?
Obviously such controlling of cases
would be a most elementary and simple procedure,
but records of such control in their publications
are sadly lacking.</p>
<p>Indeed, these exponents of surgical art would
seem to be providing for the future in their
claim that the operation may be repeated with
good effect and a second revival of powers bestowed
on the waning patient. Here is a biological
revolution that bewilders the imagination!
The young men, handicapped in competition
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span>because of lack of experience and of the
world’s goods, will be compelled to struggle
against their rejuvenated fathers and grandfathers,
while the latter, by repeated operations,
maintain a permanent lead. It’s a sad, sad outlook;
but fortunately it isn’t true.</p>
<h4>THE VORONOFF CONCEPTION</h4>
<p>The contention of Voronoff, like that of
Steinach, has to do with the use of gland material
for purposes of rejuvenation. He does
not, however, depend on any change in the tissues
brought about by tying off tubes. He actually
transplants the entire glands, and since
the human material is not easily and generally
available, attempts to supply the deficiency with
glands derived from the anthropoid apes. In
this instance also a vast amount of experimental
evidence from the past and from other workers
of the present is available to disprove the
contention. True, there are instances in which
the glands have been absent from birth or lost
through accident and in which the transplantation
of such material results favorably, but the
records again are not such as will convince any
scientific reader of the general merit of the
operation. In the first place there is not in
any sense of the word actual prolongation of
life, since none of those on whom the transplantings
have been done seem to live beyond
the normal period. In the second place, one
reads such conclusions as the following: “The
pessimistic attitude of the patient and constant
brooding over his inability have marred the
results of the treatment.” Here again the part
played by the will-to-believe seems paramount.</p>
<p>When all of the evidence is assembled and
considered <i>en masse</i>, it becomes apparent that
there is not as yet any actual proof that rejuvenation
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span>has been accomplished in a single
individual, or any basis for the belief that it
ever will be accomplished.</p>
<h3>REJUVENATION: THE MECHANICAL AND
GLANDULAR METHODS</h3>
<p>Rejuvenation is, in these days of young old-men
and old young-men, a word to conjure with.
The astute purveyors of mechanical devices,
pills, lotions and systems of physical culture
sold by the mail-order plan have been quick to
realize the wonderful “come-on” possibilities inherent
in the word. The result has been the
interminable repetition of the claim for renewed
youth achieved through hundreds of substances
and appliances. The post office department
itself is hardly able to keep pace with
the new developments in the field and its fraud
orders are issued usually after the promoters
have reaped a fine harvest.</p>
<h4>MECHANICAL REJUVENATION</h4>
<p>The senescent man or the youthful individual
who finds himself suddenly lacking in sexual
vigor is a ready prey for the exploiters of mechanical
devices, urged because of their ability
to encourage a physical development that
seems to be lacking. The average man in this
land of unenlightenment regarding the physical
constitution has but slight conception of what
constitutes the normal in these affairs, either
as to physical growth or functional ability. Indeed,
the more he meditates upon the matter,
the more he is likely to be convinced that
he himself is sadly lacking in these particulars,
the psychology of this view being dependent
upon a will to achieve rather than on actual
knowledge. Moreover, the cleverly worded literature—and
what a sad use of the word this is—of
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span>the salesman of various devices is calculated
to intensify and emphasize this view. All
of the advertising matter is a paean of praise
of sexual athleticism, and a weeping and wailing
over deficient performance, inspired to
make still more mournful the sexually despondent
male.</p>
<p>On December 5, 1925, the post office department
issued a fraud order against the manufacturers
of a device known as the “Perfection
Developer,” one Walter H. Hartman of Columbus,
Ohio, selling under the firm name of
“Hart & Co.” The simple device was merely a
cylinder of glass connected with a pump and
designed to induce a vacuum. The effects persisted
only so long as the device was in actual
use, and if it had any permanent effects whatever,
they could only be for harm.</p>
<p>Another device of the same type was sold by
one M. Von Schwarts and William Billings of
Ithaca, New York, under the name of the “Burt
Vacuum Tube.” This firm was barred from
using the mails September 1, 1925.</p>
<p>These devices are typical of most of the mechanical
appliances offered by mail for men
lacking sexual vigor. Obviously, they can be of
no permanent service. Moreover, the psychology
of their use is such as to discourage any
real possibility of improvement through rest,
diet and psychotherapy which long experience
has shown are of value.</p>
<h4>GLANDULAR REJUVENATORS</h4>
<p>Public interest in any new medical development
is at once capitalized by the promoters
of nostrums and fallacies. It is not surprising,
therefore, that increasing interest and knowledge
of the glands of internal secretion should
have aroused in the minds of some promoters
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span>the possibility of unusual and unwarranted
gains.</p>
<p>In March, 1921, the “Youth Gland Chemical
Laboratories” was incorporated in Illinois; in
February, 1922, the name of the corporation
was changed to the “Druesen-Kraft Chemical
Laboratories.” Later, it became known as the
“Lewis Laboratories.” It was not, however,
until March 19, 1925, that the United States
Government closed the mails to this concern.
In the meantime, it reaped a rich harvest from
the unwary. The advertising literature of this
concern was of a style so striking as to have
merited some better use. A full-page announcement
in the newspapers was headed, in two-inch,
black type, “YOUR GLANDS WEAR
OUT”; in the center of the page, he-men and
she-women danced the one-step in close embrace.
And here are the phrases that brought
the replies:</p>
<div class="blockquot">
<p>—It is based entirely on the principle of Feeding
Actual Gland Substance Direct to the Glands,
thereby renewing and rejuvenating them.</p>
<p>—This method of giving new life to the glands is
advocated and endorsed by the leading students of
gland therapy throughout the world—including Dr.
Arnold Lorand, who is generally conceded to be the
greatest living authority on this subject.</p>
<p>—The actual Method of Treatment used by us is
the result of exhaustive experiments covering several
thousand cases, during the past two years.</p>
<p>—The “Lewis” Treatment Is Practically Never
Failing.</p>
<p>—If You Could Prevent the Wear and Tear on
Your Glands Caused by Sickness, Age, Disease, etc.,
You Would Look and Feel as Young at 70 as at
25. Science However Has Solved the Secrets of
the Glands and Now for the First Time Shows You
the True Way to KEEP or REGAIN Your Vigor
by Feeding and Replenishing the Most Important
Glands!</p>
<p>—Build Up Your Glands and You Build Up Your
Strength and Endurance.</p>
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span></p>
<p>The evidence is clear that the firm did exceedingly
well from a financial point of view. The
original price of the treatment was $10.00,
which, on occasion, could be reduced to $7.50,
and, if the victim still failed to succumb, to a
special offer of $2.95. The court records in the
case showed that the firm had spent at least
$300,000.00 in advertising, and that it had a
gross annual income of between $250,000.00 and
$300,000.00. Nevertheless, scientific evidence
has shown that extracts or other preparations
of the sex glands are without power when taken
by mouth. They not only fail to produce rejuvenation
of the entire body, but even to
stimulate to any extent the particular portions
of the body in which the applicant for rejuvenation
seems to be especially interested.</p>
<p>Another concern, with headquarters in Denver,
issued a booklet entitled “The Secret of
Staying Young.” Here were the testimonials
of elderly men, 82, 83 and 84 years of age, who
announced that they had lasting benefits from
the treatments offered. These testimonials are
just as vociferous and emphatic as those of aspirants
for youth operated on by the disciples
of Steinach. The treatments consisted of nothing
more than dried animal glands, taken by
mouth, which, as has been said, could not possibly
have the effects claimed for them. The
concern exploiting these desiccated glands, the
“Vital-O-Gland Company,” not content with depending
on the mental responses of those who
took its preparations by mouth, sold at the
same time the usual vacuum developer, a glass
tube attached to a bicycle pump. When the
Government investigated this concern, it found
twenty-two girls and five men occupied in sending
out the salacious literature. The evidence
revealed that the gross income of the concern
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span>for 1923 was $176,406.82. Rejuvenation pays!</p>
<p>The Vital-O-Gland Company and the Lewis
Laboratories have been barred by the Government
from the use of mails, but there still remain
many concerns offering, both to physicians
and to the public, glandular preparations
for rejuvenation or for sexual stimulation.
There will always be senescent, somewhat lewd
and sad old men to waste the funds of their
declining years on such powerless pills. The
memories of youth become more and more resplendent
with the passing years.</p>
<p>The Glandine Laboratories of Chicago and
Los Angeles issues a circular with the question,
“Must We Grow Old?” and with the answer,
“Science Says, No.” The treatments consist of
extracts of the sex glands to be taken by mouth.
The Glandex Company of New York advertised
in the public press a combination of gland extracts
with iron. The International Research
Laboratories of Chicago advertised “Baker’s
Glandol,” with a salacious pamphlet emphasizing
the rejuvenation of man, and with such
headings as “The Most Interesting Thing Is
Love. Don’t Waste Life. Luck from Boldness
and Suppressed Desires.” Where is the man
who could resist the plea?</p>
<p>The Puritan Laboratories of Nashville, Tennessee,
issues “Glandtone,” offered with the
claim that it will restore youthful vigor to
those passing with age. The Walton Chemical
Company of Chicago emphasizes the glands and
says that a combination of the sex glands, the
thyroid, prostate, pituitary and adrenal, hermetically
sealed, will defer old age and renew
vitality. What of the impudence and psychological
cleverness of its warning:</p>
<p class="center">WARNING!</p>
<div class="blockquot">
<p>The country is being flooded with literature from
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span>so-called “Laboratories,” offering to restore Sex
STRENGTH in the forms of unsealed “Gland Tablets”
or “Liquids.”</p>
<p>Such preparations may contain some gland substance,
but unless the ingredients are SEALED to
preserve their strength, the potency may be entirely
gone in a few days.</p>
<p>The Walton Treatment INSURES the
STRENGTH of the INGREDIENTS and thousands
have found this method SUCCESSFUL even after
years and years of previous failure with other
methods of treatment.</p>
<p>In fact, fully three out of four who write of
their remarkable results with this new method,
say they had taken many other Treatments or
methods without relief.</p>
</div>
<p>Bear in mind that there is not an iota of
evidence to show that any preparation of male
sex glands, singly or in combination, has ever
been shown to have the slightest effect on the
human body when given by mouth. It was the
hope and the belief of Brown-Sequard that he
had found such a substance. Even he thought
that the taking of sex glands brought about in
him a sort of rejuvenation. Yet in the more
than fifty years since his passing, and since
his claims were disproved, the public has not
learned the truth.</p>
<h4>RADIUM AND LIGHT</h4>
<p>With the coming of the newer discoveries
in medicine as to the effects on the human body
of radium, the X-ray and ultra violet light, the
agile-minded exploiters of the public’s interest
in keeping young were again quick to respond
with the preparation and sale of such apparatus
and material for purposes of rejuvenation. Of
course, rejuvenation is not a physical state
that can be easily determined accurately. The
old man with declining powers is ready to welcome
the slightest sign of increasing ability
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span>in physical work or in sexual activity. He forgets
to reason that the rest and the mental
stimulation associated with any new method of
treatment are likely to bring about the illusion
of strength.</p>
<p>The manufacturer of a cabinet lined with incandescent
lamps, for example, is not content
to claim for it the simple uses of a sweat bath,
or of heat produced by incandescent lamps. Ah!
No! This simple cabinet becomes as by the
wave of a magician’s want, an “Inductive
Metabolizing Method.” And the manufacturer
says:</p>
<div class="blockquot">
<p>The —— Inductive Metabolizing method gives
to the world one of the greatest, if not the greatest,
means of rejuvenation of the human organism
known to medicine, but the part that is most interesting
about this modality is that of its synergetic
action with all the recognized methods of rejuvenation
now in use—such as gland therapy, radioactive
drinking water, baths, etc., as the results obtained
by their use, when accompanied by the Inductive
Metabolizing treatments, are increased tenfold.</p>
</div>
<p style="text-indent:0em;">One can almost picture him rubbing his hands
in glee as he murmurs: “Rejuvenation: That’s
the word that gets ’em!”</p>
<p>The makers of apparatus containing radium
or the blenders of waters which have been submitted
to the rays of this wondrous element
urge also its potency for rejuvenation. They
point knowingly to the radioactive springs of
Germany and Switzerland and cite the records
of the old men who have visited those springs
and returned home younger in body, if not in
years. But they too neglect the effect of weeks
of rest and freedom from care, of good diet and
salubrious surroundings, and possibly—in fact,
probably—of enforced inactivity for those portions
of the anatomy whose physical functioning
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span>persists in remaining the center of interest
when rejuvenation is discussed.</p>
<h4>“THE NEW SCIENCE OF RADIENDOCRINOLOGY”</h4>
<p>If radiation rejuvenates—although of course
it doesn’t—and if glands rejuvenate—and it
has been shown that they do not—then, say the
manufacturers of the Radiendocrinator, the
combination will get the result. Merely ray the
glands with the Radiendocrinator—price $150.00—and
you are there! The booklets are a hodgepodge
of exaggerations, fallacies, and confusions
regarding chemistry, physics, biology,
glands, radium, and whatnot. But the convincing
document is a blue-colored bonded guarantee
of satisfaction or money refunded. Couched
in language that seems to make the chance of
financial loss to the unwary impossible, the
guarantee is nevertheless a snare and a delusion.
Launched originally by Dr. Herman H.
Rubin, New York, as a device to be worn at
night over the glands and selling at $1,000.00,
the apparatus is now a reflector on a stand and
can be purchased for $150.00 But for pure
romance the literature is at least ten times as
fanciful.</p>
<h4>THE HOPE FOR THE FUTURE</h4>
<p>Even the Greek philosophers murmured that
physical powers in matters of sex did not always
parallel brain capacity. Strange that the
sex instinct should be so deeply rooted and so
prominent in life that two thousand years of
experience has failed to convince men of the
truthfulness of that statement.</p>
<p>Modern science has shown that the early detection
of signs of disease by physical examination,
and the establishment of a proper
regime of life, including adequate rest, diet,
exercise, simple personal hygiene, and freedom
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span>from worry will greatly extend the life of the
average man. He may quite reasonably hope to
live to seventy years and if he is at all careful
considerably beyond that age. It behooves him
then to grow old gracefully, remembering that
much of the greatest work of this world done
in art, letters, invention, finance and statesmanship
has been done by men well beyond sixty
years of age. Their minds were perhaps little
given to the purely pleasurable functions of the
bodies which constituted the abodes of their
restless spirits.</p>
<h3>THE ANTIVIVISECTIONIST AND ANIMAL
EXPERIMENTATION</h3>
<p>George Jean Nathan, in that immortal document
<i>Pistols for Two</i> in which he and Monsieur
Mencken, using the cognomen Maj. Owen Hatteras,
gave an unsuspecting world an insight
into their personal characters and characteristics,
tells us which of his aphorisms delights
him most. Of all the soul-searching mots perpetrated
by this astute coiner of phrases, the
one he selected is likewise the one that gives
me most joy. “An antivivisectionist,” said Dr.
Nathan, “is a woman who strains at a guinea
pig and swallows a baby.” There it is in a
nutshell! A Freudian might claim that the
term “nutshell” was prominent in my mind
because I was discussing the antivivisectionist.</p>
<p>At a period when the whole world begins to
turn to science as the real goal of mankind;
when intelligent human beings begin to discard
pseudo-sentiment for fact, the followers of what
is essentially merely an illogical, fanatical cult
continue to oppose progress if it is to involve
in any way what they conceive to be abuse of
the lower animals for purposes of study. This
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span>opposition seems to rest invariably on a lack
of actual knowledge of what animal experimentation
has accomplished for mankind, of what
it has contributed to the life and comfort of
the animal, of the extent to which the animal
may suffer in the cause of experimentation,
and of the very rules which the scientists themselves
have elaborated to safeguard their work
with animals.</p>
<p>It is impossible in the scope of a brief article
even to enumerate all that has been learned by
animal experimentation. Without the aid of
this method Pasteur could not have founded the
science of bacteriology; such diseases as hydrophobia,
tuberculosis, yellow fever, plague,
scarlet fever, diphtheria and diabetes would not
have passed under the control of scientific medicine
but would have continued to take their
immense toll of life and to cause immeasurable
economic loss through illness. Indeed, to calculate
the sums saved and earned through preventing
illness, through opening up countries
constantly menaced by disease, through the
building of the Panama Canal, and through the
saving of workers in industry, would produce
a figure so vast as to be almost incredible.</p>
<p>Anyone who has seen a child, succumbing to
the gradual encroachment of the diphtheric
membrane in its throat, suddenly respond to the
marvelous effects of diphtheria antitoxin will
oppose to the utmost any attempt to deprive
that child of the remedy. In preparing antitoxin
the horse is required for the production
of the serum and the guinea pig for standardization.
I have seen the horses used for such
service. Their paths are spread in pleasant
places. They toil not at all, they are kept clean,
they frolic in the open air except when the
weather may be inclement. They are well fed
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span>and given the best of attention. I have seen
the serum withdrawn and seen the horse make
no more visible sign of protest than is made
by the average man when he sticks his finger
on a pin in the back of his wife’s dress. I have
seen guinea pigs by the thousands utilized for
this work. If I am any judge of guinea pig
emotions they do not suffer unduly in the
process. I have never seen a guinea pig suffer
as much as a hysterical antivivisectionist suffers
at a dog and pony show or a circus.</p>
<p>Before the discovery of the serum for epidemic
meningitis from fifty to seventy-five percent
of all who were afflicted died. When the
serum is given the mortality is below twenty-five
percent of those affected, and this says
nothing of the saving in illness and in permanently
disabling after effects. In the investigation
which led to this discovery rabbits, guinea
pigs, horses and monkeys were employed. In a
war, nations sacrifice the lives of hundreds of
thousands of their finest young men; the people
are told that the sacrifice is made so that
women and children may have a safe place in
which to live. Shall the lives of rabbits and
guinea pigs be weighed against the lives of the
same children threatened by far greater dangers
than those of war: the dangers of infectious
disease? Puerperal infection which killed
the woman in childbirth was controlled through
animal experimentation. What about saving
women from that menace?</p>
<p>It is not alone the so-called biological remedies
such as antitoxins, vaccines and serums
that are dependent on animal experimentation.
Most of the potent drug remedies used today
for the alleviation and cure of disease must be
tested and standardized by the use of animals.
Most of our important synthetic drugs were
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span>first evolved only by the use of animals. The
anesthetics such as ether, chloroform, ethylene
and nitrous oxide gas have the same effects on
animals that they have on man. Was it not
right that they should be tested first on animals?
Such drugs as digitalis, which makes the
lives of many persons suffering from heart disease
endurable, have to be standardized by animal
tests. Shall the poisonous doses of potent
drugs be learned by tests made on the white
rat or the guinea pig or on man; or worse still,
shall we permit men to die or suffer mutilation
to spare the feelings of the white mouse? Isn’t
it after all a question of sparing the hyperesthetic
sensibilities of some idle woman
rather than the duller sensibilities of some
lower animal?</p>
<p>One by one the infectious diseases that attack
man are being brought under control. There
still remain those incurable diseases such as
cancer, those conditions such as Bright’s disease,
high blood pressure, heart disease and
diabetes, which may be alleviated but have not
been completely conquered. Shall the methods
that have brought success in the control of
some diseases be discarded at the whim of misguided
and unreasoning followers of this cult
opposed to human progress? Of course, animal
experimentation never will be discarded. After
all, the progress of scientific medicine is a powerful
movement sweeping on and on with ever
increasing impetus.</p>
<h4>ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION BENEFITS THE
ANIMAL</h4>
<p>Strangely enough the lower animals have
benefited as much as has man himself through
the progress made by animal experimentation.
Hog cholera serum, the tuberculin test for cattle,
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span>the control of hoof and mouth disease, puerperal
sepsis in cattle, hydrophobia, fowl plague,
and the many worm diseases that afflict animals
depend for their control on the same type
of experimentation that yielded results for the
diseases of man.</p>
<p>There is another side of the question that
has its humorous aspects. It is necessary to
kill hundreds of thousands of stray dogs and
cats in our large cities to keep them from overrunning
the human inhabitants. It has been
estimated that a single pair of rats, if permitted
to breed unchecked, might produce
within three years a number of progeny running
into eighteen or twenty-four figures.
Everyone knows about the prolificity of guinea
pigs and rabbits which multiply inordinately.
Who shall say that these uses of science are not
as kind a fate, as satisfactory an existence, as
is the hunting down of the surplus by the
hunter, the trapper, the poisoner, or the poundmaster?
As we have shown, the horse used
for the production of serum has a far happier
life than the drawer of burdens in the ownership
of some unthinking careless human being.</p>
<h4>RULES CONTROLLING SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTATION</h4>
<p>Medical scientists have not waited for government
or other supervision to establish control
over animal experimentation that will make
it as nearly perfect as possible in preventing
unnecessary pain and in providing animals with
the best of care. A committee of the American
Medical Association regularly functions for no
other purpose. Under the control of this committee
each laboratory binds itself to observe
the rules laid down and to post those rules
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span>regularly in each department. The rules require
that animals be held at least as long as
they are held at the city pound; that they receive
every consideration for their bodily comfort;
that no operations be made, except with
the sanction of the director of the laboratory;
that animals be anesthetized and rendered incapable
of receiving pain in all operations, except
in those in which anesthesia would defeat
the object of the experiment, and finally that
animals be killed painlessly at the conclusion
of the experiment. These rules are most rigidly
enforced and laboratories throughout the country
are open to inspection by anyone interested
from a scientific point of view, or from the
point of view of control of this work.</p>
<p>If it be true, as has been said again and
again, that science is the hope of the future
for the progress of humanity, those who obstruct
this progress by needless and unwarranted
follies should be considered as subjects
for mental investigation, or else as misguided
sentimentalists whom one condones, but whom
one does not take too seriously.</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<div class="tnote">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="Transcribers_note">
Transcriber’s Note:
</h2>
<p>Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.</p>
<p>Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice.</p>
<p>Spelling was retained as in the original except for the following changes:</p>
<table class="autotable">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td class="tdl"></td>
<td class="tdl">Page <a href="#E">1</a>: “D. Haldeman-Julius”</td>
<td class="tdl">to</td>
<td class="tdl">“E. Haldeman-Julius”</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdl"></td>
<td class="tdl">Page <a href="#would">5</a>: “such as digitalis, woud”</td>
<td class="tdl">to</td>
<td class="tdl">“such as digitalis, would”</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdl"></td>
<td class="tdl">Page <a href="#Brights">10</a>: “Such conditions as Brights”</td>
<td class="tdl">to</td>
<td class="tdl">“Such conditions as Bright’s”</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</div></div>
<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78989 ***</div>
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