STAT NEWS – Increased physical stamina. “Facility of intellectual labour.” A longer jet of urine.
These were some of the effects that Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard, a French physiologist, reported to a Société de Biologie of Paris meeting in 1889.
He had been injecting himself with a liquid made of pulverized animal testicles in an attempt to reverse “the most troublesome miseries of advanced life.” He took 10 injections over three weeks, and experienced “radical change” for about a month after.
“It is hardly possible to explain the effects I have observed on myself otherwise than by admitting that the liquid injected possesses the power of increasing the strength of many parts of the human organism,” he told the gathering.
A large number of physicians followed his lead, injecting patients with animal testicular fluids, and the so-called Brown-Séquard Elixir became a sensation. Thousands of men, including Pittsburgh baseball pitcher James “Pud” Galvin, an early dabbler in performance-enhancing drugs, felt their virility was restored.
Newspapers reported on patients getting rid of their crutches immediately after injections, and in one case a man of 70, suffering from rheumatism, started “dancing and jumping about like a boy since the treatment.”
Sounds a lot like testosterone therapy. Except, there was barely any testosterone — in fact, barely anything at all — in the injections. The results, studies have confirmed, were placebo.
But there is good reason for Brown-Séquard’s injections to make one think of the mushrooming industry of male health clinics trumpeting testosterone therapy.
They, too, promise men results including “increased stamina and endurance,” “improved cognitive abilities,” and “increased sense of well-being” — for many men, they appear to embody the latest iteration of the elusive fountain of male youth …
