A YEAR OF DEVELOPMENT

The intention in offering for your perusal the preceding newspaper accounts of Dr. Brinkley’s work in the opening months of the year 1920 was to show you what his views at that time were regarding the value of the gland operation which he has since made his life-work. The Chicago Tribune speaks of it as incidental to his general work as a surgeon. Dr. Brinkley himself speaks of shortly beginning an experiment upon an old man of 80. A year later he looked back upon a record of achievement of the most astounding results in operations performed upon men of 75, 80, and even 81. During this past year he has perfected his technique, implants the male glands exclusively into men and the female glands or ovaries into women, and has definitely selected the scrotum of the man as the only right place in which to introduce the goat-glands for the transplantation. You are here viewing the development of a great scientific discovery from the beginning of its employment upon human beings. Nor is there any reason to suppose that the year 1922 will produce no embellishment of value in the form of a wider application of the method. Some very striking limitations have been established during the past year’s work. For instance:

If the blood examination shows a positive Wasserman test for syphilis it is useless to transplant the glands, because they will certainly slough out. Active syphilis is antagonistic to the goat-tissue. Even latent syphilis, showing a negative Wasserman, is likely to produce a slough of the glands. Nothing should be concealed from the doctor, of course, and yet it has happened at the hospital at Milford that a patient on being questioned in advance of the operation has emphatically stated that he had never contracted syphilis, and three days later, after the transplantation, when the sloughing of the new glands had shown something definitely wrong with the blood, this patient admitted that he had not spoken the truth in the matter, but had contracted the disease many years previously. On the other hand, in Locomoter Ataxia, in which there is invariably a history of syphilis, the goat-glands take hold without exception, the efficacy of the transplantation in this disease, hitherto incurable by any means known to man, being due to the power of the new glands to cause a dissolving of scar-tissue, in the opinion of Dr. Abrams of San Francisco, who investigated the remarkable results attained by Dr. Brinkley in his cures of Locomoter Ataxia by the goat-gland operation.

If the goat-glands are transplanted into members of the Hebrew race there follows invariably a high temperature persisting for several days, after which the cure proceeds normally without any untoward occurrence. Glands transplanted into a negro will slough, or, at least, they did so in the one case on which Dr. Brinkley performed the operation, for no apparent reason other than a supposed racial antagonism to goat-tissue. No experiments have yet been conducted upon Japanese, Chinese, Hindus, or our native Indians. When the blood count shows high in white (leucocytes) and low in red, the glands will slough, but the reverse condition does not hold true. And now let us consider the case of Mr. Ernst, of Morganville, Kansas, who is over 77 years of age, and who permits the use of his name and address. One of the most curious features of his case is that when he came for the operation his hair, white as snow, was thin on the scalp, the color of the skin of the scalp showing through the hair, as it frequently does in the aged. That was almost a year ago. Mr. Ernst’s hair is now turning black all over the head, the scalp shows a thickening in the growth, or an increase in the quantity of hair, and you cannot now see the scalp through the hair. Mr. Ernst wrote an excellent letter to Dr. Brinkley two months ago, and states that he has no objection at all to its reproduction. When a personal story of this kind is offered for use it is as well to use it in its original form, but this so rarely happens in this work that for its uniqueness alone it would be worth while to put it before you. With some notable exceptions, the men patients who have been operated upon by Dr. Brinkley feel ashamed of the fact. Not for anything would they let their friends or acquaintances know anything about it. The veil of secrecy is, of course, never lifted by the doctor. The women patients have none of this false shame, apparently, but enjoy discussing the results of the operation with their friends. It is, perhaps, natural that a United States Senator, two of whom have been operated on with much advantage to themselves, should shrink from the jocose remarks of friend or foe and the curiosity of acquaintances. There is good reason, in the case of a public man, for avoidance of notice in the matter, and that is one of the advantages of having the hospital located in the tiny village of Milford. If freedom from observation is the wish it is certainly gratified there. Agreeing, therefore, on the whole, with the reticence of the public man in this matter, we yet feel a certain satisfaction in the robust avowals of Mr. Ernst. Follows his letter of January, 1921:

“I am 77 years old, employed as commercial salesman by one of the largest manufacturing companies of its kind in the world, and command a good salary and the confidence of my employers. Since my operation at Dr. Brinkley’s hospital I am now their free lance salesman, opening up new territory and making good money. Any doubting Thomas may send me a self-addressed envelope if he questions the genuineness of what I say here about myself, and I will take time to answer him. First, the operation is absolutely painless. For a number of years I was a martyr to Sciatica and Muscular Rheumatism. I used every Patent Medicine I could hear of, besides Osteopathy and Chiropractic, and innumerable prescriptions from physicians, and received no benefit at all. The sciatic trouble was bad enough, but to this you must add loss of memory, hydrocele, kidney trouble, constipation, no appetite, and insomnia. Most nights two hours sleep was the most I could get, for the pains were incessant. I read in ... the Kansas City Post last Spring about Dr. Brinkley’s Goat-Gland operation, and decided to try it right away. I was in such misery I would have tried anything. Now I want to tell you, in the fewest words, that the amazing truth is that I have not had a twinge of pain of any kind at all since the operation, and have only a memory of my former suffering. This is a marvelous thing. I have the feeling of a youth. Whenever you want to hear from me I will write again and tell you what changes have taken place in me as the result of this operation. If I was asked to put a cash value upon the operation in my own case I could not do it, but I can say that all I possess in cash would be a poor equivalent for the difference the operation has made in my life. What is the difference in cash value between a life that is worth living and one that is constant misery? I don’t know how you would fix that value, but that is the difference the operation has made in me.

S. H. Ernst.”

Dr. Brinkley has kept in close touch with Mr. Ernst, and received other letters, not for publication, in which the old gentleman went frankly into details of the change that had been wrought in him by the operation in the matter of astonishing sexual vigor. For obvious reasons such details, while of the greatest scientific interest, cannot be more than hinted at in a book, and we must content ourselves with the acceptance of the fact as a fact of interest to science, to Dr. Brinkley, to the world of aged men at our doors, and to Mr. Ernst particularly, rejoicing in his new-found vigor.

Apart from the genuinely happy tone of his letters to Dr. Brinkley, the phenomenon of the darkening of the hair strikes most sharply on the attention. Perhaps our satisfaction in this particular piece of evidence of rejuvenation is due to the fact that it is an objective proof; something visible to the eye, tangible; something for which we are not required to take anybody’s opinion, but can trust our eyesight for the fact of it. It is something in which the psychic factor, the feelings, the imagination, the auto-suggestion, does not enter at all, and that is why it is exceedingly well worthy of note. Looking back over the years, and casting up in your minds all the people of sixty and seventy years of age whom you have known, can you put your finger on a single one whose hair turned in color from white to dark and at the same time from thin to thick? You probably cannot. Nor can the writer. It is reasonable to conclude, therefore, that the goat-glands alone have done this thing in the case of Mr. Ernst.