A man named Steinach, in Vienna, has been experimenting for ten years with rats. Full accounts of his work were published last summer in the great biological journal founded by Roux, and these were summarized and discussed by the London +Athenaeum+, which is now the most interesting of all English weeklies. It is from the +Athenaeum"s+ account that I am taking these facts.
Steinach has been studying the interst.i.tial cells that fill in the s.p.a.ces between the tubules of the testes, in males, and between the follicles of the ovaries in females. His reason for choosing these cells for his experiments is that they are a well-spring of life. Furthermore, since all our vital functions are interrelated, to make these cells active gives the whole organism new life and strength. This is not the only way of stimulating the organism, but it seems the most powerful.
An old rat is like a senile old man; he is bald and emaciated, his eyes are clouded, his breathing is labored. He stays in one place, with bent back, and has small interest in anything. If you cut one of his genital ducts, however, which is a comparatively slight operation, it has the effect of making the interst.i.tial cells multiply actively. Waves of life flood his being. Within a few weeks he is transformed. These currents restore and rebuild him; skin, muscle and mind. Both in looks and behavior he is indistinguishable from other strong rats.
He has cast off old age. Senility, which sets in with men when they are from sixty to eighty years old, begins after twenty to thirty months in a rat. He is then about through. But when an operation is performed on a senile rat he gets from six to eight months" new life. In other words, the addition to his normal span is 20 to 30 per cent. That would be a large fraction of life for a man to live over again. The rat lives it vigorously, eagerly, back in his prime.
When senility again comes upon him it is in a modified form. His organism as a whole is in better shape. It is his mind now that tires.
As Steinach has already cut one or both of his genital ducts, that method of stimulating his cells cannot, of course, be repeated. But another operation is ready. Some unfortunate young male is deprived of his testes by Steinach, and these are implanted forthwith in this h.o.a.ry old rat.
A second spell of active life follows, not so long as the first. It ends in acute psychic senility. The rat goes all to pieces. It is as if the brain, twice restimulated to emotion, curiosity, keenness, had approached the very limit of its running, and was completely exhausted.
Steinach has not yet tried whether a third rejuvenation is possible.
That remains to be seen. He lives in Vienna, and everything there has come to a stop. He has no a.s.sistants, no funds, with which to conduct further experiments. "May happier lands or cities carry the work on," he writes at the end.
It seems as though some rich American ought to stake the old boy.
Steinach has naturally found it more difficult to give new youth to females. But here, too, he has in a measure succeeded. X-ray treatment and ovarian transplantation are the methods employed.
As to human experiments, there is a colleague of Steinach"s named Lichtenstern, who has operated on numerous men and women with apparent success. There has not been time yet to measure how long their new lease of life is to be; but they have regained the joy of life they had lost--strength and powers of work. Still, all this needs confirming.
In a rat it is the s.e.xual impulses that are directly reanimated. He again knows the fevers of courtship, the conflicts of marriage; and whether he is glad to repeat these commotions depends on the rat. In man, however, the s.e.xual impulses are more or less sublimated, so that the new energy may appear in any of the other forms of psychic activity.
Whatever such faculties he has in him once more grow strong.
How wonderful it would be if we could at least prolong certain lives--great writers like H. G. Wells and Conrad, great artists, great doctors. But in practice, the men who would get hold of this would be John D. Rockefeller and W. J. Bryan. The rich uncle would walk in and tell his hopeless heirs he had been to see Steinach. Senators would live forever. The world would grow harder for youth.
Even were we able to control all this, and reserve the boon for the best, would it work? Say we did choose the right men--is it not too intimate a suggestion that we should set a man of science upon them, prepared with a little knife to slice one of their genital ducts? Men have fought all these years for the right to live. Have they no right to die? Must an old man who is needed by the public be condemned to live on, his aged cells stirred and restirred while we glean his brains bare?
Some Socrates of the future may yet envy that other his hemlock.
This, we say it regretfully, is the end of Mr. Day"s article. It is admirable fooling. We will not pay his wit the poor compliment of taking him seriously at the last and pointing out to him that it was Heine who said, "n.o.body loves life like an old man!" There will be no need of insistence to urge the old men, useful or useless, to submit to an operation to renew their youth. But it is to be hoped that they will never be asked to submit to the cutting of the genital duct. It seems to the writer that +The Athenaeum+ must have misconstrued Dr. Steinach"s experiments in some degree, inasmuch as it is difficult to conceive of the operation of severing a genital duct as conducive to cell-formation.
However, probably ligating is meant instead of severing. But this is not the point really brought out by Mr. Day"s clever article. The real point is, Is it likely that if Mr. John Jones takes Dr. Brinkley"s goat-gland operation for the renewal of his youth, and thereby adds thirty years to his life, and at the end of this thirty years of friskiness undergoes a second transplantation of glands, thereby gaining twenty years more, and at the end of this twenty years takes the operation a third time, securing a further lease of gaiety for ten years, will the final years of Mr. John Jones be years of acute psychic senility, as observed by Dr.
Steinach in his rat? To the writer it seems a +non sequitur+. The cases are not parallel. The rejuvenated rat appears to regard his acquired vitality as impelling toward revelry and excess. It is necessary to emphasize the point that the pith and marrow of Dr. Brinkley"s discovery is that since it is clearly shown that rejuvenation is accomplished by the restoration of activity to the s.e.x-glands, therefore the preservation of this rejuvenation MUST depend upon the CONSERVATION of the seminal fluids, and cannot depend upon any other single factor whatever. It has been already explained that Dr. Brinkley puts it out of the power of the rejuvenated man to destroy the good that has come into his life, and protects him against the danger of yielding too freely to pa.s.sionate impulse, by preventing the escape of the rejuvenating agent.
The means of nourishing the body and brain being therefore insured as to supply, it is not reasonable to suppose that the nerve-cells of the rejuvenated man can fail to receive their proper nourishment for many succeeding years, and, pa.s.sing by the rat as a fallacious parallel, we cannot see any good reason why the human body and brain, either under the guidance of self-control, or surgically safeguarded against the waste of excess, should not function at their best for fifty years of added life, with very possibly another fifty added to that. The real crux of the matter is the resistive quality of tissue, which is approximately 200 years for such organs as kidneys and heart, and, say, 150 for nerve-substance.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE OPERATING ROOM AT THE BRINKLEY HOSPITAL]
CHAPTER VIII
A WEEK AT DR. BRINKLEY"S HOSPITAL
The writer, approaching the age of 54, and finding himself in first-cla.s.s physical and mental condition, except for a high blood pressure, which was certainly the prelude to a later arterio-sclerosis, decided that he would be doing himself a service, and put himself in a better position to write with some authority upon the effects of the goat-glands, if he took the operation.
On Sat.u.r.day, April 16. 1921, Dr. Brinkley operated on him at the hospital, Milford, Kansas, transplanting the glands of a three-weeks old male goat. He remained in bed Sat.u.r.day and Sunday, got up and went for an auto drive on Monday, and pa.s.sed an uneventful week at the hospital, returning to Chicago on Sat.u.r.day. He experienced a marked increase in mental energy, which might have shown itself also as increased physical energy if it had been put to the test. This feeling of added pep, snap, energy, or what you please to call it, could be psychological in its origin if it were not for the fact that it is continuous, with no set-backs. Every student of psychology is aware that auto-suggestion has the power to bring out latent energy, raise the drooping spirits, and generate a feeling of well-being. But the student, if he is a reasonably close observer, is also aware that these improved states of feeling have an annoying habit of being offset by corresponding periods of depression, and though he may persist in his effort to lift himself out of the black moods with such success that he finally arrives at a higher tone-level mentally, with a corresponding physical improvement, there is indubitably a strong sense of effort needed for this good result. When, therefore, the writer finds himself working long hours day after day with no sense of mental fatigue, but a certain unusual gaiety of heart accompanying the successive days, as if life were on the whole rather a lark, he, being accurately introspective, and not easily deceived into optimistic conclusions, is forced to give the whole credit for this change of spirit to the functioning of the new glands, and he is confirmed in this conclusion by the fact that the high blood pressure, which was noticeable enough before the operation, cannot now, ten days after the operation, be detected by him at all. Ten days is all too short a time in which to write of details in a matter of this importance. He expects to be able to confirm improvement in eyesight by the middle of May, and will be in a position to speak at greater length on the matter after the summer has pa.s.sed. The intent of this chapter is to give a brief account of something he saw at Dr. Brinkley"s hospital during the week of his treatment.
Two weeks before his arrival a man suffering from locomotor ataxia had been carried in, unable to help himself at all. When the writer saw this man and talked with him he was up and dressed and walking about, without a cane, and he left for home after a total stay of something less than three weeks. In parting from him the doctor said, "You are on the high-road to complete recovery. I expect to hear that you are getting stronger every day. Practice in walking will bring back to you the old confidence and banish the helpless feeling that you are sure to fall.
You see that you can control the motions of your feet and legs now as you could not before. Sensation has returned to the soles of your feet, and you can now turn yourself over in bed, which you could not do before without a.s.sistance. This means that the brain, spinal cord, muscles and will are co-ordinating again. This means that the goat-glands are actively working, dissolving scar-tissue, and bringing you back to health. But it is asking a good deal of a pair of goat-glands to do as much as they must do in your case to bring about complete recovery.
I would rather give them some extra a.s.sistance. If you will come back to me, therefore, next Fall, to this hospital, I will put two new goat-glands into you; and I believe that with this extra help you will go right through to a complete cure without any trouble. The operation will not cost you a cent. I am anxious only to complete the good work.
I may be wrong at that, and it is possible that the glands you have now will be enough to do the work, but if they do not, come back here for two more next Fall. Don"t forget."
This man had been everywhere for relief, and had taken every treatment known for his disease, with no results whatever, as he told the writer.
"This is the first time for twelve years," he said, "that I have had any feeling in my feet. I am surely going to get well at last."
In another case of the same disease the patient, when he came to the hospital, was taking morphine daily to relieve the lightning-pains. He could not stand upright with his eyes shut without falling, and if spoken to suddenly was likely to lose his balance and fall. He had not walked without a cane for several years. Twenty-four hours after the goat-gland operation he said that the pains had left him, and voluntarily stopped the morphine. In two weeks he was walking five miles before breakfast, without a cane to help him. He left the hospital a cured man. There has never been a case of true locomotor ataxia cured by any means whatever, in the history of man, until this Kansas surgeon, Dr. Brinkley, found the cure for it in this transplantation of goat-glands. Ataxia is an after-math of syphilis, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, and it is a question, which no layman can solve, whether the cause of the ataxia is in the disease, or in the mercurial treatment used to combat the disease. Another age, following this, may decide that the disease, syphilis, is less destructive of human tissue than the cure, Mercury. However that may be, the fact remains that goat-glands will cure Locomotor Ataxia, and they are apparently the only means of cure hitherto discovered.
The writer talked with some of the townspeople of Milford regarding Dr.
Brinkley"s work. Their att.i.tude was detached, but on the whole affirmative. They could not, as they put it, doubt their own eyesight, implying that they would do so if they could. They had seen case after case carried into the hospital, and they had seen those same people walk out and go their way to their homes. It was queer, they said, and wagged a critical head. So true is it in all parts of the earth that a prophet hath honor save in his own country! Here and there, however, the writer found a townsman who had nothing but words of praise and admiration for Dr. Brinkley"s work. These always proved to be people who had had some relative under Dr. Brinkley"s care at the hospital, and they were intelligent men who could give their reasons for their conclusions. They were proud of the l.u.s.tre which Dr. Brinkley"s Goat-Gland work was shedding upon the name of their village. Most of the townspeople, however, seemed to think that Dr. Brinkley should be proud of the town.
Their engaging surliness of demeanor with regard to the miracles being performed in their village was a fascinating study to a city man, who saw here at its best the typical small-town att.i.tude towards the big local thing. It is not peculiar to Milford. It is universal. It is as true in England and France and Belgium and Germany as in any little town in the United States. What do you suppose the country villagers thought of Fabre, the great French naturalist, probably to be hailed by the next generation as the greatest figure since Darwin? Without doubt they thought him mad, and if kindly, pitied him, or if savage, despised him.
Meanwhile it is quite certain that the work of Dr. Brinkley has put the town of Milford, Kansas, on the map, and, if you do not find it on the railroad map you may some day consult, it will help a little to say here that you go from Kansas City, Missouri, by the Union Pacific Railroad to Junction City, Kansas, and from that point change to a little branch line which carries you to Milford. The depot at Milford is about a mile from the village itself. You will find an auto at the depot which will carry you to the hospital, where you will be met by Dr. or Mrs.
Brinkley, or Miss Lewis, the Head Nurse, and where you will be very comfortable if you decide to make a stay of a week or so for personal reasons. The food is good, and the Kansas air fresh and bracing and plentiful. Winds are indeed common, but the village is safely out of the track of the Kansas cyclones, and the storm cellar is unknown. The hospital is spotlessly clean and a marvel of completeness in equipment.
The preparations for the gland transplantation are simple but thorough; a test of spermatic fluid, a blood test, a test for blood pressure, a blood count, and a purgative the night before the operation, with no breakfast on the morning of the operation. You will eat a good lunch in bed, however, on that day, and miss no meals afterwards. Briefly, the writer can say honestly that the pain of the operation is no more than the twinge of a toothache.
CHAPTER IX
SUMMARY
Dr. Brinkley"s employment of the goat-glands for the past three years of continuous operating, therefore, has proved to his satisfaction and to that of his patients that the testes in men and the ovaries in women furnish a secretion which has the property of a revivifying fluid when restored to the system by the currents of blood and lymph. In that commonly fatal condition of the arteries which follows rapidly upon the state of blood pressure known as hardening of the arteries, or arterio-sclerosis, a practically incurable condition hitherto, the results obtained by the goat-gland transplantation are miraculously swift. When the arteries are, as the doctor puts it, "as hard as pipe-stems," they grow in a few weeks, sometimes in a week, soft and pliable. The change, according to Dr. Brinkley, is brought about in the walls of the arteries themselves, and is not a process of dissolving the acc.u.mulations or deposits of calcareous material within the arteries.
The change is in the material of the walls of the arteries, producing a return of the condition of elasticity, permitting expansion and contraction as in youth.
It is a favorite theory with some modern writers that the physical change from youth to age is accompanied in the body, and in a sense caused by, the deterioration in the quality of the cells of the body, and they call this change a breaking-down process by which the finer and more highly differentiated cells, such, for example, as the nerve-cells, and others which have high and complicated duties to perform, are displaced by cells of an inferior type, which they name conjunctive cells, much as the common sparrow drives away the songbirds from the home garden and, usurping the place of the songbird, subst.i.tutes a wretched twitter for the golden notes of the warblers which once delighted our ears. The common cells, also, on usurping the place of the n.o.bler cells, are unable to perform the difficult duties of the latter, and the result upon human organism is disorder, decay, disease, etc., contributing to, if not causing, the condition of old age. This is an ingenious but not convincing theory. Our knowledge of histological processes is too incomplete at this stage to permit its acceptance as fact. It a.s.sumes too much to be known which is quite unknown. Moreover, it refutes itself upon examination in this particular, and in several others, that if it were true that these inferior cells are on the lookout to invade instantly any part of the human organism in which there was a breaking down of nerve-tissue, for example, then it would be impossible to build new nerve-tissue to take the place of that which was destroyed, because its place, according to this theory, has been already taken by an intruder who cannot be dislodged. But new nerve-cells are constantly being rebuilt, and constantly being put to use in the organism. If this theory were true, then a brain in middle age would be unable to function because of the impossibility of renewing its cells.
A much more reasonable and probably true explanation of the cause of old age is the gradual disappearance of animal matter in the bones and tissues, and the corresponding increase of the mineral matter in the bones and tissues, amounting to ossification of cartilage, whereby the supple cartilage, losing its animal content, becomes practically bone by deposit of lime particles. This would also account in a common-sense manner for the fragility of the bones of the aged, the brittleness being due to calcareous deposits in the substance of the bone itself, in excess of the normal mineral contents of the bones in youth. The function of the seminal fluids, therefore, appears to be to restore to the aging tissues this property, this animal matter, which when in its right ratio and proportion in the cells of the organism produces the condition of youth. The action of these seminal fluids, therefore, seems to be two-fold, a dissolving and a nourishing. The distinction should be clearly made that the action is NOT merely stimulating. The stimulation of a nerve-cell is a temporary excitement. We speak of the stimulation of alcohol, and this ill.u.s.tration gives a clearer view of the difference between the nourishing action of the seminal fluids and a stimulating action than we could obtain by the employment of many words. It is interesting to remember that while it is possible to increase the mineral particles of soda, potash, lime, iron, silica and magnesia in the blood and lymph, it is practically impossible for us to increase the animal contents of the cells by any method of medication or dieting known to us. Only Life can produce this change in the cells, and only this method of gland-transplantation has furnished a means of impressing Life into service to work for us in this matter. To produce the effects which are needed to rejuvenate a body that has increased its mineral matter at the expense of its animal matter we require the co-operation of glands made active, because only the glands, in the marvelous chemistry of the body, are able to compound the animal substances required to nourish the cells, tissues and organs of the body, and to dissolve and remove those injurious substances of a mineral nature which have acc.u.mulated in excess in cells and tissues, usurping the place of the animal matter in the cells because of the inactivity of function generally, and the poor elimination of waste matter, as the years pa.s.s.
This is the re-creative and rejuvenating work of the gland secretions.
It is beyond us to say exactly what these secretions consist of. We know the importance of their presence in blood and lymph only by the disasters that follow their absence. The thyroid gland and parathyroids, for instance, seem to be connected by some close sympathy with the activity or non-activity of the interst.i.tial glands, and the atrophy of one is often accompanied by the atrophy of the other. The subject is still hidden in darkness to the extent of insufficient knowledge on our part of the exact const.i.tuents of the active agents in the secretions of the testes, thyroids, suprarenals, pituitary and other glands. Time and further opportunity for experiment are needed to show to what extent the goat-gland transplantation can be used to remedy goitre, epilepsy and the graver lesions of paralysis. The use of the goat-glands is too recent to admit of anything but speculation on these points. There would seem to be no good reason to doubt that if the male organs of a young goat do rejuvenate the atrophied testes of a man, which Dr. Brinkley has abundantly proved they do, the thyroid gland of a young goat might be expected to restore the atrophied thyroid of a human being. This again is only conjecture, Dr. Brinkley"s work up to the present having been confined to the transplantation of testes and ovaries. But he expects to find time during the present year to satisfy himself of the results of such important experimental work as is here indicated. It is possible that his visit to Europe this summer may be the means of enlarging his field considerably, although it would appear that if he had six pairs of hands and could keep all employed in continuous service he could scarcely cope with the demands upon his time which any and all countries of the earth may be expected to make when his work is known. In ten years, no doubt, gland-transplantation, particularly goat-gland transplantation, for the renewal of youth in man and woman will be so usual as to occasion neither wonder nor hilarity. But we are not living ten years from now, but at this present moment, and Dr. Brinkley"s operation to-day is a marvel, a wonder and a joy. There is a satisfaction in being in the van. It is fine to be the first to do a big thing, especially if that big thing is something of the most practical value to humanity. Mankind has always crowned its great generals, its great destroyers of life. Here is a man who comes forward to preserve life. That is his mission, if you like. Certainly it is his life work.
It is a n.o.ble work. The question in the writer"s mind is, What will they do to him? How will they take him in England? Will they applaud, or crucify, or neglect? Probably they will show him something of the generous hospitality of England, and leaven this with a plentiful sprinkling of ridicule, because the subject of the goat lends itself to humor of the obvious kind. But it is our belief that the hard, practical common sense of the Anglo-Saxon will lead them to make the utmost use of this opportunity of his visit, and, having got him, it is to be expected that they will know enough to keep him. This is quite as much their opportunity as his. While they sharpen their wit upon the sacrificial goat and make merry, they are pretty sure to make full use of his knowledge and skill while they have him with them, and might make things so pleasant for him that he might say, when the summer is over and he looks back upon the white cliffs of Dover, returning to his own country, "This is a good land. I have enjoyed the trip. I like the people. I will return next summer, and for many summers thereafter."
CHAPTER X
THE SPARK OF LIFE
+By J. R. Brinkley, M.D., C.M., Ph.D., Sc.D.+
Chief Surgeon, Brinkley-Jones Hospital and Training School for Nurses, Milford, Kansas