1889

Brown-Séquard’s published report on the rejuvenating effects of injections of extracts of the testes (Borell I & II, Kahn). B-S pursued a “’replacement strategy’ in which an aqueous extract of dog and guinea pig testes, testicular blood, and seminal fluid was prepared, filtered, and then, in the first experiment, injected subcutaneously into his own arm” (Kahn, 143). “It was widely held that loss of semen resulted in the loss of strength, and that debility was the end result of sexual abuse. If weakness was the result of seminal loss, could not strength be gained by seminal retention? Brown-Séquard reasoned that something must be reabsorbed from the semen by the blood, and that these reabsorbed seminal principles must have a dynamogenic power, resulting in increased strength and vigor for those who abstained from ejaculation” (Borell I, 312). Thus, Brown-Séquard “advocated the use of testicular extract for the treatment of debilitating and nervous diseases because of the deductions he had made from generally accepted ideas of human sexuality. He had generalized this mode of replacement therapy in 1891 because of the strong analogies he perceived between the glandular organs and because of his conviction that all living cells probably secrete useful products. He saw this mode of therapy – injection of extracts of animal tissues – as being potentially useful in diseases whose etiology was unknown, but whose pathology was correlated with a particular tissue or organ” (Borell III, 266). The New York Pasteur Institute (founded by Paul Gibier to treat hydrophobia in 1889) supplied organ extracts to American physicians, at least during 1893-1898 (Borell I, 315-319). In 1890, Victor Horsley advocated the grafting of thyroid tissue into myxedematous patient, an idea that his former student George Murray transformed and exploited in 1891 by successfully treating a myxedematous patient with subcutaneous injections of thyroid juice (Borell III, 245). “Murray’s treatment of a myxoedematous patient by the subcutaneous injection of thyroid juice in 1891 was the first generally acknowledged success of the new organotherapy (III, 248). Then, in 1894, the clinician George Oliver and the physiologist Edward Schäfer of University College, London reported On the Physiological Action of Extract of the Suprarenal Capsules [thick connective tissue capsules surrounding the adrenal gland], which, with water, alcohol or glycerin, exerted a powerful action on the blood vessels and heart, causing an “extreme contraction of the arteries, so that the blood pressure is enormously raised” (III, 255-260, quoted at 259). They discovered that “the physiological effects of adrenal extract [could be] measured by standard experimental techniques” (255). Schäfer’s influence  interest in specific druglike effects of adrenal extract among British physiologists (260). Thus, “By 1895, ‘internal secretions’ seem to have acquired a new status in physiological theory because of the direct applicability of the notion of internal secretion to the interpretation of recently accumulated data on the physiology not only of the liver, pancreas, and kidney – all glands with ducts – but also of the thyroid gland, the pituitary body, and the suprarenal bodies – all ductless glands. These data derived principally from the extirpation and transplantation experiments performed by surgeons from the 1880s on. Extracts of organs came to be advocated as a rational substitute for transplanted organs” (Borell III, 266).