Dammit, the Human ability to rationalize is weird. And can involve transplanting monkey glands into millionaires ballsacks. For fun & profit.
The Surgeon was named Vornoff, & a fad was started. (LINK)
And Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a Sherlock Holmes story, based on the idea.
The Adventure Of The Creeping Man (LINK)
And a Bio page of this very real Mad Doctor (LINK).
Behind the Bastards has an episode or two devoted to this; people are strange.
Enhance, please. I am unfamiliar with that media.
It’s a podcast by Robert Evans.
I wonder how often “monkey” was a euphemism for “tramp found down by the railroad tracks”?
It’s a podcast devoted to terrible people throughout history.
There was a guy in the US doing it with goat testicles. Someone here recommended a book about him to me maybe 5 years back. Can’t remember his name off the top of my head though.
I feel that this is unlikely. Taking body parts from monkeys is legal. Taking body parts from humans is illegal. So why take the extra risk of using human body parts when your customers were paying you to use monkey body parts?
In fact, my brain may have cross-fired, and this is actually what that Behind the Bastards episode was about…
Millionaires get what millionaires want. Why settle for monkey glands when human (even tramp) glands are obviously better? The fact that Serge ran out of executed criminals is a small obstacle for a man of wealth.
Gland-injection rejuvenation therapy appeared in popular media of the era. Buster Keaton goes into a clinic for goat glands in Cops, after making sure no one sees him.
In 1923’s Black Oxen, it’s used by an aging European woman to vamp a nice American boy (kind of an interesting 100-year difference from Demi Moore’s treatment of similar material in The Substance
There was nothing fancy about the procedure: a syringe drew fluid out of the animal’s testicle and jabbed it into the patient’s. The immune system would respond with swelling, and before the pain set in, he’d think he’d achieved nutsack nirvana.
It was notorious enough of a procedure in its own time to produce a drink (from Harry’s New York Bar in Paris) called the “Monkey Gland”.
Monkey gland (cocktail) - Wikipedia
They’re… not my favorite. Gin, absinthe and orange juice don’t work as well together as the recipes claim.
So, a very meta reference to monkey gland therapy, then…
I remember recommending the book about J.R. Brinkley: Charlatan by Pope Brock 2009
Thank you…it was an excellent book.
Re Monkey Glands
The wonderful series Dark Matters- Twisted But True had a brief segment on a surgeon transplanting bits of monkey testicles into men as a virility treatment. This was part of a larger segment on a Soviet scientist trying to create a humanzee.
NOTE- With literally one or two exceptions, the events and experiments dramatized and discussed on the show are verified historical fact. Experts in various fields make comments and explain things. As promised, the things shown are “twsited but true”. I cannot recommend the show strongly enough.
Re Goat Glands
Many years ago, I heard of a comic book called Crucial Fiction. It was summarized as “A man attempts the ultimate blasphemy- to bring about the Second Coming himself!”. I eventually tracked down a copy. It was fantastic! I have never been able to find a copy of the second issue which was about an evangelist who claimed to have mastered “goat gland science”. I’m going out on a limb and assuming this is the same man mentioned above.
ETA
Many episodes of Dark Matters can be found on YouTube. I do not think they are posted by people who have the right to do so. This is why I have not linked to the Ape Man Army segment.
I thought Voronoff and Brinkley were telling their customers that they were transplanting animal organs. Were there cases where they claimed they were using human organs?
As you point out, millionaires want to get what they paid for. If they paid for a monkey gland, they might get annoyed if a human gland was substituted.
I’d still rather drink one than have one surgically installed.
If they paid extra for a “monkey gland” and only got a monkey gland, any self-respecting early 20th Century millionaire would have had the doctor’s legs broke. (I think you are taking my posts a little too seriously)
Conversely, John D. Rockefeller started out drinking the purest possible cow milk but switched in old age to human milk drunk from a thermos while he golfed