Sydney Blanshard Flower

“ 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 77 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. ”

“ An expose is dearer to the detective-instinct in them than a laudatory article, and they leave no stone unturned to get at the facts. When, therefore, after the lapse of months, the newspapers of the United States repeat and confirm their first stories about Dr. Brinkley’s work it means something to one who knows their methods of working. Money cannot buy this sort of publicity. There must be facts, and facts of value, and facts verified again and again, before stories of this kind appear and reappear in the great organs of publicity in all the big cities of the United States. ”

“ There must be some evident condition of ill-health to be set right. But, on the other hand, though I will not advise these people to take the gland operation, there may be something in her idea that the glands will arrest age and hold it back. I have never been in a position where I could afford to experiment on young and healthy human beings, and this point can only be settled by such experiment upon healthy and young human beings. I should say at a guess that the operation would do her no good, but you understand that this is a guess only. ”

“ Brinkley alone has had the wit and skill to find the means to solve the problem as it should be solved to be of any value to humanity, namely, to discover how the inactivity can be changed to activity, how the blood of man and woman can be charged anew with the life-giving hormones, perhaps, or whatever may be the name of that substance secreted by the sex-glands and used by the blood to nourish all the cells of the body, which MUST be present in the system if body and mind are to continue to function at their best. ”

“ No other man alive has had this experience in sufficient quantity to justify him in forming a conclusion derived from his facts. This is my answer not only to those who listen to encouraging advice regarding the effects of this operation tendered by surgeons who are embarking in this goat-gland operation, but also to those general practitioners who inform patients asking their opinion in the matter that the operation is useless because the glands are certain to slough, I hold that they are not qualified to speak on the subject because they have no knowledge. ”

“ It is interesting to remember that while it is possible to increase the mineral particles of soda, potash, lime, iron, 75 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ He was looking to the young of the animal kingdom to furnish him with the material he proposed to use to improve the functioning of human organs, and more certainly as time passed he drew to the conclusion that in the goat, and in the goat alone, was to be found that gland-tissue which, because of its rapid maturity, potency, and freedom from those diseases to which humanity is liable, was most sure under right conditions of implantation to feed, nourish, grow into and become a part of, human gland-tissue. ”

“ 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. ”

“ My greatest number of men come for impotency, next for prostatitis, and many for a general improvement in health. Many come with but one purpose—to prolong their lives. I believe that those who receive gland transplantation will live much longer than without it. Possibly as much as from 10 to 25 years can be added. Then successive transplants can be made, and we have no idea how long they will live. Their skin takes on the appearance of youth. I know that after the ovaries have been transplanted into women who have none their menses return on a 4-day period regularly. ”

“ I have the most positive knowledge that when the operation is rightly performed the glands do NOT slough, and my knowledge is founded upon the hard facts of much experience. In another ten years I shall know more than I know today because I shall have added to my facts, and among those facts there may be some which confirm the hope of the woman of forty alluded to above that this gland transplantation may hold the condition of youth steady as something static, which will not be suffered to pass. ”

“ 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 assistance. 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. ”

“ In ordinary cases of gland-transplantation into women, where the patient is in good physical condition, with no disease of the organs, the operation is as simple as in the case of the man. The speculum discloses the condition of the vagina, and the insertion of the new ovary is into the mucous membrane of the vagina, leaving the goat-ovary about four inches distant from the woman’s. The only incision made is a small one, about one inch long, painless under local anesthetic, the purpose of the 24 incision being to get a blood supply for the goat-ovary. ”

“ 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 interstitial 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. ”

“ Steinach has been studying the interstitial cells that fill in the spaces 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. ”

“ If the testes of a man are removed he will assume the characteristics of a woman. Many changes will take place. His mind is no longer clear, he tires easily, cannot concentrate upon any subject, and has marked loss of memory and of physical well being. The things that once appealed to him are now undesirable. The opposite sex are repulsive and he shuns their society. A man or woman who suffers the premature loss of their glands of regeneration will become more or less defective mentally and their life will be materially shortened. ”

“ Since there is no other human being who has had experience sufficient in this matter upon which he may justly found an opinion, it seems to the author that only one man, Dr. Brinkley himself, is qualified to speak 7 at all, and until members of the medical profession here and in Europe have mastered Dr. Brinkley’s technique, and learned what to do, and how and why, and what not to do, and why not, a dogmatic negative is not the proper comment with regard to the question of whether successful transplantation of goat-glands can be made upon human beings. ”

“ Suppose the patient is an old man in whom it is desired to produce rejuvenation; the doctor then will ligate both sides, in order that the new glands when they take hold, and begin to feed the testes of the man, stimulating these to a new activity, may not be overtaxed to the point of excess usage by the patient when he returns home and finds himself in possession of a sexual vigor that has been unknown to him for many years. This increase in sexual vigor invariably follows, regardless of the age of the patient. ”

“ He does not say that the goat-ovaries transplanted into the woman have grown new ovaries, but there remains the phenomenon of the renewed menstruation, and this is very difficult to account for. In barren women, from twenty-eight to thirty-five years of age, in whom he has found not a diseased, but an atrophied, condition of the ovaries, the transplantation has invariably been attended with success to the removal of the barrenness, the new glands evidently bringing about the development of ova. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 hoary 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 not stated that all human brains are of equal power or can be developed to equal power. It is stated that all human brains of unusual power are brains that are well-nourished by the testicular secretions, and it is implied, with full understanding of what this statement leads to, that if, for any reason, there is an interference with this sex-gland activity, the unusual brain will cease in a short time to be unusual in its power, grasp, and faculty of clear, continuous thought. ”

“ Milford, Kansas.—A surgeon in this little Kansas town has lifted from womanhood the curse of sterility.
He is Dr. J. R. Brinkley, chief surgeon of the Brinkley-Jones Hospital of Milford.
For several years Dr. Brinkley has made a study of the transplantation of the interstitial glands and its results. Two years ago he performed his first operation upon a human being. Since then he has circumvented nature four times, making it possible for three men and one woman to become parents. He is awaiting results hopefully in four other cases.
The most remarkable case is that of the woman. ”

“ If the woman’s organs are sound and merely inert and atrophied, the new ovary will find its way to its proper position and begin the work of restoring the arrested functions, so that the act of menstruation, for example, which has ceased because of the atrophic condition of the woman’s ovaries, begins again and continues on a normal twenty-eight day period. The effect of the new glands upon women is even more noticeable, if such a thing were possible, than upon men, since in their case the rejuvenation is more striking in the changed appearance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Very thin people are built up to normal weight by it. Barren women and impotent men become mothers and fathers. But in no case do I permit a grandfather or grandmother to entertain the hope that they may be rejuvenated to such an extent that they can procreate again if they wish. This is mere romance, with which I have nothing to do. Nor 90 do I advise a young woman of forty who has not reached the menopause stage to take the operation if she is in good health, in spite of her belief that the goat-glands will enable her to remain indefinitely young. ”

“ Chief Surgeon, Brinkley-Jones Hospital and Training
School for Nurses, Milford, Kansas
(Written October, 1920)
For many years scientists have believed that a part, or all of the glands of the human body influenced longevity. They believed our glands contained the “life spark.” Men for hundreds of years have been seeking the “fountain of youth.” Ponce de Leon when he landed in Florida and saw the beautiful springs and flowers thought he had found it, and so announced to the world. Long ago we learned that the pituitary gland influenced growth and development. ”