The Goat-gland Transplantation Part 3

One month after the operation Chancellor Tobias wrote to Dr. Brinkley: "I really feel twenty years younger. My health has improved wonderfully.

I have regained my lost vigor and vitality. I'm a recreated youth."

And today even Chancellor Tobias' fellow faculty members, many of them nationally famous attorneys, admit that Dr. Tobias has improved 100 per cent.

+"Almost Unbelievable."+ "I hesitate to speak of this," Chancellor Tobias said. "It is so wonderful it is almost unbelievable. The public cannot appreciate what the operation means. There has been some levity over the news of the gland operations, but it should be treated with the greatest respect and admiration. The operation has been a success on me so I am in a position to speak authoritatively. It is one of the greatest things of the century."

Among the other thirty-five patients who have been successfully operated on are many well-known to thousands of people in Chicago. Here are some typical Chicago cases omitting names:

Policeman ----, aged 60, suffering from chronic diabetes and a general breakdown, which was about to compel his retirement from the force.

Operated on August 9. Left the hospital yesterday feeling like "a new man."

Alderman ----, aged 55, chronic asthma sufferer. Operated on April 26.

Asthma had disappeared by the time he left the hospital. Declared he felt years younger and is now completely revivified.

Mr. G----, newspaperman, aged 39. Suffered from complete nervous breakdown from overwork. Operated on April 25. Resumed work almost immediately, full of pep, and today is the picture of health.

Judge ----, aged 58. Premature old age from hardening of the arteries.

Operated on April 28. Because of his wonderful improvement in health has changed his mind about retiring from the bench.

+Operation Painless.+ "Ignorance about the gland transplanting is almost universal," I told Dr. Brinkley. "I know nothing of it. Tell me how it is done, why you use goat-glands, all the whys and wherefores, so the readers of +The American+ will have some authentic information. Is the operation painful?"

"No," Dr. Brinkley replied. "It is a simple incision with very little actual pain. In practically all cases a local anesthetic is used.

A general anesthetic is used only in exceptional cases."

"How long does the operation take?"

"Fifteen to twenty minutes. It is as simple as grafting new shoots on a fruit tree. No part of the human gland is removed. The goat-gland is simply planted to take the place of the old gland."

"And the hospital confinement?"

"One week, to rest the patient and allow the gland to begin functioning without undue exertion."

"Any danger?"

"None whatever. It's like grafting on a piece of skin. There is absolutely no danger."

+Eliminates Disorders.+ Lost youth is regained, according to Dr.

Brinkley, as a result of the revivifying fluid secreted by the transplanted gland, leading to the elimination of organic disorders that are hastening old age.

Dr. Brinkley explained in detail:

"I began my experiments nine years ago, and began using goat-glands three years ago in the interst.i.tial gland operation because the goat-glands resemble to a large degree the human glands in their histological make-up. The interst.i.tial glands and the blood, of a goat, are a very close approach in their const.i.tuents to those of a human being.

"Old people are simply broken down. The goat-gland secretes the fluid that builds up the brokendown parts of the human body. Eyesight improves 50 per cent. If a man is underweight he will gain to normal, and if he is overweight he will reduce to normal, showing that the goat glands actually function."

+Chronic Diseases Cured.+ "Chronic skin diseases are cleared up. Stomach trouble disappears under the new gland's guardians.h.i.+p of the body.

I have the laboratory data, the scientific records, and the actual revivified patients to prove it. The only unsuccessful cases are certain people whose blood lacks necessary essentials, and they are few."

Dr. Brinkley gives Dr. G. Frank Lydston of Chicago credit for performing the first gland transplanting operations.

+Lydston Is Pioneer.+ "Dr. Lydston is the pioneer," Dr. Brinkley said.

"He was the first man to transplant glands from a human to a human.

I have never transplanted anthropoid ape glands, as Dr. Voronoff of Paris, and only in three cases human glands, as Dr. Lydston, and I was not pleased with the results in those three cases. I was the first to transplant goat glands. Dr. Serge Voronoff has performed the operation on only two human beings. He failed to give Dr. Lydston credit, although it is obvious he followed Dr. Lydston's book."

This completes Mr. Lehrbas' interview. In the same paper, +The Chicago Evening American+, a month later, date of September 15, appeared the following account of another visit to Chancellor Tobias, written by Edward M. Thierry:

J. J. Tobias, chancellor of the Chicago Law School, told me it was none of my business how old he is. He's got a goat-gland sewed into his innards and I was trying to get some personal Ponce de Leon statistics.

"I'm over 50," Tobias conceded. "How much I won't say. But I will say my clock has been turned back from ten to twenty years! Just look at me!"

He jumped out of his chair--er--friskily. That's the only expressive word. Tobias is little, thin and wiry. His face wrinkles up and his teeth flash when he smiles. He has grey hair and talks with quick jerks--as if his energy is running a race with his tongue.

"I'm rejuvenated," Tobias said. "Time will tell whether my goat-gland will make me live longer. I had that operation on last March 26, and I'm still living. I'm no decrepit old man, either."

Tobias was operated on by Dr. J. R. Brinkley, who has caused a furor in medical circles through his many successful goat-gland operations.

Critics of Dr. Brinkley make Tobias tired. Get his goat, so to speak. He says he knows what he's talking about, for he was formerly lecturer in a Chicago medical college.

"Seventy-five years ago my father had a little German machine," Tobias said, "called the 'life waker.' It was a disk as big as a dollar with a lot of needles in it. You jabbed it into the small of the back and waked life that way. We can laugh at that archaic system, for it was crude.

Now we're more scientific. Witness the transplantation of goat-glands."

Tobias said he went to see Dr. Brinkley at Milford, Kansas, to investigate his goat-gland discovery because of long suffering from congestion of the brain arteries. Doctors had told him he was in danger of death because of severe attacks of vertigo and a high blood pressure.

"The operation," Tobias said, "occupied about 20 minutes. Within three hours after the operation the goat-gland began to function, the congestion was relieved, and within three days the cause was eliminated.

"I am a new man physically, with new mental vigor, and a new power of sustained effort. I can distinctly sense the function of a new gland in my body."

It must have functioned muscularly, for when I left Tobias gave me a knuckle-crus.h.i.+ng grip which made it necessary to write this story with my left hand.

These newspaper articles are printed here without change, in spite of evident repet.i.tions, because of their evidential value. It is an old trick of the public press in the United States, and probably in Europe also, to start a sensation with a blazing front page story, and in the course of a few weeks follow it with a complete and sarcastic expose of the whole matter as a baseless fabrication, piling facts on facts to show that the first story was an ingenious piece of deception got up by the subject with the purpose of making capital out of the credulity of the public. There are no better detectives in the world than newspaper men. They work for the love of it. 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. How far they carry, and how wide-reaching is the interest, will be understood by the statement that the announcement of Dr. Brinkley's work, printed first in American newspapers, and copied in the English papers, has brought him urgent requests to visit South Africa, Australia, Sweden, Scotland, and many other countries. From England in particular come requests from women that he do not fail to make a journey to some part of Europe in the summer of 1921, in order that they may take the operation with a view to bearing children. This he has arranged to do about June of this year, expecting to find in England a climate during the months of June, July and August, which will not be too hot to prevent him from transplanting the goat-glands. He does not operate at his hospital in Kansas during June, July and August, on account of the heat, having found that when the outdoor temperature is high the glands will certainly slough. The high temperature without seems to create a high temperature for the patient, and the result is a wasted pair of good goat glands, with loss of time and money to all concerned. In England in the summer it should be necessary to wait a few days only for right climatic conditions to present themselves, and be sure that they will do so. There are the further matters of a supply of goats of the right Toggenburg breed, a place to keep them, in close proximity to the operating hospital, and the hospital itself, to be dealt with suitably in the shortest possible s.p.a.ce of time after arrival. The supply of goats can probably be best procured direct from Switzerland through some London importer, and the other matters will no doubt fall easily into place. The goats must not come from a high alt.i.tude, or their glands will not contain a right amount of iodine. This is curiously important.

Dr. Brinkley cannot use goats from Colorado for that reason. If the doctor's reception in England is cordial he will probably make his visit there an annual summer affair of three months' duration for some years to come, which would give him an opportunity of keeping in continued touch with his English and European patients. The English are a practical people, and less sensitive than we to, or more careless of, ridicule, and they are likely to grasp the importance of Dr. Brinkley's work on the instant of his arrival, compelling a long visit.

CHAPTER VII

PROFESSOR STEINACH AND THE RAT

Writing with vivacity and humor, Mr. Clarence Day, Jr., speculates with so much whimsicality upon the possible effects of surgical rejuvenation of men that one might overlook the keenness of his observation in a hurried perusal of his article. For the sake of preserving it for more leisurely study, and because the points raised are really worthy of attention, the article is reproduced here in full, with acknowledgments to +The Literary Review+, in which it first appeared, of date November 20, 1920. Says Mr. Day:

Biologists really seem to be discovering ways of making men young again.

So far, it is like making men drunk; the state that is produced does not last. But it looks as though they might succeed in adding a chapter to life. I wish it could be added to the other end: to youth instead of to the last flickers. But if we can renew and re-live middle-age, that will be better still.