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At London, Voronoff presented moving pictures showing the transference of monkey glands to human beings, with "before-and-after" effects on three specimen cases— men aged 65, 74 and 77, respectively, in more or less advanced stages of decrepitude. Within periods of four to 20 months after the operations, the films showed them as hale and active, apparently in middle age, riding horseback, rowing and doing other athletic feats. In another film the ancient ram on which Voronoff performed his original gland-grafting experiments was shown gamboling like a kid. Voronoff announced that 44 men over 60 years of age on whom the transplantation has been performed are vigorous and sound today. They remain anonymous, but rumor has it that several of his first patients were doctors, and the others included "statesmen, actors, millionaires."
To understand the methods of Voronoff and Eugen Steinach, the Viennese surgeon, who works on a quite different principle, some knowledge of the glandular system of the body is essential. The glands may be roughly divided into three types. There are the familiar glands of secretion and excretion, such as the salivary glands, the kidneys, the tear glands, the pyloric glands of the stomach, et cetera, which have ducts through which the secreted juices or waste products are carried to the surface or to the appropriate organ.
Then there are the "endocrine" or ductless glands, whose functions have only recently begun to be discovered, and which form the subject matter of one of the newest and most absorbing chapters of medicine. These include the adrenals (or suprarenals), the source of adrenalin; the thyroid and thymus, in the neck; the pineal and pituitary, near the base of the brain. The secretions of the ductless glands, called "hormones," are poured into the blood stream by little understood processes, and have remarkable effects on various organs and functions of the body. They are concerned with growth, muscle tone, pugnacity and other emotional attributes, gigantism and dwarfism, sex development, et cetera. Much nonsense has been written about them and their possibilities, but there is no question that they have definite and far-reaching influences on life, health and disposition. (A reliable popular book on endocrinology is Benjamin Harrow's The Glands in Health and Disease— Button, 1922.)
Finally there are a few glands which have a double function and may be called " mixed " glands. They have ducts which carry secretions for a specific purpose, but they also pro- duce hormones which have quite different functions. The pancreas is such a gland, and it is the internal secretion of the pancreas, distinct from the pancreatic juice, from which insulin, the diabetes specific, is derived. Other mixed glands are the " gonads," or reproductive glands (ovaries and testes), which form the basis of Voronoff's and Steinach's work. The primary business of gonads is to produce ova and semen, but they also contain so-called interstitial cells, secreting hormones which are distributed through the body and affect the secondary sex differences as well as the general vigor and well-being of the entire system.