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Voronoff puts his patient and a healthy young monkey side by side on operating tables. A local anaesthetic is given the man, and a general one to the monkey. The incisions are made, and one of the monkey's gonads is sliced into six pieces thin enough for the interstitial cells of the patient quickly to interpenetrate them. In earlier operations Voronoff had failures because the transplanted portions were too thick and died before they could knit up with the human glands. Within a few weeks the new tissue becomes continuous with the old, and its hormones begin their beneficial flow. Blood pressure diminishes, sight improves, metabolism is intensified, muscles regain their spring, and new hair grows. Voronoff told the surgeons that a great park is being constructed in Africa under French auspices for the breeding of chimpanzees and other apes and monkeys. The supply of animal glands is too limited at present to accommodate those who desire transplantation. The reason for the use of these species is, of course, their physiological similarity to man. Other animals might theoretically be used just as well, but the results might not be so satisfactory.
In Steinach's operation, no new material is transplanted. He discovered that if the reproductive function of the gonads is stopped by removing part of their duct (called the "vas deferens"), or even by tying it off, the reproductive cells atrophy and the interstitial cells multiply and occupy the space, greatly increasing the flow of the hormones. The effect is to turn the gonad into an exclusively ductless gland. The same general results are produced as in the case of transplantation. Steinach himself makes no extravagant claims. He calls the effect " arrest within modest limits of the process of senility," and says the use of the term " rejuvenation " is unfortunate. It is merely the prolongation for varying periods of the normal functions of middle life.
Preliminary experiments on rats have shown that the process cannot be continued indefinitely. The two gonads may be operated on in turn, and then new cells may be transplanted, but each time the return of senility is more acute, and the vitality burns out more quickly. So that human beings who contemplate the Steinach or Voronoff operations may find their last state worse than their first. Other critics have pointed out that the sex glands are only one factor in the regulation of old age, and that for complete arrest of senility, all the ductless glands would have to be renewed, not to mention other physiological changes. But Dr. Peter Schmidt, a colleague of Steinach, who claims to have performed 85 of the operations himself, made very rosy predictions in an address at Berlin last week. Indefinite prolongation of life by a series of Steinach operations is well within the bounds of possibility, he said, asserting that thin men might be made fat, and fat men thin, the timbre of the voice transformed, and arterio -sclerosis cured. Steinach himself is expecting to undergo his operation shortly, it is said, though he is not yet an old man.
All of the experiments so far have been done on men. Corresponding operations with women (suggested by Gertrude Atherton in Black Oxen) are possible, but more difficult, owing to the greater inaccessibility of the female gonads.