testicles and electrodes
Some men have always been ready to try anything to stay potent. However, the pseudo-scientific approach to ageing began only a century ago.
Charles-Edouard Brown-Squard, a French doctor, announced that he felt 20 years younger after injecting “extract of fresh guinea-pig and dog testicles”. Within a year, 1 200 physicians were administering Brown-Squard elixir to patients and claiming wonderful results.
In 1916 a Chicago doctor, Frank Lydston, went even further when he argued that putting a slice of testicle directly into the scrotum should work even better and performed the operation on himself and many others. A few years later, Eugen Steinach, a professor of physiology in Vienna, announced a vasectomy could have the same rejuvenating effect.
Before World War II, diathermy – one ampere of direct current from electrodes connected to the testicles – was thought just the thing to kick- start ailing glands.