"Rejuvenation"

A very popular exposition of the work of Eugen Steinach, Viennese Ponce de Leon (TIME, July 30, Oct. 8), has appeared from the pen of George F. Corners, a newspaperman, and from the press of Thomas Seltzer, who specializes in works of imaginative literature likely to incur the hostility of John S. Sumner and other censors.

The book is based on personal interviews and data furnished by Professor Steinach himself and several of his disciples, including Dr. Peter Schmidt, of Berlin; Dr. Harry Benjamin, of New York; Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, of the Institute for Sexual Science, Berlin, and Dr. A. S. Blumgarten, chief of the endocrine department of the Lenox Hill Hospital, New York, who has written a sympathetic introduction. It will not settle the scientific status of "rejuvenation" methods, but will doubtless have a ready sale among romantic laymen and laywomen.

Steinach is a bigger man than most of his detractors. He is a biologist and physiologist of great and reputable achievements, professor in the University of Vienna, and director of the Biological Institute of the Vienna Academy of Sciences. His palpable sincerity and devotion to scientific truth are qualities which have not been conspicuous among many who have traded on his reputation. It is not generally known that Steinach is not a surgeon himself and does not perform on human beings the operation that goes by his name. He has not, in fact, received any income from his discoveries, but has allowed regular practitioners to reap the financial benefits. As a result, his own experimental work has languished, the diminished purchasing power of the krone making prohibitive the upkeep of the essential laboratory animals.

Mr. Corners gives some elementary account of the endocrine system. He differentiates between the various methods of "youthifying," i. e., vasectomy combined with vasoliga-ture (the Steinach operation), the implantation of tissue from gonads of other human beings or from animals (Voronoffs operation), the application of X-rays (useful with women), Kammerer's suggested methods of stimulation by electrical heat. He devotes some chapters to Steinach's rat experiments, as well as to numerous human cases from Lichtenstern, Schmidt, Chetwood (American urologist). Useful appendices are a glossary of technical terms in Steinach literature, and a "Who's Who" of persons prominent in connection with rejuvenation methods.

Much of the volume is interlarded with poetical quotations, rhetorical questions, wild prophecies (e. g., that Harding, Roosevelt and Wilson would have escaped death or disability if they had undergone the Steinach operation). Such extravagancies cannot but detract from scientific validity. However, a direct quotation from Steinach on methods of verifying the degree of youth attained has evidential value. The age of an organism, he says, can be determined in several ways: 1) the proportion of functioning body cells to dead or inactive ones; 2) blood pressure; 3) muscular power, measured by the dynamometer; 4) rate of absorption of oxygen, which decreases with advancing years; 5) "protoplasma hysteresis", or degree of condensation of tissues, measured by characteristic index numbers. All of these tests have been applied to patients who have had the Steinach operation, with results indicating a substantial difference of years between their "before and after" conditions.

But it is admitted that the operation is not always successful and that the effects wear off after about five years. "The worst that can happen," says Corners, "is nothing." Most medical men are not so sure of that.