Medicine: Virility Prolonged

As he neared 50, large and lusty Writer Paul de Kruif felt his considerable powers waning. His customary four-mile trot along a Lake Michigan beach slowed down to a walk. Three or four hours with the double-bitted ax and cross-cut saw were all he could stand. He tired easily, slept fitfully, found himself a prey to causeless fears.

Youthful-looking Herman Bundesen, 63, unorthodox president of Chicago’s board of health, suggested that De Kruif’s decline might be due to a hormone deficiency. Dr. Bundesen believed that the vitality of men and animals is linked to their sexual vigor. He informed De Kruif that organic chemists had isolated and synthesized the essential product of the male sex glands (the female hormones, estradiol and estrone, had been discovered and put to fruitful use still earlier).

It was enough to send De Kruif, often criticized for his own expansive scientific optimism, plunging through the literature of the subject, digging out the facts for his own benefit and the instruction of the vast audience won by his tales of microbe-hunting, hunger-fighting heroes of the test tube. Last week he published his findings, in a mixture of laboratory slang, movie-travelogue lyricism and man-to-man locker-room candor, in The Male Hormone (Harcourt Brace; $2.50).

Sneers & Jeers. In 1889 Charles-Edouard Brown-Sequard, eminent French physiologist, announced at the age of 72 that he had succeeded in revitalizing himself by brewing the mashed-up sex glands of dogs and guinea pigs in a salt solution and injecting the mixture under his skin. An audience of distinguished French scientists listened spellbound to details of the miraculous transformation. But Sequard’s new lease on life lasted just one month; then he began to wither. When he died in 1894, he and the potentialities of the male hormone were both badly discredited.

During the ensuing years, while other endocrines yielded up their secrets to the “hormone hunters,” study of the male hormone languished. Pioneers who dared to experiment in the field drew sneers & jeers at “rejuvenations,” “elixirs” and “monkey glands.” But in 1926 University of Chicago Chemist Fred Koch and his assistant Lemuel McGee began dissolving, fractionating and distilling tons of bulls’ testicles in an attempt to discover what it is that makes bulls bulls. They developed a method for obtaining from some 40 Ibs. of bull glands 20 milligrams of a substance which, when injected into capons, restored them to roosterhood. It was also tried on a 26-year-old eunuchoid male who lacked all libido and most of the outward signs of masculinity (beard, deep voice, etc.). After 53 days of injections, both the sexual urge and the power to consummate it appeared. But the transformation exhausted Koch’s supply of the hormone, and the patient lapsed into his former condition.

Testosterone. Others took the cue. Out of an ocean of human male urine, German Chemist Adolf Butenandt extracted a few tiny crystals that showed hormone activity. He proceeded to determine their exact formula. In the Amsterdam laboratory of Ernest Laqueur, Dutch chemists came up with purer crystals, set down the structure of their product and labeled it “testosterone.” In the same year the Swiss chemical genius Leopold Ruzicka turned cholesterol (an abundant substance found in human and animal cells) into synthetic testosterone. Subsequent refinements reduced its cost and made it available in pill form.

Testosterone, tried on almost-males, not only created or restored full masculinity but sometimes cleared up such related symptoms as skin eruptions, high-pitched voices, mental and physical sluggishness.

Case of the Broken-Down Gelding. Scientists also found reason to believe that men receiving testosterone might experience the desired effects simply through the power of suggestion. Startling results were sometimes obtained by deceptively injecting an old hopeful with a harmless oil or giving him an aspirin pill. To resolve . such doubts, Surgeon Walter Kearns planted a huge dose of the male hormone under the aging hide of Holloway, a once famed gelding, now 18 and broken-down. Holloway surprised his owners by proceeding to perform brilliantly both among the mares and on the track.

De Kruif cites many equally remarkable revitalizations of men ranging from 45 to 71, suffering from impotence and such complaints as rheumatism and arthritis. All these scourges yielded wholly or partially to the beneficent magic of testosterone. Scientific tests demonstrated a measurable improvement in the action of muscles, nervous reflexes, memory and intelligence.

Testosterone is dangerous if improperly administered; it may overstimulate a man sexually, and it cannot be used at all when prostatic cancer is present or dormant. Otherwise it is likely to alleviate any distress or ailment directly or indirectly connected with “male hormone hunger.” On young, normal men, oddly, it appears to lower sexual drive while improving muscle tone and endurance. Its effect is temporary.

At 54, De Kruif has been taking 20 to 30 milligram doses daily for more than a year. He is convinced that “good, tough old pal” Bundesen was right about testosterone “putting a bit of new life in my aging body.”