"SPARE PARTS"

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 126, 24 November 1923, Page 16

"SPARE PARTS"

REJUVENATION WRONG AND MIS-

LEADING.

Dr. Thorek, Surgeon-in-Chief of the American Hospital of Chicago, dealt many hard blows to the supporters of Yoronoff's "rejuvenation" theory in a two-hour address which he delivered before the International Congress of Comparative Pathology on 13tb October, in his quality as honorary president.

He declared, says the Rome correspondent of the "New York Times," that •'rejuvenation" in the* sense that old men and women could become young again was an absolute impossibility, and in any case, the method hitherto followed of transplanting goat glands was useless if not positively injurious. Referring to his own experiment on eye transplantation, he said that those on mice and dogs had been entirely'successful, and that on one occasion he wag even able to restore vision to a monkey. He looked forward to the day when further development of surgical science would make it poEsible to patch up all human maladies by the use of spare parts, just as one did with a motor-car. In his lecture Dr. Thorek condensed the results of four years of patient research in what are generally known as "rejuvenation" phenomena. He set put four years ago to inquire scientifically into what truth there might be in tlwpossibility of rejuvenating old people. His conclusions are in distinct contradiction to those which are generally ascribed to Dr. Voionoff.

"The term 'rejuvenation,' promiscuously, used by certain medical men, he said, "is wrong and misleading. It, gives the layman-the impression that oldi men and women can become young again. This conception is false and is not based on truth. The improvement of certain physical conditions incident to premature old age can be accomplished, but that is all."

To show that improvement in health followed certain operations for gland transplantation—he related particulars of ninety-seven cases, those • of men and women —which he had treated in the last lour years. He was emphatic, however, in saying that not only must the technique for such operations be correct but proper material also must be used. He severely censured the practice of transplanting goat glands, which he styled "a physical and physiological impossibility resorted to only by the unscrupulous, who prey.on the credulity of the pub-