“MONKEY GLAND” RESULTS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 18975, 28 March 1924, Page 7

“MONKEY GLAND” RESULTS

A word of warning against expecting too great results from the administration of what was called “monkey gland’’ was uttered by Professor Winifred Cullis who lectured on “Monkey Glands and Others,” at King’s College Sydney, the “Daily Telegraph” reports. Professor Cullis explained that in addition to the glands which had an obvious outlet, such as the salivary glands, there were ductless glands, or glands of internal secretion, which had no obvious outlet. They took their food from the blood, and returned their secretion to the blood.* The study of these dpctless glands was one of the romances of the last twenty or thirty years. Of the various glands most was known about the thyroid, which was the controller of the rate of living. If the gland were under-developed, we would fall below the normal rate of living, and, similarly, if it were over-developed our rate of living would be above the normal.

At. the conclusion of her lecture, Professor Cullis referred to the socalled monkey gland treatment. It was absurd, she said, to speak of “monkey gland” as if the monkey had only one glsrid. Having indicated the particular secretion which is used in the treatment, the lectureer explained that Voronoff claimed that senility was due to a failure of internal secretions. At Edinburgh she present when he lectured, and by mean s of a cinematograph film he showed his treatmet. First an animal was shown before treatment, a ram very old and decrepit, and only with much pushing and coaxing Could it be induced to move at all. Upon an attempt being made to photograph it after treatment, it put its head down and charged the camera. It certainly then appeared in the prime of life, another picture shown on that occasion wag of a very old man who appeared in the last stage of dejection. That was before treatment with the gland of a chimpanzee. The photographs after the various stages of the treatment showed him walking briskly; then swinging a golf club, a bad swing, but nevertheless a swing; next he was seen riding a horse, and, finally, sculling in a skiff, with a lady hiding discreetly behind a parasol—an indication, commented the lecturer amid laughter, that rejuvenation was complete. Having uttered the warning already alluded to as to expecting too great results from the treatment, Professor Winifred Cullis concluded that if these changes could be produced it must not be supposed that the treatment meant an increase in longevity. It did not; what it meant was that the human powers would be utilised right up to the last. If what we desire was to increase the span of life, we would have to turn to eugenics.