{"title":"Endocrinology's early historians (1889-1914) and the forgotten prehistory of testosterone.","authors":"Diederik F Janssen","doi":"10.1093/sxmrev/qeae001","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Introduction: </strong>An often-retold historical outline of endocrinology was established over a century ago. An exhaustive history of sexual physiology remains forthcoming, however.</p><p><strong>Objectives: </strong>To explore and contextualize the remarkable medical-historical and medical-anthropologic frenzy triggered by Brown-Séquard's 1889 self-injections with testicular juice, which ultimately settled down into an early history of endocrinology.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Pertinent primary sources were selected from a broader study, primarily between 1889 and 1914, as well as selected older texts identified and unidentified by these sources.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Endocrinology's early historians in a short space of time moved from the history of testicular opotherapy to that of glandular typology and physiology and to increasingly encompassing medical-historical accounts of internal secretion as an epochal idea. Early historians nominated \"precursors\" to Brown-Séquard but underestimated physiologic continuities-specifically, early modern protoendocrinologic notions concerning semen as a \"recrement,\" notions still recited by Brown-Séquard and early Brown-Séquardists as well their detractors. Brown-Séquard himself worked through this old (recremental) concept of semen between 1889 and 1892 but was later identified with it, by among others Ancel and Bouin.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>Western sexual physiology is a medical palimpsest, the undertexts of which remain to be studied in detail.</p>","PeriodicalId":21813,"journal":{"name":"Sexual medicine reviews","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.6000,"publicationDate":"2024-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Sexual medicine reviews","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/sxmrev/qeae001","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"UROLOGY & NEPHROLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Introduction: An often-retold historical outline of endocrinology was established over a century ago. An exhaustive history of sexual physiology remains forthcoming, however.
Objectives: To explore and contextualize the remarkable medical-historical and medical-anthropologic frenzy triggered by Brown-Séquard's 1889 self-injections with testicular juice, which ultimately settled down into an early history of endocrinology.
Methods: Pertinent primary sources were selected from a broader study, primarily between 1889 and 1914, as well as selected older texts identified and unidentified by these sources.
Results: Endocrinology's early historians in a short space of time moved from the history of testicular opotherapy to that of glandular typology and physiology and to increasingly encompassing medical-historical accounts of internal secretion as an epochal idea. Early historians nominated "precursors" to Brown-Séquard but underestimated physiologic continuities-specifically, early modern protoendocrinologic notions concerning semen as a "recrement," notions still recited by Brown-Séquard and early Brown-Séquardists as well their detractors. Brown-Séquard himself worked through this old (recremental) concept of semen between 1889 and 1892 but was later identified with it, by among others Ancel and Bouin.
Conclusion: Western sexual physiology is a medical palimpsest, the undertexts of which remain to be studied in detail.