iscovery by Brown-Sequard, a quarter of a
century ago, that the ingestion of the testicular juices in states of
debility and senility acted as a beneficial stimulant and tonic, opened
the way to a new field of therapeutics. Many investigators in various
countries have found that testicular extracts, and more especially the
spermin as studied by Poehl,[140] and by him regarded as a positive
katalysator or accelerator of metabolic processes, exert a real influence
in giving tone to the heart and other muscles, and in improving the
metabolism of the tissues even when all influences of mental suggestion
have been excluded.[141]

As the ovaries are strictly analogous to the testes, it was
surmised that ovarian extract might prove a drug equally valuable
with testicular products. As a matter of fact, ovarian extract,
in the form of ovarin, etc., would seem to have proved beneficial
in various disorders, more especially in anaemia and in troubles
due to the artificial menopause. In most conditions, however, in
which it has been employed the results are doubtful or uncertain,
and some authorities believe that the influence of suggestion
plays a considerable part here.

There is, however, another use which is subserved by the testicular
products, a use which may indeed be said to be implied in those uses to
which reference has already been made, but is yet historically the latest
to be realized and studied. It was not until 1869 that Brown-Sequard first
suggested that an important secretion was elaborated by the ductless
glands and received into the circulation, but that suggestion proved to be
epoch-making. If these glandular secretions are so valuable when
administered as drugs to other persons, must they not be of far greater
value when naturally secreted and poured out into the circulation in the
living body? It is now generally believed, on the basis of a large and
various body of evidence, that this is undoubtedly so. In a very crude
form, indeed, this belief is by no means modern. In opposition to the old
writers who were inclined to regard the semen as an excretion which it was
beneficial to expel, there were other ancient authorities who argued that
it was beneficial to retain it as being a vital fluid which, if
reabsorbed, served to invigorate the body. The great physiologist, Haller,
in the middle of the eighteenth century, came very near to the modern
doctrine when he stated in hi