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[PROFESSOR PHILIP PHILIPPOVICH PREOBRAZHENSKY’S COLLEAGUE] Omolozhenie organizma po metodu Shteinakha [i.e. Body Rejuvenation by the Method of Steinach]

Koltsov, N.

Item #2058

Petrograd: Vremia, 1922. 39 pp. 17,5x12 cm. In original wrappers with a decorative frame and publisher’s logo designed by Sergei Chekhonin. Some spots and bookshop stamps on the covers, pencil signature on t.p., otherwise very good.

First edition. Very rare.
This interesting book covers endocrine-stimulating procedures in the early USSR. In particular, the author suggested them for correction of person’s sexual orientation.

A pioneer of Soviet modern genetics Nikolai Koltsov (1872-1940) supported the popular surgeries reversing the consequences of aging. He highly influenced the early years of Soviet biology, starting with the foundation of the Institute of Experimental Biology in 1917 and forming the Russian Eugenics Society in 1920. Although Koltsov was blamed for an anti-Soviet organization in 1920, he was the head of the Institute for a long time. As the geneticist Nikolai Vavilov, Koltsov was sharply criticized in 1940 and died the same year, most likely, after poisoning by NKVD.
In the early Soviet Union, apart from other experiments, Koltsov promoted ‘Steinach operation’, practiced by an Austrian hormone researcher Eugen Steinach. “Koltsov personally watched the process of rehabilitation and got to know that biology may postpone human death”, the book states. This method to “rejuvenile human organism” by vasectomy was popular enough in the early Soviet Union alongside other countries. Besides, Koltsov was interested in Steinach’s studies of artificial hermaphroditism. He published various methods by which both male and female gonads had optimal conditions to adapt. Koltsov considered that operations on human organisms naturally develop a series of experiments on animals. He writes: “Even more often than in appearance, hermaphroditism affects the psyche. “Unnatural” sexual attraction show up in “homosexual” people, even with a completely normal body structure. Everywhere authorities are fighting homosexuality, as if it is an evil will, and quite recently we witnessed how England destroyed one of its most talented citizens for his homosexual attraction. If hermaphroditism is the result of the simultaneous development of gonads of two genders, then mental homosexuality could be explained by the same anatomical reason. In this case, the method of curing this anomaly would be in the surgeon’s hands.”
Koltsov outlines experiments made by Steinach and Lichtenstern. They castrated four homosexual men and transplanted cryptorchid testicles from heterosexuals instead of their testes (which the scientists studied separately). He further writes that the operation succeeded and the patients changed their sexual behavior. “Undoubtedly, we see a very interesting attempt to find a practical solution to a problem that is important to humanity. And it may very well be that if the English judges had been familiar with the views and experiments of Steinach, then Oscar Wilde would have continued writing even now.”

The only paper copy is located in University of North Carolina.

Price: $1,500.00

Status: On Hold