Increased physical stamina. “Facility of intellectual labour.” A longer jet of urine. These were some of the effects that Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard, a French physiologist, reported to a Société de Biologie of Paris meeting in 1889. He had been injecting himself with a liquid made of pulverized animal testicles in an attempt to reverse “the most troublesome miseries of advanced life.” He took 10 injections over three weeks, and experienced “radical change” for about a month after.
“It is hardly possible to explain the effects I have observed on myself otherwise than by admitting that the liquid injected possesses the power of increasing the strength of many parts of the human organism,” he told the gathering.
