Read on Twitter
"Thus glandular injections, as well as the Steinach operation (which renders an external secretion internal by making gonads wholly ductless), often cause complete changes in emotional life."
- H. P. Lovecraft to Alfred Galpin, 20 Jan 1933, LAGO 280
- H. P. Lovecraft to Alfred Galpin, 20 Jan 1933, LAGO 280
I've touched on this before, but for anyone unfamiliar: Eugen Steinach was the scientist whose work became the grandfather for contemporary gender reassignment surgery and hormone replacement therapy. In Lovecraft's day, this was broadly classified under "glands" especially in
the popular consciousness. Early science fiction even had an entire subgenre of "gland stories" where most anything could happen if you mucked about with glands. Unfortunately, there was also a lot of fraud during the period, and elsewhere Lovecraft mentions John R. Brinkley, a
doctor who specialized in "goat glands" (i.e. surgically inserting a goat teste into the scrotum), and Serge Voronoff gained fame and wealth as the "monkey gland" expert for grafting chimpanzee testicles to humans. But it's always interesting to see that Lovecraft was "read up"
on sexology enough for the period to at least be aware that human sex hormones could have a tremendous impact on mental and emotional well-being.
If I ever find the right work to discuss it on Deep Cuts, I'd like to talk about how "transgender" was understood back in Lovecraft's day versus today.
