Eugen Steinach

By the 1920’s Austrian researcher and physiologist Eugen Steinach was world famous; so famous that his name had been turned into a verb. Nominated for the Nobel Prize six times, with his pioneering research in endocrinology Steinach demonstrated the effect of hormones in determining masculine and feminine characteristics in humans. But that is not what made him a household name throughout the world.

Nowadays Steinach is sometimes remembered for his claim that male homosexuality could be “cured” by transplanting testicles from a heterosexual man into a homosexual man. It is worth mentioning that as horrifying as that notion sounds to us today, Steinach’s contention that homosexuality was a biological fact (albeit one that was in need of a “cure”) represented a significant advance over the belief that it was merely degeneracy and moral failure. But it wasn’t Steinach’s supposed homosexuality “cure” that made him world famous either.

The reason people in households across the world knew Steinach’s name, and the reason his name became a verb, was because of his claim that aging men could be sexually “rejuvenated” by having a vasectomy (more specifically, a “unilateral” or half vasectomy). To undergo the procedure was said to be “Steinached.” And there was no shortage of men eager to do so.

Throughout Europe, Asia, and North and South America, hundreds of men longing for rejuvenation were Steinached in the 1920’s, including Sigmund Freud and the poet William Butler Yeats. Yeats claimed to have experienced a sudden outburst of creative ability and a “second puberty” thanks to the procedure. Newspapers across the world ran titillating stories for captivated readers, describing aging millionaires who were supposedly turned into spry young bucks after being Steinached. It was this “Steinach Rejuvenation Method” that carried Dr. Steinach to the height of his fame.

By the late 1930’s the “rejuvenation method” had fallen out of favor, but Steinach was still active and doing important hormonal research. In March 1938 he was giving a series of lectures in Switzerland, accompanied by his wife, when Nazi Germany seized Austria. Both Steinach and his wife were Jewish, and it was impossible for them to return home. The Nazis confiscated Steinach’s library and destroyed his research materials. Although the Swiss government granted him asylum, the sudden exile from their home devastated the Steinachs. Mrs. Steinach committed suicide in September 1938 and Eugen died a few years later.

Eugen Steinach died in Switzerland at age 84, on May 14, 1944.