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We cannot . . . perform the comic
opera bouffe of transmuting an old hag into a giddy
young damsel. . . . But, under certain conditions,
we can stretch the span of . . . usefulness, and
enable the patient to recapture the raptures, if not
the roses of youth.—Eugen Steinach
I n
her autobiography, Gertrude Atherton pronounces her
novel Black
Oxen(1923) a
‘‘miracle [that] gushed out like a geyser that had
been ‘capped’ down in
the cellars of my mind, battling for release.’’
According to Atherton, she finished
this novel in record time, typing at a speed she
‘‘had never commanded before.’’1
The geyser propelling the completion
of what would become one of Atherton’s
most successful and controversial books was nothing
less than a ‘‘modern
scientific fountain of youth’’—the result, she
claims, of a course of anti-aging
treatment that gave her ‘‘renewed mental vitality
and neural energy’’ ( A,
556, 562).
In Atherton’s case, this therapy consisted of eight
sessions of X-rays directed at
the ovaries. Known as rejuvenation (or reactivation,
the term Atherton preferred),
the treatment was promoted in the 1920s by
scientists, physicians—and
Atherton— as a means for restoring sexual and mental
potency.
Rejuvenation therapy was big news in the 1920s when
Viennese physiologist
and biologist Eugen Steinach published the results
of his early vasoligature
operations. First performed on rats in 1910 and
later on humans in 1918, the
procedure tied off the sperm ducts, which
purportedly had the effect of reversing
the internal and external signs of aging.2
Steinach
claimed that attacking the
aging process ‘‘at its . . . . . . . . .
Engineering
Womanhood - complete article
American Literature ,
Volume 76, Number 2, June 2004. Copyright © 2004 by
Duke University
Press.
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