Eugen Steinach

Eugen Steinach (28 January 1861 – 14 May 1944) was an Austrian

Steinach was born on 28 January 1861,

After World War I, Steinach attempted to change the sexual orientation of a homosexual man by transplanting into his groin one half of an undescended testicle that Steinach had removed from a heterosexual man. In 1923 he commissioned a film on this work.[7]

He developed the "Steinach operation," or "Steinach vasoligature," the goals of which were to reduce fatigue and the consequences of ageing and to increase overall vigor and sexual potency in men. It consisted of a half-(unilateral) vasectomy, which Steinach theorized would shift the balance from sperm production toward increased hormone production in the affected testicle.^[8][9]

Famous Steinach surgeons in the 1920s and 1930s included Victor Blum, Robert Lichtenstern and Norman Haire.^{[citation needed]}

The procedure was later discredited, but even at the peak of its popularity there were medical sceptics such as

Steinach received six nominations for the Nobel Prize in Physiology from 1921 to 1938, although he never received the prize.^[12]

Steinach worked with

He died on 14 May 1944, during exile in Switzerland.[14] Harry Benjamin, in a June 1944 obituary for his colleague, attributed the melancholy of his final years to his enforced exile in Zürich and the ‘unjust criticism’ of his rejuvenations and emphasised the ‘enormous impetus’ his work had for biochemists to concern themselves with all the endocrine glands.^[15]

Aldous Huxley's 1923 book Antic Hay makes mention of "a fifteen-year-old monkey, rejuvenated by the Steinach process."^[16][17]

• Sigmund Freud's views on homosexuality
• Serge Voronoff