Serge Voronoff
Monkey-gland rejuvenation surgeon
Timeline - Voronoff in the record
5 events from the Ivanov's Ghost archive.
Serge Voronoff is born; he will make his career as a surgeon in Paris.
In Vienna, Eugen Steinach pioneers 'rejuvenation' by vasectomy and gland surgery, part of the interwar craze that Voronoff will carry to celebrity. By 1925 Nature and JAMA treat the two men as one phenomenon; the year 1912 is the one usually given and is not verified here.
Voronoff grafts ape testicle tissue into aging men, promising rejuvenation; his xenotransplantations run from about 1910 to 1930, and 1920 is the year usually given for the first human grafts. The operation becomes an international craze.
Popular accounts have Voronoff running a private ape farm on the Italian Riviera to supply his surgeries. No source used here confirms the farm, its place or its year.
Voronoff dies, his name a synonym for medical overreach. Sources give 2 and 3 September 1951, and the place of death is not documented in this archive.
The research file for this dossier holds 8 verified source entries, 8 of them distinct works. The sources page lists every one of them with what it covers, how it was reached, and the sharpest point at which this page and its sources come apart.