ABSTRACT
In the sixteenth century, the Chinese Textbook of Internal Medicine was the first to suggest the existence of a period of male menopause that began in the fifth decade of life (1). Toward the end of the nineteenth century, Brown-Sequard, the French neurologist, tried to rejuvenate himself by injecting an aqueous extract of animal testes. This led Victor DeLespinase in Chicago to undertake the first human testicular transplant in an attempt to delay the aging process. The shortage of available human testis donors led to Serge Voronoff introducing the concept of chimpanzee testicular transplants for the rich in search of the fountain of youth. This approach was highly utilized in the first part of the twentieth century. It was not until the 1930s, however, that testosterone was isolated from bull testes, enabling its synthetic manufacture.
