ABSTRACT
Transsexualism has always been part of the human landscape. It is a phenomenon that has been recorded throughout history, wherever mankind has inhabited the earth (Benjamin 1966; Rubens et al. 1989). Although Abraham (1931) was the first to describe an intentional sex-change operation in a transsexual patient in 1931, this was certainly not the first use of surgery to relieve the agony of persons with irreversible gender dysphoria (Edgerton 1984). Self-castration and other forms of mutilation were earlier, more rudimentary attempts to employ surgical solutions.
