THE HORMONES IN HUMAN REPRODUCTION 



removal of the ovaries escaped notice until Edgar Allen 

 discovered it in monkeys. 



As a matter of fact, an experiment like Allen's had once 

 been done on humans, on a large scale, and with the best 

 intentions in the world. Robert Battey, a surgeon of Augusta, 

 Georgia, in 1872 conceived the idea that neuroses and in- 

 sanity in women are often concerned with the ovaries and 

 may be treated by removal of these organs. He was probably 

 led into the notion by observation of cyclic mental disturb- 

 ance, paralleling the menses, insanity following child-bearing, 

 and other conditions in which sex and the reproductive func- 

 tions were of course concerned, though in a far more complex 

 way than he could have imagined. Battey's radical proposal 

 to remove the normal ovaries was put forward just at the 

 time when the surgeons had gained command of the operation 

 of ovariotomy (as they often ungrammatically called it). 

 Antiseptic surgery. Lister's gift to the world, was now in 

 general use, and the great American ovariotomists Ephraim 

 McDowell, the Atlees, and their followers in Britain and 

 Europe had worked out the operative technique. The opera- 

 tion was therefore relatively safe, and no doubt the patient's 

 mental condition was often improved or at least subdued by 

 the surgical intervention, with its anesthesia and opiates, 

 by the rest in bed, and the nursing and general attention. 

 At any rate "Battey's operation" was taken up widely by a 

 profession thoroughly baffled by mental disease. Thousands 

 of women were subjected to this drastic operation, not only 

 in the United States, but in England, Germany and the rest 

 of Europe, until in good time it became obvious that the 

 psychiatric results did not justify it and that insanity with 

 cyclic or sexual symptoms cannot be pinned directly to the 

 ovaries. The late Dr. Edward Mulligan of Rochester, New 

 York, told me of an incident in the last years of Battey's 

 operation. Dr. Mulligan when a young surgeon studied for 

 a time, about 1883, at Bellevue Hospital in New York City 



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