Spermine (seminal and tissue polyamine)

Spermin is a catalytic agent that increases oxidation processes in the tissues and acts as a physiological antitoxin against 'autointoxication' (endogenous metabolic self-poisoning). On Poehl's account its decline with age explains senescence, so administering it restores 'vital energy', improves nutrition, and checks senile decline; it was indicated for senile debility, neurasthenia, convalescence, and male sexual weakness.

Spermine is a ubiquitous aliphatic polyamine of living cells, not a quasi-vital catalyst peculiar to semen. Its free base was isolated and characterized in the 1920s (Dudley and Rosenheim; see Pegg, J Biol Chem 2018); its known biological role is binding and stabilizing nucleic acids and modulating cell growth and translation (Lightfoot and Hall, Nucleic Acids Res 2014), with no demonstrated oxidation-catalyst or antitoxin action of the kind Poehl claimed and no rejuvenating effect on senile organisms. At the turn of the century spermine's chemical identity was itself unsettled and was frequently confused with piperazine, which a Berlin firm sold under the trade name 'Spermin', with the piperazine formula printed under the name spermine as late as 1903 (Mann 1954). Mann notes polyamines do have pharmacodynamic activity and that parenteral spermine is toxic in animals, so spermine is not inert; what was disconfirmed is Poehl's specific rejuvenation-and-antitoxin doctrine.