Borrowed vitality
The recurring promise that age can be reversed by acting on the body's vital substances. Charles Brown-Séquard injected a testicular extract into himself in 1889 and reported renewed vigor; Alexander von Poehl marketed spermine on the same organotherapy logic; Serge Voronoff grafted monkey-gland tissue into wealthy patients in the 1920s; Paul Niehans injected fetal lamb cells from the 1930s; Alexander Bogomolets promoted an antireticular cytotoxic serum. The premise persists at the present terminus in therapeutic plasma exchange paired with intravenous immunoglobulin, which removes and replaces the patient's own aged plasma rather than transfusing a young donor's (a mechanism distinct from the separate 'young plasma' fresh-donor model). Each generation acted on a different substance and by a different route (inject, graft, infuse, or exchange) while keeping the structural cycle intact: a credentialed promoter, exclusive or costly access, a vague or surrogate mechanism, a financial interest, and an evidence base that never demonstrated a hard-endpoint benefit under controlled assessment.
The borrowed-vitality thread is the archive’s oldest mechanical idea: that the failing body can be refreshed by acting on its vital substances. The route changes across the eras (an injected extract, a grafted gland, an infused fetal cell or serum, an exchange of the patient’s own plasma), but the appeal and the failure mode do not. Miller and Fulmer’s 2007 urological review traces the injection, ligation, and transplantation procedures of the late-19th and early-20th centuries and records that none demonstrated endocrine efficacy under controlled assessment. The member cases below carry the specific sourcing for each episode; the present-day terminus is documented in its own case.
- Brown-Séquard testicular extract (organotherapy) (1889–1894)
- Spermin-Poehl (Sperminum-Poehl) organotherapy (1893–1908)
- Voronoff testicular xenograft (chimpanzee-to-human) (1920–1935)
- Cellular therapy (Frischzellentherapie) (1931–1971)
- Antireticular cytotoxic serum (ACS / ATsS) (1934–1950)
- Therapeutic plasma exchange with intravenous immunoglobulin (TPE-IVIG) (2024–present) · LIVE TERMINUS
- Injection, ligation and transplantation: the search for the glandular fountain of youth (2007)
- Multi-omics Analysis Reveals Biomarkers That Contribute to Biological Age Rejuvenation in Response to Single-Blinded Randomized Placebo-Controlled Therapeutic Plasma Exchange (2025)
- The Life and Death of a Soviet-Era Search for Longevity (2024)