Sex and Life: Forty Years of Biological and Medical Experiments
book · 1940
SUMMARY
Steinach's English-language retrospective summary of his four decades of experimental work, adapted for general readers by Josef Loebel. Covers his sex-hormone research, sex-reversal experiments, and the vasoligation procedure. Published four years before Steinach's death and six years after testosterone was chemically isolated (1935), the book represents his late-career attempt to consolidate his scientific legacy. Contains no blinded outcome data for the vasoligation procedure. The Viking Press edition is the standard North American reference; the Faber and Faber edition is the British reference. Both are from the same text, 1940.
NOTES
Published toward the end of Steinach’s life, this work is the primary English-language source for Steinach’s own account of his research program. The vasoligation chapters present the theoretical case for the procedure and describe case outcomes in anecdotal and uncontrolled terms. The book’s 1940 publication date is significant: by then, testosterone had been isolated (1935) and synthetic androgens were available, making the theoretical basis for vasoligation obsolete. The retrospective framing does not reckon with this displacement. The book functions as an autobiographical and promotional document, not as a controlled clinical report.