The Weird Role Of Testicles Throughout Medical History
We tend not to pay much attention to testicles unless something horrible is happening to them, and history feels the same way. Which is to say that we don’t know much about the testicular life of old-timey people who went about their old-timey days without testicular incident, but we do have plenty of records that show some very sad things happening to lots of happy-sacks. Things like …
Testicle Transplants Were All The Rage In The Early 20th Century
Do you remember the film Hands of a Stranger about a pianist getting a double hand transplant from a murder victim which then seems to drive him to madness? Wait, no; that movie is from 1962. How about that “Hell Toupee” episode of The Simpsons where Homer gets a hair transplant from Snake and becomes a criminal?
What? That episode is 22 years old? Jesus Christ.
Look, would you ever accept a ball transplant from a freshly executed criminal? Of course not. That’s a surefire recipe for getting your crotch haunted and subsequently fried by the Ghostbusters. But, in 1918, if you were an inmate in San Quentin prison, nobody was giving you the option to say “no.”
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I’d argue that any escape attempts were completely justified.
A prison doctor by the name of Leo Stanley performed a bunch of Frankenstein experiments by taking the testicles of executed prisoners and transplanting them into living ones. He was trying to cure things like acne and asthma, most likely by giving the inmates something more horrible to focus on. Because once your knackers start whispering to you in the dead of night about avenging them, a few zits just don’t seem like such a big deal.
By the 1920s, people had moved on from minor maladies and were convinced a fresh set of testes would improve sexual health, so transplants became popular among the wealthy. But since not everybody had a fresh supply of prison corpses to de-ball, they snagged their supply from monkeys and goats. Or at least mostly.
Between 1922 and 1923, there were at least five cases of people being drugged at seedy bars and taken to a back-alley surgery where a doctor “expertly” removed their testicles, stitched them up, and left them on the street. Most of the cases, for whatever reason, happened in the Chicago area, like with Henry Johnson and Joseph Wozniak, both victims of what both historians and medical professionals refuse to refer to as testicle vampirism, because they are all cowards.
Thankfully, the gonad transplant craze died soon after, as did the testicle thefts and, hopefully, the bean-bag bandits.
Semi-Castration Was Used As A (Worthless) Form of Genetic Engineering
Back during the Middle Ages, most families wanted male children; usually because a son would be expected to take over the family trade and look after his parents in their old age, which back then was all of about 40. But also there was a fair amount of straight-up gender bias, which should surprise absolutely no one.
Regardless of reasons, male children were in high demand, as were, subsequently, tools for ball amputation.
OK, let’s back up.
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All the way to Mars.
Although we now understand testicles and their function (it’s where the pee is stored, right?), things were unsurprisingly less enlightened during the Middle Ages than they were during the early 20th century. Back then, people used to believe that specific testicles made specific sperm, with the right ball being responsible for making boys, while the left one made girls. So, at one time, when a medieval family wanted a male child, the father would have his left ball chopped off before attempting procreatory activities.
Of course, the superstition eventually died out when a bunch of medieval Lance Armstrongs started showing up to church with daughters in tow. Hey, speaking of Lance Armstrong …
Doping in Ancient Greece Took A Lot of Balls
One day, the Olympics will allow athletes to be more steroid than human and give us what we want to see, which is to watch a genuine super soldier throw a discus like they were Captain Goddamn America. But for now, the Games kind of frown upon performance-enhancing substances. It’s unclear why, though, seeing as those things were present during some of the earliest Olympics in Ancient Greece.
To steady their nerves, many ancient athletes would drink wine and brandy and even experiment with magic mushrooms. Other sportsmen, however, would apparently also chew on raw animal testicles as a form of doping.
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To be fair, he looks pretty ripped.
The idea that the essence of masculinity was connected to testicles was popular in Ancient Greece, though not fully understood, which is why so many early Olympics had Rocky Mount Olympus Oysters on the menu. The little steroid balls apparently mostly came from bulls, and eating them was also seen as an act of masculinity in and of itself. So, between drinking, doing drugs, and eating weird things to prove how manly you are, it would seem that modern frats really do carry on the traditions of Ancient Greece.
There Was A Disturbing Amount Of Food Involved In Treating Testicular Distress
Celsus was a philosopher who lived in 2nd century Greece. Many of his writings were censored or banned by the early Christian church, most likely because that’s what party-poopers do when they read about rubbing honey and spices on other men’s ballsacks.
In his On Medicine, Celsus describes various treatments for swollen testicles, writing that they “should be treated with bean meal cooked in honeyed-wine or rubbed with cumin with boiled honey; or ground cumin with rose oil, or wheat flour with honey wine and cypress roots.” Basically, whenever a farmer came in complaining of a couple of ache-ers, Celsus would send them home with, quite literally, a sweet pair.
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I’m not apologizing for that joke.
Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History, on the other hand, recommended an elderberry and wine salve to ease testicular swelling. Though you'd probably be better off just drinking that wine, because his alternative method was slathering your clangers in “calf’s dung reduced in vinegar.”
To be fair, we still derive our modern medicines from the healing properties we discover in the natural world, and while barley does, in fact, have some healing properties, I'm not sure that applying a poultice made of powdered roast barley has the same effect.
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