The Riddle of Gender - Deborah Rudacille [48]
Within two weeks of beginning daily doses of ethynyl estradiol in 1949, Jorgensen noticed physical effects (“sensitivity in my breast area and a noticeable development”) and emotional ones. “The great feeling of listlessness and fatigue, which often seemed to be with me even after a full night’s sleep, had disappeared. I was refreshed and alive and no longer felt the need to take little cat naps during the day.” Encouraged by these results, Jorgensen speculated that “if the female hormones that I was taking without guidance could have such a pronounced effect on me, would it not be possible for an expert to administer them in proper proportions, so that my body’s chemistry would be in complete and correct balance?”
Jorgensen craftily confessed her secret to a fellow student, Gene-vieve Angelo, whose husband was an M.D. The friend arranged an appointment with her husband, Dr. Joseph Angelo, and after weeks of discussion and research in medical journals, Dr. Angelo agreed to supervise the estrogen administration. “It was his plan to retreat and use strong doses of testosterone, thereby returning me to my original maleness, if the estrogen injections had proven unsatisfactory,” Jorgensen writes. Around the same time, she received a letter from a Connecticut physician whom she had consulted a few years earlier, who pointed out “the course of treatment that you requested” (sex-change surgery) had been carried out in Sweden. Soon after finishing the course at the medical technician’s school, in December 1949, Jorgensen decided to visit family and friends in Denmark, and to proceed from there to Stockholm, “where I hoped to find doctors who would be willing to handle my case.”
Arriving in Denmark in May 1950, Jorgensen discovered that there was no need to go to Sweden. Instead, in July, she visited the Statens Seruminstitut, in Copenhagen, searching for Dr. Christian Hamburger, a prominent endocrinologist who had published a number of hormone studies. Learning that he was on vacation in the country, the impatient young American sought him out at home and, after pouring out “the whole story of my perplexing life,” asked him point-blank “if he thought I was a homosexual.” Hamburger replied negatively, and when pressed for an explanation, told Jorgensen that “the trouble is very deep-rooted in the cells of your body. Outwardly, you have many of the sex characteristics of a man. You were declared a boy at birth and you have grown up, so very unhappily, in the guise of a man. But inwardly, it is quite possible that you are a woman. Your body chemistry and all of your body cells, including your brain cells, may be female.”
This theory, which had its roots in Steinach’s guinea pig experiments and subsequent animal experimentation, remained untested in humans—even though, by 1950, rudimentary “sex change” surgeries had already been carried out in more than one European country, on both male-bodied and female-bodied individuals. But European views on these matters were not generally accepted, or well-advertised, in the United States. Meanwhile, in Denmark, Dr. Hamburger was looking for a human guinea pig, and he found one in the young American who had traveled to Europe to seek the knowledge and understanding that he hadn’t been able to find at home. It was a fateful meeting. Jor-gensen recalls Hamburger’s proposal in her autobiography. “There are several questions about the interaction of the hormone which are not quite clear now and I am very much interested in having you help me clear up these complicated matters. They can only be accomplished by observing a person over long periods of time. Since they are based on urinalysis, it will be