The Riddle of Gender - Deborah Rudacille [49]
The first stage of the treatment involved discontinuing the oral doses of estradiol, and beginning a rigorous regimen of fluid collection. Hamburger’s young patient was instructed to save every drop of urine excreted. “Thus began a period in my life when I was never to be without a two-quart bottle, discreetly concealed in a black bag,” Jor-gensen writes. “I began to refer to it jokingly as my yor mor taske, which means ‘midwife’s bag’ in Danish.”
After Hamburger had established baseline levels of male and female hormones in Jorgensen’s body by running tests on the urine, he began injections of high-potency estrogen. “The first few injections brought my energy back up a startling rate,” Jorgensen reports. The injections were then replaced by the administration of much higher oral doses of estrogen. “By these methods of hormone administration, the male complement of my system was being suppressed into a slumbering state. I was undergoing what medical experts called a ‘chemical castration.’”
It was during this period that Jorgensen had her first plastic surgery—one that had nothing to do with sex but that corrected a condition that she had found a source of annoyance all of her life. She had her “prominent” ears, a source of lifelong teasing, pinned back.
Miraculously, the complex I’d had for years disappeared almost overnight. I regarded it as a small victory, as it was the first conquest of one of the things I disliked about myself.” At the same time, the high doses of estrogen were “imparting added weight in the hips and some bust development,” without any adverse effect on the pituitary—one of the doctor’s concerns. Most important of all to Jorgensen, “when the male chemistry was inert, I became alive and vigorous and felt fully capable of meeting my responsibilities and problems with competence.”
After five months, the doses of estrogen were halted so that the experimenters could assess their subject’s reaction to the withdrawal. “The hormone tablets were discontinued for several weeks and I was upset physically and mentally as the male hormones, no longer suppressed, took over again. Almost at once the old fatigue and disturbing emotions returned,” Jorgensen reports. Around this time, Hamburger sent his patient to see Dr. George Sturup, a psychiatrist. Sturup’s job was to find some psychological explanation for his patient’s desire to become a woman, some “childhood trauma or emotional aberrations that would give me the cause.” He never found one, and later told Jorgensen, “I felt you could not be cured, psychologically. After many visits, it was finally clear to me.” Jorgensen’s physicians then applied to the Ministry of Justice for permission to surgically castrate their patient. Sturup applied to the Medico-Legal Council of the Ministry, submitting his findings together with those of Hamburger and the other physicians who had consulted on the case. Jorgensen too was asked to submit a letter, stating why the surgery was being requested. She closed the letter with a poignant plea, not only for herself but also for the unknown others who shared the mysterious condition, which her doctors were alternately calling “genuine transvestism” and “psychic hermaphroditism.” “To return to my old way of life would destroy all my hopes and ambitions as well as my body. This operation would not only be helping me, but perhaps open a whole new field of investigation for similar cases. If you could really realize how desperately we, of my kind, need help.”
The last hurdle to surgery was cleared when Helga Pederson, the attorney general of Denmark, brushed aside the reservations expressed by the Ministry of Justice about performing a castration on someone who was not even a citizen of Denmark. The operation was performed on September 24, 1951. Soon after the surgery, Jorgensen