"AGED 64 : FEELS 1000."

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5321, 3 September 1928, Page 3

"AGED 64 : FEELS 1000."

VOBOXOf F PATIENT'S TRAGEDY. ONCE ACTIVE JOURNALIST. "I am sixty-four years old, but 1 feel a thousand. I am miserable, weak, and helpless. I can hardly walk ; I can hardly see. 1 sit all day loijg. every day at my windojv here to catch a little of the Sun aflFfresli air. I yearn for the; days, of iny health and vigour so recent, yet so far away, find I can onjy dream • ntyv of getting back to, my home and family in America.” Not even the most intimate wojiild recognislci if they did’ not know the facts, a shrunken, wizened', fragile creating as Carrie van Duesen Kins, ' one-time American woman journalist and dramatic, full of vitality, with a keen brain and a vigorous, personality (states the “Daily Express Paris cor respondent.) Tbit, shred and- shadp.w of womanhood has, riow only one claim .to the attention of her contemporaries. She, is the first woman in the world to. have a Voronoff monkey gland. “What made you do it’” 1 as^et ' •Mrs King. “Were you ill or in dapgqi of loiißlg your faculties 1” , „ “No, I was just crazy, that’s all, replied the poor creature in thff arm- ; chair. “I w,a.s in the full glow o life and vitality, physical and menta , an|d my e#s were bright and sparkling, but I had heard about Dr. Voronoff, and a ma.d impulse -«hed me. 1 think it was just the spirit a venture. . “I suddenly hit on the idea that r would be the first woman in the wor d to test this claim for rejuvenation,;and if it was really true that the transplan,taion of the g.la ; nd of the monkey restored the full vigour of youth to ahumnn being past tne ( prime, or what is called the prime 1 . Not that Ife o,ld in the slightest degre*-on the contrary, I felt then, when I was fifty-nine, that I should' ejai.ily live Wl be 100. . I just wanted to see wha effects the, operation would have, so ... that I co,uld tell the world of. tnw wonderful discovery which wo,uld lead > to the rejuvenation of the human race. • awonderful man. “I believed in; Dr. Vojronoff—that wa-; why I had the pluck and confidence. to plunge into the .adventure. I think even now that he is a wonderful man. I admire him because I think that for animals nis process ol regeneration may be sound, but fo.r human beings, anyway for women, it is impossible, and as. for I'ving to HO -well, what chance have I in) tnis state.? I have good reason not to believe' in this oper.at'on. Now look at me—instead of leaping into youth 1 h.a.ve sunk into physival senility be, fore my time. „ . . “Well, without any of my friends knowing anything I underk went the • I xelt all lig • it. I did not feel an>y younger vigorous. Indeed, I could not, because, as I said, I was youthful and healthy before it. Nor. did I fe.el any adverse effects, for a time, but suddenly I began to get old. The face that was formerly taut and ifull sagged, pr. Voronoff operated on me again to cure thia, and after that I completely went to pieces. In two years’ time I had sunk intoi what 1 am now—l am nearly blind, and without physical vitality. “Of course', yqu see what I. am, but you do not know who I was. I kno;W everybody and everybody knows me. I was in the original capt of ‘H.M.S. Pinafore’ in London, and I toured all over America singing in Gilbert and 'Sullivan. I kffew W. S. Gilbert. 1 took over Eug.ene. Sandow and introduced him in America. I know Charlie Cochran, Maurice Chevalier, Adolphe Menjou, Anna, Held, and scores of other famous artists,—they' are all my friends.” ONLY STANDS WITH DIFFICULTY. The pathos, of this Shrivelled-up Qld figure, huddled up in l the- armchair by •the window, is o.vejpowering. Only with difficulty could she stand, leaning heavily on her stick, to have hoi. photograph taken. I have collected tier words and given them form, but her conversation is rambling and inconsequent, with dashes of vigour. The most tragic features, if it all is the animation of n ’S|mile which suddenly lights up her whole: countenance and brings a flash to the old A z worn eyes. Then the light vanishes "7 as suddenly as; it came, as if it were a message from a forgotten age. Her last words to me were rigjiiflcajit. “I have ve’i\ little now, and I can do ■frothing. Dr. Vor.ono.ff is a rich man. Why can’t 'he help me ?” Dr. Voronoff, it is, understood, maintains that Mrs King was, sixty-ejight years old, not fifty-nine, when she consulted him in 1923, and thaf she was then a broken-down) bent o,ld woman who walked with- difficulty, and complained of pains all oyer, her body and of her eyesight. It is stated that Dr. Vor'onO|ff does not pretend that his operation ic as effective on women of that age, and state of iff a younger, woiman, nor that the good effect will last more than five years in mbit cases. Dr. Voronoff now performs a second operation at the end of five years, it i- : said, on most of his men and wffmen patients. ■ Dr. Voronoff is understood to have asfeioted Mrs King financially when she 'declared tha,t her health was breaking down again, a.nd' that she was without meaps.