How Yeats Revived His Sex Drive (And His Creativity)
Vasectomies were once sexy. So why are they feared today?
Before the Spring of 1934, acclaimed poet and die-hard romantic William Butler Yeats trundled into his sixty-ninth year. He was not in a good place. His health was failing, his sex drive was gone, and his soulmate and companion of forty years, Lady Gregory, had died.
His grief also cut its teeth on his creativity. Yeats had not written a single word in over a year.
Yeats was tortured by a belief that many artists share — without passion, one cannot create. And with his approaching mortality, his prophetic “No country for old men” words were becoming a reality.
Simply put, Yeats was sadder than his saddest poem.
Fortunately, that hopeful spring, he discovered a way to revive his lost vigor and cure his writer’s block — the Steinach operation.
How Yeats became the “Gland Old Man” and a sexual Dynamo
The Steinach operation or Steinach Rejuvenation procedure was developed by the Institute of Experimental Biology Director in Vienna, Eugen Steinach. The procedure was done by cutting and sealing the tube that carries sperm to one testicle.
In other words, the Steinach operation was a unilateral vasectomy.
Now stay with me because this logic gets squirrelly. Steinach believed that by eliminating sperm production in one testicle, an older man’s sex drive and youthfulness would return. Basically, older men could not multitask. Or at least their balls could not. So Steinach concluded that if the testicles weren’t busy producing sperm, they could keep penises hard.
The history of the first vasectomies is not one you will read in the medical brochures. In 1899, Henry Sharp performed the first human vasectomy. His patient was a nineteen-year-old boy suffering from “excessive masturbation.” According to Sharp, after the surgery, he “became more of a sunny disposition, brighter of intellect and ceased to masturbate.”
By the time the eugenics movement was in full swing, vasectomies were performed to sterilize men deemed unfit to reproduce — i.e., criminals and the mentally ill. Sharp taught that reabsorption of the sperm strengthened the mind.
And with all that sperm-feeding madness, the Steinach operation was born.
The first Steinach operation was performed in 1918 by urologist Robert Lichtenstren on a 44-year-old coachman. The coachman had grown increasingly senile and was suffering from malnutrition. Eighteen months after the surgery, the patient’s youth was restored. Steinach documented the case but failed to correlate his patient’s health improvements with his improved nutrition.
The Steinach operation was controversial, yet thousands of placebo vasectomies were performed, mostly on wealthy, older men. Eventually, the snip snip became so popular that it was referred to as being “Steinached.”
As its popularity increased, the Steinach treatment also developed a blue pill stigma. Most affluent men denied undergoing it. In one hilarious 1923 article, Col. Edward H. R. Green, son of the wealthiest woman in America, Hetty Green, denied being Steinached. Green emphatically claimed that his renewed health was due to his doctors treating his hemorrhoids. Sure.
Sigmund Freud admitted to being Steinached but was disappointed with the results. Apparently, he thought it would not only improve his sexual vigor but also cure his oral cancer. It did neither.
The surgery did restore Yeats’ sex drive and his writer mojo. Or so he claimed. In a 1937 letter, he boasted that the surgery “revived his creative power.” It also revived his sex drive so much that he referred to his new sexual prowess as his “second puberty” and strong enough to “last me until I die.”
Yeats, you dirty devil.
The proof is in the placebo pudding. Yeat’s last works were arguably some of his best. And a few months after his rejuvenation snip, he began a tumultuous affair with Margot Ruddock — a twenty-six-year-old poet, actress, and dancer. The Dublin press had a field day with his May/December romance and called Yeats the “gland old man.” That’s ballsy.
It gets wackier.
Steinach also believed he could “cure” homosexual men by replacing one homosexual testicle with a testicle from a heterosexual male. The belief at the time was that gay men had an oversecretion of feminizing hormones, which testicle transplants could balance. (By this logic, macho men could have been better balanced by attaching ovaries. But alas…no such surgeries were performed.)
Of course, many physicians ridiculed Steinach’s work, but surgeons continued to perform vasectomies to invigorate men.
How to rebrand those un-sexy vasectomies
Imagine if Steinach had been correct about vasectomies treating sexual dysfunction. The procedure would be far more popular today.
Although misinformation persists, a vasectomy only affects the vas deferens — the duct that transports mature sperm to the urethra before ejaculation. A vasectomy does not affect erectile dysfunction. (Although some couples report more frequent sex after the procedure, probably due to eliminating pregnancy fears.)
Still, the most commonly cited reason men fear vasectomies today is the belief that it will reduce their masculinity. In one 2021 survey, men were asked how they perceive the word “vasectomy” vs. “sterilization.” Men overwhelmingly feared the term “sterilization” and equated it with “sinister” and “barbaric.” Well, then, let’s not use that word.
Vasectomies just need better branding. Or a better spokesmodel. I vote for George Clooney, rumored to have had a vasectomy in 1997. (If that rumor is true, he most likely reversed it. Clooney had twins in 2017.)
Instead of calling vasectomies getting “Steinached,” we could call them getting “Clooneyed.”
Yeats would approve. He once wrote, “An aged man is but a paltry thing.” But an aged Clooneyed man…now that’s sexy.
More from Carlyn Beccia:
To read my entire collection of 100+ articles on sexual education, please become my referred subscriber. A portion of your monthly Medium subscription supports my work.