Urology & Anecdote

If he had not had an attack of shingles, Dr. Hugh Hampton Young of Johns Hopkins might never have written his autobiography. And that would have been a pity. For, besides being the foremost urologist in the U. S., 70-year-old Dr. Young is a raconteur of parts. His memoirs, Hugh Young: A Surgeon's Autobiography (Harcourt, Brace; $5), bursting with scientific facts and exquisite drawings of urologic diseases and operations, make a lusty, gusty book.

"In 1912," says Dr. Young, "a big, burly man with a huge head and a strong face appeared at my office . . . diamonds sparkled from his vest, watch chain, cuff links, and the head of his cane." He was James Buchanan ("Diamond Jim") Brady. Among his imposing list of ailments: "Bright's disease [inflammation of the kidneys], generalized urinary infection, inflammation and obstruction of the prostate gland, difficulty and frequency of urination . . . angina pectoris [heart disease] and high blood pressure." Dr. Young cured his prostate trouble by using a "punch" of his own invention--a straight tube with a short, curved inner end which, when passed through the urethra (urinary canal), trapped in a small window of the instrument the bar of tissue which was damming up his bladder and cut it with an inner, sliding steel tube.

For the remaining five years of his life, Diamond Jim showered the doctor with presents and confidences. He never smoked nor drank, remarked Dr. Young, but used to say shyly: "There is one other little pleasure I am very fond of."

When Diamond Jim felt twinges of conscience about squandering money on actresses, Dr. Young suggested that he might build a Johns Hopkins urologic hospital as a "monument." In May 1915, the James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute war, dedicated, and Diamond Jim, ablaze with jewels, was a one-day monument in person.

During World War I Dr. Young was in charge of all venereal-disease work in the A. E. F. His job, he once told a sarcastic colonel, was to "make the underworld safe for democracy."

Among his many reforms: 1) soldiers who contracted venereal disease were court-martialed, deprived of pay; 2) all men far from prophylactic stations were given kits, and tubes of Metchnikoff's paste for prevention of syphilis; 3) all men who contracted syphilis were given injections of a new French arsenic preparation (no-varsenobenzol) based on Paul Ehrlich's 606. The older drug had been difficult to give, painful to take, but novarsenobenzol (neoarsphenamine) was so great an improvement that some doctors could make 100 injections an hour.

In the regular Army at home, the annual rate for new cases of venereal disease had been go to every 1,000 men. A. E. F. rate fell to 16 per thousand. Ordinarily, the 2,000,000 men in the A. E. F. would have needed 20,000 beds for venereal disease. Thanks to Dr. Young, not one special venereal hospital was necessary.

An inventor as well as a famed surgeon, Dr. Young has spent many hours in the Institute's tool shop. He designed a modern cystoscope, a tubular instrument with a prism and electric light, used for examining the interior of the bladder. Other inventions: a combination cystoscope and radium applicator for treating tumors of the bladder; a special type of lithotrite, an instrument for crushing stones in the bladder.

Dr. Young is most widely known for an operation commonly used for relieving prostate trouble, which afflicts one out of every five middle-aged men. He makes an incision in front of the anus and "shells out" the enlarged lobes of the prostate. His punch operation started the removal of prostatic enlargements through the natural urinary opening. He also designed radical operations for cancer of the prostate, a number of operations to treat hermaphrodites, restore them to their predominant sex. One "girl" whom he turned into a man fell in love with an Institute nurse and married her. His enormous tome Genital Abnormalities, Hennaphroditism and Related Adrenal Diseases is a classic.

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