Research reveals studies to ‘cure’ gays in Brazil from the 1930s-40s

Monkey testicle transplants, testicular extract injections, electroshock, thyroid massage, respiratory gymnastics, constipation treatment, psychoanalysis, changing the environment and even reading novels about heterosexual passions.

The compendium to “prevent” and “cure” homosexuality in the 1930s/1940s was vast and went everywhere, according to the doctoral thesis authored by historian Rodrigo Ramos Lima, recently approved by the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation.

In addition to prejudice, the treatments reflected the anxieties of the time, according to the historian. The world then registered a demographic decline of tens of millions of people, victims of the First World War and the Spanish Flu, and new studies and therapies emphasized the importance of human reproduction.

Added to the developmental context of the Vargas Era (1930-1946) and conservative currents such as integralism, ideals of male virility, reproductive capacity and heterosexuality supported studies that saw gays, lesbians, impotent men and children with neurological problems such as bodies to be corrected or discarded. “It was the period of eugenic selection, of strong and virile bodies”, says Lima.

The most shocking experiment reported was that conducted by the coroner and university professor Leonídio Ribeiro (1893-1976), founder and director of the Criminal Anthropology Laboratory, linked to the Civil Police of Rio.

The police institution was known at the time for promoting the repression of groups such as homosexuals, blacks, samba dancers and Afro-Brazilian religions.

Leonídio, in turn, was a relevant figure in the medical and social scene of the then federal capital, with dozens of articles and books on forensic medicine published and lectures abroad. In Italy, he was even received by Mussolini in 1935 and praised the achievements of fascism in that country.

A survey by historian Alcidesio de Oliveira Júnior states that Leonídio also worked with Filinto Muller, head of Getúlio Vargas’ political police, to update scientific techniques for identifying and treating “pathological criminals” in Brazil.

The aim of the research was to prove the hormonal origin of homosexuality. As a coroner for the Civil Police, Leonidio had access to the detainees and used in the study at least 195 gay men detained in the streets on charges of indecent exposure, vagrancy and prostitution. The photos are part of the book “Homosexualism and Endocrinology” (Rio de Janeiro, ed. Francisco Alves, 1938).

Although not classified as a crime in Brazil, homosexuality was considered a disease, a status that lasted until 1990, when the World Health Organization removed it from the international list of pathologies. In the American Psychiatric Association’s handbook, it was no longer classified as a mental disorder in 1973.

Homosexuals were photographed nude, usually in pairs or trios, and distributed into “active” and “passive” categories; the latter were objects of further study. Leonídio registered characteristics considered feminine and that would be present in gay men, such as little hair on the body, pubis in a V shape and distribution of body fat.

Inspired by surgeries that implanted tissues of one species into another (so-called xenotransplantation), carried out by French physician of Russian origin Serge Samuel Voronoff (1866-1951), the coroner recommended grafting and transplantation of monkey testicles that would contain sex hormones capable of reversing homosexuality and could arouse “the sexual desire and the desire to marry”.

The Criminal Anthropology Laboratory ended its activities in 1946, at the end of the Vargas government, but recommendations for the treatment of similar homosexuals were also made in private clinics in Rio.

Hernani de Irajá (1894-1969), considered the father of sexology in Brazil, reported in his book “Treatment of Sexual Males” (Rio de Janeiro, ed. Freitas Bastos, 1933) the use of a therapeutic arsenal ranging from electroshock to injections of testicular extracts and readings of novels of heterosexual passions.

Of the 93 cases he said he had treated, Irajá claimed to have cured 12 — the performance was modest, but the doctor said he was confident because a colleague would have obtained the “conversion” of a lesbian with similar treatment.

Rodrigo Lima tells in his thesis that, in the second edition of the same book (1937), Irajá also describes the prescription of drugs containing sex hormones for the treatment of gay men, although he again registers that “the homosexual desires remained in most patients”.

One of the drugs described was Pansexol, created by the renowned psychiatrist Antônio Austregésilo from bull testicle extracts and the yohimbine plant.

Originally sold to treat problems such as sexual impotence and nervous breakdown, Pansexol was also indicated to increase the virility of gay men.

Lima also reveals reports of the use of sperm injections to sterilize Brazilian women during the 1930s.

The experiments were conducted by Manuel Gonçalves Loforte (1908-1987), a professor at the Faculty of Medicine of Porto Alegre (now UFRGS), based on similar studies carried out with Argentine women.

Loforte defended that people with tuberculosis, syphilis and leprosy should be sterilized because they would be “beings unfit for reproduction or that they would conceive of beings undesirable to society”. The doctor reported having submitted 28 patients to sperm injections, which were followed by “intense local reaction, not very painful”, fever, headache and general malaise.

In the article in which he narrated the experience, Loforte considered the results to be excellent and said that similar experiments were carried out in São Paulo, but using semen from sheep.

With the end of World War II, the Nuremberg Court was charged with investigating war crimes and, in 1946, it condemned 16 German Nazi doctors for unethical and eugenic practices, such as those made famous by the physician Josef Mengele, known for his experiences with prisoners in the Auschwitz concentration camps in Poland.

The change in medical and scientific practice was gradual, says the professor of medicine at UFMG José Agostinho Lopes. Several of the current international guidelines for ethics and respect for human rights were conceived after the late 1940s.

In theory, research was no longer acceptable without the informed consent of the participants, for example, or testing in humans possible treatments that brought harm already known before the study.

In practice, the Covid-19 pandemic showed decades later that this is not the case.