Greg Downey: Roid Age: steroids in sport and the paradox of pharmacological puritanism

Via Andrew Sullivan.  Long, but an interesting read.

By the 1880s, French physiologist Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard developed an ‘elixir’, a concentrated extract derived from guinea pig and dog testicles, that he believed would capture the essence of masculinity, including increased strength and intellectual ability.

In 1889, US baseball pitcher James ‘Pud’ Galvin openly injected the Brown-Séquard Elixir, especially toward the end of his remarkable career (Halverson 2011). In contrast to McGwire, Galvin was an early inductee into the Hall of Fame, as he was the first pitcher to notch 300 wins in the professional leagues (Coincidentally, Galvin was also born in St. Louis. But I digress…). In fact, as Halverson (2011) points out, Galvin was actually praised by the media at the time for demonstrating the value of the Brown-Séquard Elixir.