San Quentin’s chief surgeon experimented with testicular transplants on prisoners

Evidence

Leo Stanley, the chief surgeon of San Quentin, tried treating prisoners with “testicular implantations”; he found that goldfish, fed with a diet of “ground testicular substance” (taken from rams), had shown great improvement in “activity”; perhaps convicts could benefit likewise. He also tried out the idea of using the testicles of executed prisoners. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 4287

Categorization

• FICTION: A genuinely strange, specific image — prison medicine as mad-scientist testicular gardening — rich material for a historical fiction scene of institutional grotesquerie.