Where and when was HRT first made available for transsexual women?  Also, when was it first available for transwomen in the US?

That's a great question. I'd like to know if anyone has the answers. I know that one of the first persons to undergo GCS was April Ashley (9th person in the world) and she was taking hormones in the 1950's along with a handful of other performers in France at the time. Her biography is pretty fascinating, I recommend it. You can read it here http://www.antijen.org/Aprilv1/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Ashley

Yes, I know all about April Ashley!  Love her!  She's so regal.  I wish I was as beautiful as she was when she was my age.

I looked around for trans history stuff and it seems like the first person to treat transsexual individuals with hormones might be Harry Benjamin.

From this site
http://www.cinematter.com/tshistory.html

QuoteIn 1953, Dr. Harry Benjamin authored the article, Transvestism and Transsexualism, in the International Journal of Sexology (7: 12-14). Dr. Benjamin had begun to treat transexuals with hormone therapy in 1949.

Also from Harry Benjamin's wiki:

QuoteBenjamin eventually decided to treat the child with estrogen (Premarin, introduced in 1941)

I wish those were better sourced, though. I can't find anything on this "International Journal of Sexology". I'd love to be able to read that article.

Thanks, Sunnynight.  I greatly appreciate your findings!  It helps a lot.

I dont know when hrt became widely available, but first experiments in that direction seem to have taken place in the early 1920's in berlin. I have no material at hand right now but you could google magnus hirschfeld, felix abraham and "institut für sexualwissenschaft"

Magnus Hirschfeld tried to transplant ovaries and possibly even uteruses.
It's not very well documented.
The Nazis plundered the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in May 6, 1933.
Many records were destroyed.

In 1941 Premarin was extracted in Canada.

In 1949 it appears that the first hormone treatment by Harry Benjamin occurred.

Here is an important piece of the puzzle:

After many years of research and having first discovered the estrogens, estrone and estriol in 1929, Dr. Edward Adelbert Doisy isolated Estradiol isolating it from pig follicular fluid in the mid 1930's.  Estradiol is the sex hormone used for MTF hormone reassignment therapy (HRT).

Also, a German  biochemist, Adolf Friedrich Johann Butenandt, discovered estrone working independently in Germany around the same time.

It was Benjamin, in 1949. But Premarin, estrogen extraced from pregnant mares, was first sold in Canada and later in the US since 1941.

Didn't it mainstream in the 1990s?

I believe that HRT in transsexual women became more official in the 1960's with Harry Benjamin.

Quote from: Amy Chislett on November 06, 2016, 09:05:40 AM
Didn't it mainstream in the 1990s?

I started Premarin in 1977 and treatment was pretty standard then. Christine Jorgensen completed her transition in 1951 and was on HRT prior to that.

I started HRT the first time on Stilboestrol in the late 1960's, then was put on Premarin by Dr Reid, first the yellow pill subsequently the purple pill in the mid to late 70. Then in late 70's it was weekly  injections with Primogyn Depot - that's when I started to see the real differences with initial rapid breast growth.
Judith Lynn

Hi Everyone

Lili Elbe[1] is widely recognized as one of the first to undergo hormone treatment and gender affirming surgeries.  Her medical transition began in 1930, under the supervision of Dr Magnus Hirschfeld at the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin.

Elbe's experience, along with the surgeries she underwent, is chronicled in the book Man Into Woman[2]

Best Wishes Always
Sarah B
Global Moderator
[1]  Wikipedia link for Lili Elbe
[2]  Elbe, Lili. Man into Woman: The First Sex Change, edited by Niels Hoyer

Quote from: Sunnynight on September 02, 2011, 06:42:51 PMI wish those were better sourced, though. I can't find anything on this "International Journal of Sexology". I'd love to be able to read that article.

The reference is: Benjamin, H. "Transsexualism and Transvestism—a Symposium: Transsexualism and Transvestism as Psychosomatic and Somato–Psychic Syndromes." American Journal of Psychotherapy 8, no. 2 (1949): 219-30.

I pulled the paper and read it. Benjamin cites Hirschfeld and makes an early mention of the concept of transsexualism, which didn't really gain currency until about 1966. Benjamin's concepts are similar to Hirschfeld's, allowing for the prejudices of his time, but he gets entangled in sexual orientation and gets very close to a definition which is banned here. However, Benjamin writes, 'These people seem to me truly the victims of their genetic constitution, step-children of medical science, often crucified by the ignorance and indifferent of society and persecuted by antiquated laws and by legal interpretations that completely lack in wisdom and realism.' That echoes Hirschfeld's view and eased the way toward transgender theory, in which society's prejudice is a part of the problem.

Benjamin writes, 'A conversion-operation is an infrequent procedure, even allowing for the fact that it may often be kept a deep secret (as a supposed illegal procedure). Treatment with estrogens would have to follow in order to control castration symptoms, aside from having its feminizing effect...' He mentions treatment with large doses of estrogen in combination with psychotherapy and 'the possible plastic formation of an artificial vagina'.

Benjamin's paper was expanded into a book, Benjamin, H. The Transsexual Phenomenon: A Scientific Report on Transsexualism and Sex Conversion in the Human Male and Female. First ed. New York: Julian Press, 1966. By then he had further developed his ideas and transsexualism became accepted.

This is fun - I've written about Hirschfeld and Transsexualism without mentioning Benjamin here.

Although the OP was about hormones, GAMC surgery began to become more comon in the late 1940s. In England Harold Gillies - an amazing man, I've worked with people who operated alongside him - did their first case in 1949 and a more advanced one in 1951. With this type of surgery, what could be done early on was limited because the necessary techniques didn't exist and it was exceptionally talented people like Gillies who helped create those techniques from scratch.

Gillies was devoted to what he did. He died while he was operating. I have literally never heard a bad word about him.

Quote from: Renate on September 03, 2011, 10:10:41 AMIn 1941 Premarin was extracted in Canada.

Premarin has to be the key because before it was isolated, estrogen therapy wasn't practical. So any SRS procedures done before it became widely available would have been limited compared to what can be achieved now and the estrogen driven secondary sexual changes we take for granted now as part of GAMC would have been a dream.

Another key question here is when was the first surgery to create a vagina carried out? A literature search might find it, but Benjamin mentions it, so the idea was already around in 1949.