In Search of an Anti-Ageing Drug or the History of Gravidan Therapy in the USSR

Abstract

The article is devoted to the history of discovery, experimental testing and practical implementation of the gravidan therapy, a method for the treatment of various diseases, introduced by the doctor named A. A. Zamkov. The method was based on the administration of gravidan, a preparation obtained from pregnant women’s urine. The inventor of this miracle drug promulgated a novel medical approach, based on the rehabilitation of the whole organism rather than of its poorly functioning individual organs. According to Zamkov, gravidan contained a complex of various hormones and bioactive substances, invigorated, aided in speedy recovery, and possessed a rejuvenating action. In 1930, after the publication of experiments with gravidan, conducted at the Institute of Experimental Biology, Zamkov was criticized by his scientific colleagues in the Izvestiya newspaper. Soon both he and his wife, the sculptress V. I. Mukhina, were arrested for their attempt to illegally escape abroad, sentenced with seizure of property, and sent into exile to Voronezh. At the time, Zamkov’s influential patients in Moscow joined in a campaign for his return to the capital. In 1932, he created the Laboratory of Urogravidan Therapy that was in 1933 reorganized into a scientific research institute. In 1938, after the Third Moscow Trial, where, inter alia, several physicians were accused of the deaths of a number of prominent figures in the Soviet Union, the USSR People’s Commissariat for Health Care dissolved the Institute of Urogravidan Therapy. The experiments with gravidan were prohibited but Zamkov and, after his death, Mukhina appealed to different authorities to permit production and therapeutic use of gravidan. In the end, it never came into widespread use in medical practice, as a rigorous testing of its effectiveness yielded the results that dispelled the myth of the omnipotent drug.