Medical Rejuvenation in Georgia in the past: the Sukhumi Station.

If youth and body appearance enhancement is as old as Homo Sapiens, reliable medical technology for such activities is only about 100 years old. At the dawn of the 20th century, surgical operations performed under the Voronoff's treatment plan (monkey gonads' tissue grafting into humans) or the Steinach's technique (vasoligation) offered a promise of longevity, beauty and therefore youth restoration. The many links with a newly recognized discipline, endocrinology, offer a critical insight on the strong interactions between medicine and surgery in the promise of successful antiaging. On the front-line of scientific research, the Institute of Experimental Endocrinology's primate station in Sukhumi (West Georgia, now Abkhazia, on the Black Sea coast) developed a leadership role in the medical research, including rejuvenation with testis' tissues. Authors focus their attention to the everlasting commitment to experimental and clinical research as developed by Sukhumi scholars and the related moral, practical and ideological implications.