Wondrous Transformations

ALISON LI

The story of hormone therapy told through the fascinating life of Dr Harry Benjamin, who pioneered the use of hormones to assist in gender transitions

Today it’s unexceptional to think of ourselves as hormonal beings. We blame ‘raging hormones’ for the tempests of puberty and midlife and spend our days ‘running on adrenaline’ in ‘testosterone-fuelled’ workplaces. Yet this view is relatively recent.

In WONDROUS TRANSFORMATIONS, Alison Li tells the fascinating history of the rise of hormones through the life of one of its foremost pioneers. A daring explorer in the areas of sex and ageing, as well as a celebrity doctor in 1920s’ New York, the German-born physician Harry Benjamin (1885–1986) first became acquainted with the science of hormones in 1916. He then devoted his life to using this new technology to help people transform themselves – from old to young, or, decades later, from male to female. Benjamin’s sympathetic work with those who wanted to transition from one biological sex to another was ground-breaking, done at a time when homosexuality and any behaviour that crossed gender lines was not just pathologized but criminalized, too.

Li shows how Benjamin paved the way for the then-revolutionary idea that we can transform our bodies to match our minds. Ultimately, WONDROUS TRANSFORMATIONS is a tale not only about the chemical transformation of our bodies but also about the transformation of the very concept of identity and self.

Alison Li is an historian of science and medicine. The author of the biography J. B. COLLIP AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF MEDICAL RESEARCH IN CANADA (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013), she has lectured at universities as well as to the public, presented papers at numerous conferences and appeared in a television documentary about the discovery of insulin. She holds an MA and a PhD in the history and philosophy of science and technology from the University of Toronto. Previously an assistant professor of science and technology studies at York University in Toronto, she now writes full-time.

AGENT