Harry Houdini could escape almost anything. Could he escape growing old?In the 1920s, doctors offered an extraordinary promise: renewed youth through animal-gland transplantation. Monkey glands in Europe. Goat glands in Kansas. For a performer whose livelihood depended on his body, the prospect of restored vigor had an obvious attraction.
Houdini watched operations, corresponded about their results, and knew a surgeon conducting transplantation research. But how far did his interest go?
In Houdini and the Promise of Youth, Jef Stevens follows this little-known trail through a world where medical ambition, show business and the search for another chance collided. Along the way emerges a complicated Houdini: devoted to his mother, fiercely protective of his reputation, relentless in his promotion, and determined to expose fraudulent mediums—even when it cost him his friendship with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
The investigation ends in Montreal and Detroit, with the celebrated punches, a final performance given while seriously ill, and the hospital struggle that became part of his legend.
Drawing on correspondence, contemporary reporting and medical history, this illustrated book explores Houdini’s fascination with rejuvenation, the possibility of a private operation, and the unanswered questions surrounding his death.
For magicians, magic historians, and anyone who enjoys the stranger corners of vintage history—a famous life viewed through an unexpectedly intimate mystery.
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