When it comes to treatments for erectile dysfunction, there are a wide range of pills, sprays, injections and other treatments and research that spans nearly a century of medical history, as well as millennia of archaic remedies.
Scientific innovation has come a long way, and there is a range of ways to buy sildenafil, tadalafil and other PDE5 inhibitors online.
Before that, however, there was a wide range of attempts.
Infamous Beginnings
The first ‘doctor’ to attempt to cure erectile dysfunction through medical means was John R. Brinkley. Brinkley did initially work as an undergraduate physician but his degree was bought from a diploma mill and he didn’t have official qualifications.
In 1918, after years of wheeling and dealing across the United States, Brinkley would come across a patient who asked if he could help someone who was “sexually weak”.
He came up with the bright idea of transplanting goat testicles into the patient, as they were one of the healthiest animals slaughtered.
Unsurprisingly the goat’s parts didn’t actually graft with the human parts and essentially did nothing.
That didn’t stop him advertising the fact that by sheer chance a baby had been born to one of his patients. This got him publicity, as well as the attention of the AMA.
Eventually, his decades of charlatanism caught up with him and he was forced to flee the country.
Implants And Devices
It would take another forty years before erectile dysfunction treatments a basis in reality, with the first vacuum pump being invented by a car dealer by the name of Geddings D Osbon. He came up with the device basically for himself, to regain the relationship he had lost with his wife.
The eventual result, the Youth Equivalent Device, was initially heavily criticised by the medical community, but turned out to work effectively and would be the first prescribed medical treatment for ED out there.
The Medical Revolution
The biggest revolution in treating erectile dysfunction would come in 1983, when Dr Giles Brindley, in an infamous Las Vegas meeting of the American Urological Association.
Dr Brindley was showcasing a new chemical ED treatment, and to do so, injected himself with a mixture of saline and phenoxybenzamine, an alpha-blocker, and exposed himself to the audience of clinical professionals.
Whilst that lecture alone would remain in the minds of urologists around the globe, what it also proved was that chemical treatments could be used to induce an erection, paving the way for the development of the first ED treatment that many people are aware of.
Sildenafil was discovered in Sandwich, Kent, at Pfizer’s research facility in the UK, originally as a potential treatment for high blood pressure and angina.
Whilst at the time the clinical trials suggested it was not a great fit to treat angina, taken orally it could induce erections, and so the drug was marketed (as Viagra) for treating ED rather than heart conditions, although there are prescription uses for sildenafil to help with cardiovascular diseases.
The blue sildenafil pill has become exceptionally well known through being the first ED treatment on the market that was openly advertised on television.
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