doi: 10.1503/cmaj.231436 Harry Benjamin (1885–1986) is now best known as the author of the ground- breaking 1966 book The Transsexual Phenomenon and as a pivotal figure in the early history of transgender medi- cine.1 The German-American physician provided the first detailed clinical dis- cussion of the condition then referred to as “transsexualism” and was one of the first medical professionals t. [...] Through were treated there, including Dora the Steinach operation, a procedure the 1920s and early ‘30s, Benjamin regu- R ichter and Lili Elbe, the subject of The intended to slow the aging process. [...] The work of the institute treatment was devised by the respected at his Institute for Sexual Science, the came to an abrupt end in May 1933 when Viennese physiologist Eugen Steinach, first of its kind devoted to the scientific it was ransacked by Nazi-backed stu- who postulated that a unilateral vasoli- study of sex. [...] And interested in transsexualism, “most care — had embedded in it assumptions thanks to his years of giving hormone roads led to Benjamin.”5 At 81, Benjamin of heteronormativity, a gender binary, and therapy to his aging patients, he felt published The Transsexual Phenomenon, the belief that psychological distress is an comfortable supplying the means to which influenced a generation of trans- i. [...] Together, they bandied about Morris and Renée Richards, the well- in treating his patients with compassion ideas and tried to get to the heart of this known transgender figures of the 1970s.
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