Self and Roberta Cowell
In 1946 Dillon published Self: A Study in Endocrinology and Ethics, a book about what would now be called transsexuality, though that term had not been coined yet. He described "masculine inverts" as being born with "the mental outlook and temperament of the other sex", using Stephen Gordon in the novel The Well of Loneliness as an example. Since this form of inversion was innate — a hidden physical condition similar to intersexuality — it could not be affected by psychoanalysis and should instead be treated medically. "Where the mind cannot be made to fit the body," he wrote, "the body should be made to fit, approximately at any rate, to the mind."
Self brought him to the attention of Roberta Cowell (born Robert Cowell), who would become the first British trans woman to receive male-to-female sex reassignment surgery. Though Dillon was not yet a licensed physician, he himself performed an orchidectomy on Cowell, since British law made the operation illegal. Cowell's vaginoplasty was later performed by Gillies.
Read more about this topic: Michael Dillon (physician)