History
Lili Elbe was the first known recipient of male-to-female sex reassignment surgery in Germany in 1930. She was the subject of five surgeries: one of penectomy and orchiectomy, one intended to transplant ovaries, two to remove the ovaries after transplant rejection, and vaginoplasty. However, she died three months after her fifth operation.
Christine Jørgensen was likely the most famous recipient of sex reassignment surgery, having her surgery done in Denmark in late 1952 and being outed right afterwards. She was a strong advocate for the rights of transsexual people.
Another famous person to undergo male-to-female sex reassignment surgery was Renée Richards. She transitioned and had surgery in the mid-1970s, and successfully fought to have transsexual people recognized in their new sex.
The first male-to-female surgeries in the United States took place in 1966 at the Johns Hopkins University Medical Center. The first physician who performed sex reassignment surgeries in the United States was the late Dr. Elmer Belt. He stopped doing these surgeries in the late sixties.
Read more about this topic: Sex Reassignment Surgery (male-to-female)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“In the history of the United States, there is no continuity at all. You can cut through it anywhere and nothing on this side of the cut has anything to do with anything on the other side.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)