Lili Ilse Elvenes (*1882 Denmark–†1931 Germany) was one of the first transgender women
who ultimately died from on a series of risky and essentially unproven operations
to remove her male parts and transplant female reproductive organs. Her remarkable
life history – made into ‘The Danish Girl’ and the learnings thereof – carries important
messages about how we, citizens and doctors alike, should deal with hormonal conditions.
There are instructive parallels with other disorders, for example, insufficiency of
the thyroid gland. The Danish girls and boys of today, who suffer hypothyroidism,
have a similar mix of signs and symptoms, intended- and unintended effects of treatment,
and placebo- and nocebo-effects, thus posing us with an emergent socio-, and medical
challenge.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: September 29, 2017
Accepted:
September 25,
2017
Received:
September 21,
2017
Identification
Copyright
© 2017 European Federation of Internal Medicine. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
