Versemaking and lovemaking--W. B. Yeats' "strange second puberty": Norman Haire and the Steinach rejuvenation operation.

This article examines the Steinach rejuvenation operation (a vasectomy) which Norman Haire performed on W. B. Yeats in 1934: while this method is now discredited, many others are still used in similar attempts to "cure" old age and restore youthful vitality. The article deals substantially with ideas which were popular among well-read people and intellectuals in the 1920s and 1930s and discusses whether the poet's late-in-life burst of creativity was caused by a medical breakthrough, Haire's more general medical advice, the placebo effect, or by a combination of factors: questions which still have relevance to theories about age, sexuality, and mind-body relationships. Copyright 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.